Tuesday, 18 June 2013

The National Security Agency (NSA) and US Patriot Act Controversy

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

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