US defends surveillance of phone calls and internet
The Obama administration has staunchly defended the way it obtains private communications, both in the US and from abroad, amid a wave of revelations exposing the extent of official surveillance.
Just a day after it emerged that the administration has been secretly collecting the phone records of its citizens, new reports claimed that it was also tapping into the servers of the country’s biggest internet and social media companies, allowing them to gather emails, audio and video files, photos and documents.The Washington Post and The Guardian reported on Thursday night that a classified programme, dating back to the later years of the George W Bush administration, permitted the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to collect the data as part of the country’s antiterrorism efforts.
The highly classified NSA and FBI programme was codenamed Prism and was established in 2007, the papers reported.
As civil liberties groups expressed outrage about the extent of the programme, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, issued a rare statement to defend the practice.
“Information collected under this programme is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats,” Mr Clapper said.
He said the programme, authorised under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), was only used to obtain intelligence about non-Americans living outside the US, and could not be used to intentionally target US citizens or people living in the US.
Mr Clapper said the Washington Post and Guardian reports contained “numerous inaccuracies”, labelling them “reprehensible” for risking “important protections for the security of Americans”.
Section 702 actions were subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the executive branch and Congress, he said, adding that Congress recently reauthorised the activities “after extensive hearings and debate”.
But with the growing controversy over information sharing spreading to Silicon Valley, internet and social media companies rushed to reassure users of the security of their networks.
“Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully,” said a spokesperson for the tech company.
“From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data.”
Information collected under this programme is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect- James Clapper, director of national intelligence
“We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis,” it said.
“In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security programme to gather customer data we don’t participate in it,” Microsoft said.
But Apple and Facebook disputed the report.
“We have never heard of Prism,” Apple said in a statement. “We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.”
Facebook said it did not provide any government organisation with direct access to its servers.
“When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinise any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law,” Facebook said.
Earlier on Thursday, it emerged that the Obama administration had been secretly collecting the phone records of its citizens since the day it took office, extending a Bush-era practice, with the knowledge and approval of both Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
The administration has been compelling Verizon Communications, and possibly other leading phone companies, to hand over the records of all telephone calls made “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls”.
The practice was revealed by The Guardian, which published an order – signed by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – instructing Verizon to give the NSA the metadata, or information logs, for the calls “on an ongoing daily basis”.
This is the first concrete evidence that the administration is continuing a broad campaign of domestic surveillance that began when the Bush administration passed the Patriot Act after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The order covered the three months from January 19 to April 25, but it is apparent that the practice has been going on for much longer.
“As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past seven years,” Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said on Thursday morning.
“This renewal is carried out by [the Fisa] under the business records section of the Patriot Act. Therefore it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress,” she told reporters, defending the practice.
While civil libertarians condemned the practice as “deeply Orwellian”, the White House said its actions were necessary to protect the US from terrorist attacks.
A senior Obama administration official said the phone programme “allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States”.
Spokesmen for Verizon and AT&T, another leading phone company, declined to comment.
Fuente: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c5d043f0-ce5a-11e2-8313-00144feab7de.html#axzz2VYPTS2a9
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