Reactions to NSA Phone Record Spying
The disclosure that the National Security Agency has been collecting and analyzing phone records of tens of millions of Americans has struck a chord. Here are some of the reactions, and some of the reasons this is such a big deal.
From Jim Harper, Cato Institute's director of information policy studies and a member of the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee (not online yet, received by e-mail):
- "It flies in the face of Fourth Amendment principles that call for reasonableness or probable cause. It is not reasonable to monitor every American's phone calling in a search for terrorists.
- The program was not authorized by Congress and it flies in the face of Congress' intent when it de-funded the Total Information Awareness program because of concerns about the privacy consequences of 'data mining.'
- "'Data mining' for terrorism -- the idea that searching through masses of data can find terrorist patterns or suspicious anomalies -- is provably flawed. Probability theory shows that searching for extremely rare events or conditions using even slightly flawed formulae will return mostly false positives. In other words, investigators searching through data about millions of Americans for the very few terrorists will send themselves on wild goose chases after innocent law-abiding citizens, with only the slimmest chance of stumbling onto terrorists or terrorism planning.
- "It is no defense of the program to say that it only includes information about calls, and not the content of calls themselves. Traffic information is very revealing -- it includes the times and frequency of Americans' calls to their doctors, psychologists, paramours, and priests. And there is no way to know whether this surveillance is limited only to telephone traffic information.
- "It is unlikely that authorities could restrict their use of a database of all Americans' phone calls. If it hasn't been put to new purposes yet, before long this database will be used for general investigative purposes. As we've seen in the past, surveillance powers given to government officials are ultimately used even for political purposes.
- "For these reasons, oversight is essential. But the secrecy that surrounds the NSA's domestic surveillance programs prevents Congress from debating the issues, prevents researchers and critics from testing the techniques, and prevents testing in the courts to determine whether the programs are lawful.
- "Congratulations are due to Qwest, the one telecommunications company that resisted the NSA's demand for information because of concerns about its legality. Jeers are due to AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth, who have violated the privacy of their customers. It is not patriotic to obey the demands of government officials. It is patriotic to hold government officials to the laws and the Constitution."
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