WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The U.S. National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone records provides only minimal benefits to countering terrorism, is illegal and should end, a federal privacy watchdog said in a report released ysterday.
The watchdog’s report could further complicate efforts by both President Barack Obama and Congress to come up with reforms to NSA eavesdropping programs, which have been under harsh scrutiny for their scope in the wake of revelations by former contractor Edward Snowden.The report was a result of a vast review of the phone data collection program, based on public and classified briefings and documents, conducted by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board at the request of Obama and lawmakers.
The board, formed at the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission in 2004, is an independent government agency within the executive branch that advises the president and Congress on how to ensure that counterterrorism operations also protect Americans’ privacy.
In Thursday’s report, the board’s three-member majority called on the government to end the NSA program that collects bulk telephone records and to purge the data it had collected, adding ammunition to efforts by privacy advocates to win new restrictions on government surveillance programs. “The Section 215 bulk telephone records program lacks a viable legal foundation under Section 215, implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value,” it said.
The board’s majority argued that the NSA improperly relies on a statute meant to give the FBI access to phone records. It also questioned the relevance of collecting metadata – records of U.S. phone calls, their length and time – in bulk and its routine reauthorization by a secretive surveillance court.
