The recent
discovery of the NSA program collecting telecom recordings has yet again
sparked the debate on the validity of the US Patriot Act which allows the
national agencies to tap into private data of the masses.
A recent
leaked NSA document shows that on April 25, the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court (FISA) granted an order to the FBI, giving them unlimited
access to obtain telecom recordings (within the country as well as between US
and other countries) for a three-month period ending in July.
Following
up on such spying activities that were carried out in the Bush administration,
this document shows evidence that for the first time under Obama’s presidency, such
measures are being taken, regardless of whether the citizens are suspected of
any wrongdoing.
As per the FISA
order, phone numbers of both parties on the call are handed over, along with location
data, call duration, unique identifiers and the time and duration of all calls
on the networks operated by Verizon, one of the biggest telecom operators in
the country.
To add to
the blows, it was also revealed that the court order had expressly barred
Verizon from disclosing any existence of such activity or the court order
itself.
It is still
unknown if Verizon is the only provider to be targeted with such an order while
previous reports have suggested such collections from all major mobile
networks. It is also unclear whether the three-month order is for a one-off
activity or the latest in a series of similar orders.
Privacy
advocates have stated their concern that such breach of privacy and storage of
unlimited "metadata" (also termed as business records) is a highly
invasive form of surveillance and is in no way, a constituent of the US Patriot
Act of 2001. Under the cover of “security concerns”, such activities fall into
a grey area where these records enable the government to know the identity of
every person with whom an individual has an electronic relationship, either via
phone calls, texts or e-mails sent via phone.
The US authorities
have tried for a long time to get their hands on such data to discover an
individual's communication patterns and network of associations. This data
collection request indicates that the agency is continuing some version of the
data-mining program that began in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Apart from
the hostility from the masses, other repercussions have also started surfacing.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is the first of the many to come, to
file a lawsuit against the NSA for breach of privacy.
Working on
mitigating the damage, Barack Obama, said in an interview with journalist
Charlie Rose that all NSA has access to, is “call pairs”. The identity
information is kept under wraps and the only revealed data is number pairs, the
time and duration of the calls.
According
to the President (also known as “Big Brother” post this leak), the database
would be available to the national security agencies only to cross reference
and match information in times of suspected terrorist activities. Also, this
database would be a property of the FISA court and would require a warrant for
access.
The security concerns and the measures taken by
the state to “counter-acting terrorism” have always been a controversial topic.
With certain revelations like WikiLeaks and now the NSA leaks, have grabbed a
lot of media attention and portrayed the authorities in the bad light, giving
rise to conspiracy theories and hostility towards the state.
Source(s):
Guardian.co.uk
Reuters.com
General
press search
