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Federal court ruling against NSA phone surveillance isn't quite what it seems
A federal district court judge in Washington DC issued a preliminary injunction today in a case regarding the NSA's practice of collecting phone call metadata. In doing so, Judge Richard Leon essentially prohibited the NSA from recording the metadata of the folks who filed the lawsuit, holding that the NSA's actions likely violate the fourth amendment of the US Constitution -- the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The case was originally filed in June by five people who are customers of either Verizon, AT&T or Sprint in the wake of Edward Snowden's NSA spying revelations. And today's ruling has been hailed by some as a huge blow against the NSA in its fight to continue the surveillance practices it claims are authorized under the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).There's a problem with that narrative, however. It's misleading, and the ruling's importance has been overstated. In reality, the ruling just tells us Judge Leon's view of the case given the information he currently has. (A view that is, admittedly, overwhelmingly skeptical of the legality of the NSA's practices and current case law regarding fourth amendment violations.) It does not change the law, the ruling is not final in nature. In fact, in issuing the ruling, Judge Leon removed any immediate legal force of his decision when he stayed the injunction (meaning that the NSA can go about its business as usual if it so chooses) pending appeal. So, not only does the injunction not yet take effect, it might not ever take effect if the appellate court disagrees with Judge Leon's reasoning. Furthermore, the effect of a preliminary injunction only lasts as long as the case does -- so should the trial result in a verdict that the NSA did not violate the constitution, any reasoning given to the contrary in a preliminary injunction ruling is essentially rendered moot.So, while it seems clear that Judge Leon will be looking upon the NSA's data collection policies with great interest and some scorn, his decision is not a major blow against the government. That blow may be coming, and Judge Leon may be the among those to deal it. He just didn't do so today.
FISA court renews NSA permission to collect call metadata
News that the NSA collects bulk phone call metadata (phone numbers, call times and duration) from Verizon and other backbone providers initially leaked out in June. Since then PRISM, Edward Snowden and any number of other national security related topics have been in the spotlight, and the new focus has spurred at least one change in the process. On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly announced the request -- following other declassified documents about the program -- and that it has been renewed (again) by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. As The Hill mentions, the NSA claims its analysts are only able to search through the collected data if there is "reasonable, articulable suspicion" a phone number is connected to terrorist activity. With analysts still able to paw through tons of our data this doesn't quite feel like the transparency promised, but even this small admission that it's happening highlights how things have changed.
Secret NSA project gathered American cellphone location data
The NSA's been rather busy over the past few years, tracking everything from your emails to phone calls, and now the New York Times is reporting that it even conducted a secret project to collect data about the location of American's cellphones in 2010 and 2011. The project was ultimately not implemented and only recently surfaced in a pre-written answer for the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper, should the subject come up in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. According to the Times, details about the project are scarce, and Senator Ron Wyden said that "the real story" behind the project has yet to be declassified. The answer obtained by the paper reads:"In 2010 and 2011 N.S.A. received samples in order to test the ability of its systems to handle the data format, but that data was not used for any other purpose and was never available for intelligence analysis purposes."
US government declassifies documents concerning telephonic data collection
Today brings another victory for transparency as the US government has just declassified three documents pursuant to the collection of telephonic metadata authorized by section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. The documents, released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, include the 2009 and 2011 reports concerning the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act as well as the order for business record collection. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the subject, NSA Deputy Director John Inglis made public for the first time the mechanism for accessing the metadata at the government's disposal. According to Inglis, telephonic information -- which does not include names, addresses, or social security numbers -- exists in databases but cannot be accessed without reasonable suspicion of association with terrorists. Deputy Attorney General James Cole went on to say, "Nobody is listening to anybody's conversations." This revelation might be cold comfort to those concerned about the government's ownership of this data to begin with, but it does pull back the curtain somewhat on the NSA's policies and procedures. To read these declassified -- and heavily redacted -- documents in full, head on over to the source link below.
Leaked court documents reveal NSA is collecting bulk call logs from Verizon
A court document published today by The Guardian reveals the NSA is currently collecting call records in bulk from Verizon. The request, granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25th, extends until July 19th and mandates Verizon produce all call detail records on a daily basis to the NSA. The data collected includes the numbers of both parties to a call, how long it lasted, location data, IMEI / IMSI numbers, but not the content of the call or identifying information about the customer. As the report indicates, security officials had revealed bulk collection of call records previously, but until now there has been no indication of it happening under the Obama administration. In 2006 Verizon Wireless was one of the few to state it had not turned over call records to the NSA, but that appears to have changed. Among the many things that are still unknown however, is whether this order is a one time event or one in a series of such requests collecting vast amounts of data on unsuspecting citizens, and whether other communications providers have received orders to do the same.[Image credit: Frédéric Bisson, Flickr]
