Your government spying on you

It has been an extraordinary week as London's The Guardian newspaper and The Washington Post have published top-secret documents revealing that the FBI and National Security Agency -- with the complicity and approval of Congressional intelligence committees, not to mention major U.S. corporations -- for years have been massively spying on U.S. citizens, whether suspected of criminal behavior or not.

The spying apparently extends to private telephone calls, emails, credit-card transactions, and Internet services provided by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Yahoo and AOL. And that's only what has come out so far.

Officials reacted with the lame observation that national security requires such erosion of privacy. Really? Secret orders from secret courts sound like... well, like George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, as many have pointed out.  It is all outrageous -- so outrageous that even the editorial board of The New York Times, which has supported President Obama on many issues, published a remarkable rebuke stating: "The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it."

For a timeline of milestones in government surveillance since 9/11, read this excellent piece in Mother Jones.

Thank God for whistleblowers and a free press. The wisdom of the Founding Fathers in adopting the First Amendment is proved once again.

Like many other newspapers and media outlets, we at The Providence Journal will be examining this issue -- privacy v. security -- in greater detail in the weeks to come. It was already on our radar. For now, here's the local story we ran on P. 1 today alongside AP coverage of the story:


Balancing of security, rights urged
G. WAYNE MILLER
Publication Date: June 7, 2013  Page: MAIN_01  Section: News  Zone: MAIN  Edition: 1 

PROVIDENCE - Disclosure that the National Security Agency is secretly obtaining daily logs of phone calls made by Verizon customers brought a comparison on Thursday to George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984," in which "Big Brother" relentlessly spies on its citizens - whether they are suspected of criminal behavior or not.

"The revelation that the government has been secretly tracking the calls of potentially millions of Verizon phone customers is shocking, but only the latest example of the insidious growth of a surveillance state in this country," Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Thursday.

"In the name of security and safety, the government is approaching Orwellian dimensions in its spying on ordinary people."

In an interview, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed said Congress should convene hearings into the reported surveillance and the general use of the Patriot Act, under which the NSA apparently justified its data-gathering, with the goal of "improvements" in the balance between Americans' right to privacy and legitimate national security concerns.

"This is a topic that Congress should pursue," the Rhode Island Democrat said. "Hearings - absolutely."

The revelation was published by The Guardian, a London newspaper that obtained a copy of a top secret court order, issued two months ago by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a furtive U.S. government body. The order requires Verizon Business Network Services to give the NSA daily logs of information including the phone numbers, location data and duration involved of all calls - regardless of whether the callers are suspected of wrongdoing or not.

It is unknown if other U.S. telecommunications companies, such as AT&T, are under separate orders to supply logs to the NSA. The court order does not apply to the content of the calls, which means the surveillance technically is not wiretapping.

U.S. Rep. David N. Cicilline, D-R.I., was among the members of Congress on Thursday who expressed serious concerns about such indiscriminate surveillance.

"It is very disturbing to learn that the National Security Agency reportedly required Verizon to turn over information regarding the private communications of millions of innocent Americans," Cicilline told The Providence Journal.

"The federal government has a responsibility both to ensure our national security and to maintain every citizen's essential right to privacy. There has to be a better way - this level of sweeping surveillance has no place in a free society and we should review this matter thoroughly."

Speaking to The New York Times on Thursday, an unnamed senior official in the Obama administration defended the gathering of phone information under a contested section of the Patriot Act.

"Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States," the official told the paper. (In a remarkable rebuke, the paper's editorial board Thursday afternoon posted an editorial that said with the Verizon disclosure, "the administration has now lost all credibility.")

The "critical tool" sentiments were echoed by Daniel Castro, senior analyst with the nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

"Government should use data to fight terrorism. One of the major failures pre-9/11 was the inability to 'connect the dots,' " Castro told The Journal. "Using meta-data such as phone records is a useful way to identify networks of individuals … . From a privacy perspective, this is also better than listening in on phone calls. Data analytics alone won't stop terrorism, but it should be one tool available to law enforcement officials."

Castro, however, questioned why the surveillance had not been publicly disclosed by the government.

"Most Americans didn't know this was happening," he said. "There's nothing intrinsically wrong with collecting and using this type of data on a large scale, but there doesn't seem to be a good reason to do it in secret."

Said David Barrett, professor with Villanova University's department of political science:

"A program which is known to high officials of the executive branch and to the two congressional committees on intelligence is not what I would call Big Brother. I have assumed something like this has been going on since the passage of the Patriot Act. Notice that this particular order does not authorize monitoring of the content of such phone calls. That would take additional authorization."

In a statement to The Journal, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse urged balance between security and privacy.

"As a former member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I can't comment extensively on these news reports, since they relate to classified information to which I may have been exposed," the Rhode Island Democrat said.

"That said, when looking at programs of this nature it is always important to ensure that our nation is protecting both civil liberties and national security. I have always worked to make sure the actions of our government are consistent with both goals, and I will continue to do so."

The ACLU's Brown was more emphatic.

"This latest disclosure highlights the need for strong action at both the state and federal level to address these increasing encroachments on basic privacy rights," he said.

"We can no longer pretend that our privacy is safe from indiscriminate government snooping. We hope that steps will be taken to restore some semblance of our right to privacy in the face of technological advances that are so easily able to eradicate it."