As reported earlier, the President has a plan to take government out of the business of collecting and storing telephonic metadata. In reality, he already made some changes back in January. This plan seeks to expand on them.
For non-emergency situations, he ordered that the government can only seek Section 215 data based on national security concerns after a judge agrees and approves the particular number that can be queried. He also ordered that the result of a query is limited to two hops from the specific number.
The President indicated that he asked the intelligence community and the Attorney General to develop options for a new program that would fill the gaps that the program was designed to address without government holding the data.
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Today, President Obama announced that not only would government cease to hold data, it would also cease to collect it.
During a conference call held on Thursday, a senior administrative official outlined the key features of the President’s proposed program.
- The government will not collect these records in bulk. Instead, the records will remain in the possession of telephone companies who have always been collecting this data and the companies will store them for the same length of time they do now.
- In non-emergency situations, the government can only obtain these records after the FISA court has signed off on individual orders and approved the use of specific numbers of queries, based on national security concerns.
- There would be a two hop limit from the selection term or number used. Moreover, the government’s handling of any records would be governed by FISA Court approved minimization procedures.
- For a limited time, the court approved numbers can be used for data queries without returning to the FISA Court for approval.
- Telephone companies and provides would be compelled to provide technical assistance to assure that the records can be queried and produced. Also the results can be transmitted in a timely way and in a usable format.
During the conference call officials disclosed the Administration has had discussions with telephone providers about the technical assistance the government would need to make this program work.
They also noted that until Congress passes the enabling legislation needed to make this program a reality, the current program will be renewed every 90 days.
One thing that stands out is the fact that this proposal addresses non-emergency situations. So what happens in an emergency situation? Officials pointed to the fact that existing law, namely the FISA statute, requires a senior legal government official to sign off on emergency exceptions, and the matter must be followed up by seeking approval from the FISA court within seven days.
The conference call also revealed that the House Intelligence Committee could at least agree with the Administration that the government shouldn’t be collecting or holding this data.
Earlier on Thursday, the White House Press Office released a fact sheet on the proposed program on Thursday.
As indicated in the earlier press release and the telephone conference, the Administration via DOJ will seek FISC approval to renew the existing program for 90 days. Like it or not, if we don’t maintain the ability to access these records, it places us at a disadvantage with people who wish to do us harm.
Ideally, within that time frame Congress will take time or make the time to propose, debate and pass legislation that will take our government out of the business of collecting and storing telephonic metadata.
Image: Al Jazeera
Former contributor.
