Holders Committee appearance & testimony will be classified
By Kim Davis
Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON D.C. As details emerged this week of the U.S. governments massive surveillance efforts both at home and abroad the ACLU predictably ranted about tactics it described as beyond Orwellian. But this time around the hyperbole seems justified It goes without saying that this mass collation of data is based on nothing even resembling a showing of probable cause. On Wednesday the Guardian newspaper obtained and published a copy of a
secret court order demanding the production of millions of U.S. domestic Verizon phone records to the National Security Agency. The order
calls for production of these records on a daily and ongoing basis for a three-month period and covers calls both within the US and from the US to other countries.
If youve used Verizon to make a call since mid-April chances are your call is in the dataset. In fact your data may have been collected even if you havent used Verizon: Privacy advocates have
pointed out that theres no reason to assume that the order is unique.
It is likely that orders like this exist for every major American telecommunication company said Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Pushing that shocker out of the headlines on Thursday was the admission by National Intelligence Director James Clapper that for the last six years the government has been
collecting information from the Internet on foreign nationals overseas.
The program extracts audio and video chats photographs e-mails documents and connection logs directly from the servers of nine major companies including Google Facebook and Apple.
Members of the Obama Administration hit back at the disclosures with Clapper
calling them reprehensible and a threat to U.S. security. FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Eric Holder
will be questioned about these efforts in upcoming committee appearances (although Holders appearance will be classified).
These revelations make the feds pursuit of Associated Press phone records for which Holder has already expressed regret look like small potatoes. Although the Obama administration will be held accountable the justification for the
programs seems to have been based on a
controversial reading of the Patriot Act signed by President Bush.
The political fallout looks likely to be significant. While people may be prepared to put up with increased inconvenience and intrusion in defense of the U.S. homeland placing millions of evidently innocent people under surveillance may be a step too far.
Orwellian? In
1984 Big Brother notoriously scrutinizes every detail every thought of the citizens of Oceania. But theres no suggestion he was rifling the data of foreign nationals in Eurasia and Eastasia too.
Maybe he didnt have the technology.
Kim Davis is the Senior Editor of Internet Evolution.
