WASHINGTON — As scrutiny by Congress and the public grows, the Obama administration today declassified two reports and a court order pertaining to the National Security Agency’s much-criticized surveillance program.
The documents divulged information on the bulk data collection programs, recently revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and also the authorization for the collection of this data.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which released the material, said the documents were made public in the “interest of increased transparency.”
The NSA’s surveillance program involved analyzing metadata — gathered from cell phone records — to collect intelligence on possible terror threats. The NSA has said that only phone numbers and routing information related to these calls were analyzed, not the actual contents of the call. Intelligence officials have also clarified that sensitive information such as names, addresses and Social Security numbers for individuals was not accessed.
Information in the reports has already been revealed in public hearings, but the documents did provide additional details as to the number and scope of searches conducted and terror plots which had been foiled through use of the data.
The court order made public was from an April 2013 ruling by the FISA court directing Verizon Communications to hand over telephone records and directions on how to store and access the data.
The documents came out as senior intelligence officials testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is looking into ways to increase transparency with regards to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including those parts of the law that aid the intelligence community.
Criticism for these programs stemmed from fear that the searches were being conducted in an ad-hoc manner. James Cole, deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, said the information shows that there were 300 searches conducted in 2012. This, he told the committee, helped thwart 54 terror plots, 13 of them in the country.
“We are not really accessing or getting into all the metadata and we don’t actually get to roam in it,” said Cole, regarding restrictions on the use of these programs.
Cole said the courts, which reviewed the provisions of FSA 34 times and fond no wrongdoing with the program, have addressed concerns about the constitutionality of the searches.
There has been increased clamor for transparency in the way the FISA court functions. It does not take an adversarial approach to hearing surveillance cases, or consider both sides of an issue.
The Justice Department’s Cole said cases involving wiretaps and warrants in civil and criminal cases typically do not require adversarial proceedings — so this is not a departure from the norm. But he said Justice is reviewing the possibility of instituting an adversarial approach in the courtroom.
“There were few occasions when I felt as a judge that it would have been useful to have someone speak in opposition,” said Judge James Carr, who served on the FISA court from 2002 to 2008.
This would achieve two things, he said. Firstly, it would help judges reach more informed decisions and at the same time leave room for appeals of these decisions from some entity other than the government.
The court is instrumental in issuing orders, based on “reasonable suspicion” of terror activity, allowing NSA analysts to review metadata. One of the released documents says that analysts review ‘only a tiny fraction’ of these records.