Snowden revelations may lead to spying curbs: experts

[Night_Hawk]

Snowden revelations may lead to spying curbs: experts
AFP

US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden. — File Photo
Published 2013-12-20 08:46:24

WASHINGTON: Intelligence leaker Edward Snowden's revelations about the scale of American eavesdropping have succeeded in triggering a fierce debate which could ultimately lead to limits on National Security Agency spying, experts say.

Snowden has been labeled a “traitor” by government officials but events this week signalled a possible vindication for the former computer contractor, who has always insisted he is a whistleblower trying to shed light on the NSA's secret surveillance.
Six months since a stream of bombshell revelations began pouring out from Snowden, members of Congress are proposing new laws to rein in the NSA, a federal judge ruled one of its programs is likely unconstitutional and a panel handpicked by the White House has called for sweeping changes to electronic surveillance.
It is “undeniable that we're having a series of debates about the appropriate limits of government surveillance that, without Edward Snowden, we would not be having,” said Stephen Vladeck, professor of law at American University. “If Snowden's goal was to spark a public debate I think he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.”
Snowden, who has been granted asylum in Russia and faces espionage charges in the US, has expressed satisfaction that federal judge Richard Leon found the NSA's collection of Americans' telephone records probably violated privacy rights and that the snooping was “almost Orwellian” in scale.
“Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights,” Snowden said after Monday's ruling.
The most serious rebuke to the NSA came Wednesday from a panel of establishment figures named by the White House to review the surveillance operations that mushroomed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The panel, which included a career spy who served as acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Morrell, called for imposing limits on the NSA's powers, scaling back its secrecy and reforming the agency.
“We conclude that some of the authorities that were expanded or created in the aftermath of Sept. 11 unduly sacrifice fundamental interests in individual liberty, personal privacy, and democratic governance,” the panel wrote in its report issued Wednesday.
The panel also called into question claims from US spy chiefs that the dragnet of phone and Internet traffic has kept America safe, saying the spying “was not essential to preventing attacks.”
Privacy versus security
The panel warned that privacy rights outlined in the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution should not be sacrificed in the name of preserving security, but also said the government had a duty to protect its citizens. The tension between those two principles is at the heart of the debate triggered by Snowden.
“I think the question is: what is the spirit of the Fourth Amendment as applied to the new technologies?” Vladeck said.
“That is the incredibly important and so far unanswered question looming behind the Snowden disclosures.”Even the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, reluctantly acknowledged in September that Snowden's leaks have generated a much-needed discussion about the parameters of eavesdropping.
More than a decade since the 9/11 attacks, the sweeping powers granted to the NSA by two successive presidents and lawmakers are now being re-examined, according to James Lewis, a former senior US official who worked on intelligence and cyber security.
“It's painful to say but yes, Snowden triggered long overdue thinking about how we engage in intelligence collection,” said Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Snowden's leaks, however, also have damaged the US government's ability to gather intelligence and that will carry unknown risks, he said.
Snowden evokes mixed feelings among Americans.
According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll last month, only 35 per cent of Americans between the ages 18 to 30 say Snowden should be charged with a crime, compared with 57 per cent of those 30 and older.
Rights activists believe the leaks have opened up a rare opportunity to enact major reforms but it remains unclear where President Barack Obama will come down on the panel's recommendations.
For Snowden, the secrecy surrounding NSA spying represented a bigger threat than the surveillance itself.
“What we recoil most strongly against is not that such surveillance can theoretically occur, “ he wrote to Time magazine in an email interview, “but that it was done without a majority of society even being aware it was possible.”

http://www.dawn.com/news/1075280/snowden-revelations-may-lead-to-spying-curbs-experts

 

[Night_Hawk]

NSA court case may threaten surveillance legality

SHANE HARRIS
​

An illustration picture shows the logo of the US National Security Agency on the display of an iPhone in Berlin, June 7, 2013. Reuters Photo​

Updated 2013-12-19 15:18:21Share

WASHINGTON: A Federal District Court judge ruled this week that the National Security Agencys collection and storage of all Americans phone records probably violates the United States Constitution and is an almost Orwellian system that surely . . . infringes on that degree of privacy that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.
Its the first successful legal challenge to NSA surveillance since June, when Edward Snowden began a cascade of NSA disclosures. It might just set up the most important legal debate about surveillance and personal privacy in decades. And it threatens to undermine one of the major legal foundations of the NSAs vast surveillance network.
Judge Richard Leon of the District of Columbia, a George W Bush appointee, ordered the government to stop collecting the phone records of two plaintiffs who brought a lawsuit against the NSAs so-called metadata programme and to destroy the information it has on them now. He stayed his injunction, pending an almost certain appeal by the Obama administration. But if the case is eventually heard by an appeals court and there are reasons to think it will be it would be the highest-stakes and highest-profile battle to date over the NSAs programme, and a proxy argument for the broader ethical dimensions about massive government surveillance.
The judge ruled that the governments collection of phone records relied on an outdated Supreme Court ruling, from 1979, that metadata isnt protected by the Fourth Amendment. The ubiquity of phones has dramatically altered the quantity of information that is now available and, more importantly, what that information can tell the government about peoples lives, the judge wrote. I cannot possibly navigate these uncharted Fourth Amendment waters using as my North Star a case that predates the rise of cell phones.
But that case, Smith v. Maryland, is part of the foundation of NSAs global surveillance system, which relies on the collection of all kinds of metadata from phone records, to email header information, to Internet addresses. Leons ruling may be the first step towards bringing that issue before the Americas highest court, and potentially altering the way the global surveillance system is run.
In some respects, momentum has been building towards this moment. The metadata programme was nearly defanged over the summer, in a rare show of bipartisan support in the House of Representatives. Since then, there have been further revelations of government spying, including on US allies, and a presidential review panel has reportedly recommended a sweeping set of reforms at the NSA, including prohibiting the agency from storing Americans phone records. Since June, the Obama administration has mounted a public relations offensive in support of the NSA programme and has told lawmakers that it is legal and necessary to protect Americans from terrorist attacks an argument that Judge Leon found unpersuasive. But officials have rarely had to publicly argue the legality and constitutionality of the programme in court. The only judges to review the programme have done so in secret over the past six years, and no lawyer has been present to argue that the programme should be changed or discontinued.
In finding that the metadata programme probably violates the Fourth Amendment, Judge Leon ruled on broad grounds, leaving the DC Court of Appeals a number of potential options. They could dismiss the case ruling, as previous courts have, that the plaintiffs lack standing to bring the suit because they cant prove that they were individually subjected to secret surveillance.
But that was before Snowdens leak, which provided documented evidence that the government was collecting phone records. Administration officials subsequently confirmed the programme exists, and that it continues to collect information about hundreds of millions of Americans. The plaintiffs in the case, led by conservative public-interest attorney Larry Klayman, arguably have the proof of standing that has eluded prior challengers to government surveillance.
The administration would also have a hard time arguing that the need to preserve national security secrets is reason not to hear the case.
Thanks to Snowden, the government is not really in a position to tell the DC Circuit, You cant reach the merits [of this case] because of state secrets, said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at American Universitys College of Law who focuses on national security.
Of course, the ruling could end up being short-lived. Paul Rosenzweig, a homeland security official in the Bush administration, called Leons ruling remarkable, but also unpersuasive, and predicted that it wouldnt stand.
By arrangement with the Washington Post-Bloomberg News Service
http://www.dawn.com/news/1074918/nsa-court-case-may-threaten-surveillance-legality