NSA Surveillance Programs and “Incidental Collection” of Data
According to an investigation by the Washington Post, “Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks.” As a part of their investigation, the Washington Post reviewed approximately 160,000 e-mail and instant message conversations, and nearly 8,000 documents from more than 11,000 accounts. “The material spans President Obama’s first term, from 2009 to 2012, a period of exponential growth for the NSA’s domestic collection,” the Washington Post notes.
Under current law, unless it has obtained a warrant from a surveillance court, the NSA may only “target” foreign nationals who are located overseas. But the majority of those caught up in the NSA’s PRISM and Upstream programs were not the targets, and instead were swept up in the “incidental collection” of information in an effort to track someone else.
The paper notes, “When NSA and allied analysts really want to target an account, their concern for U.S. privacy diminishes. The rationales they use to judge foreignness sometimes stretch legal rules or well-known technical facts to the breaking point.” Some people were tracked because they had directly interacted with the intended target, but others had a far weaker connection. As examples, some were tracked because they had been in an online chat room visited by a target, and others when the NSA designated the Internet protocol (IP) address of a computer server used by hundreds as its target.
An astonishing nine out of ten account holders in the files given by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to the newspaper were not the intended targets. Further, “Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens [emphasis added] or residents.”
To be fair, the Washington Post notes that some of the intercepted messages do have “considerable intelligence value.” Others, however, “…tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversations, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes.” Though these messages are said not to be of value from an intelligence perspective, they are nonetheless retained by the NSA anyway.
“Even if one could conceivably justify the initial, inadvertent interception of baby pictures and love letters of innocent bystanders,” Snowden told the Washington Post, “their continued storage in government databases is both troubling and dangerous. Who knows how that information will be used in the future?”
In a free society, the intrusion by the government into the private lives of law-abiding citizens for whom there was not a ‘reasonably articulable suspicion’ of wrongdoing is unacceptable. We can achieve a balance between protecting our civil liberties and protecting our society.
In addition to concerns regarding the violation of civil liberties, I am particularly concerned that the federal government through the NSA has seized and is storing the conversations of individuals about political and religious matters, conversations unrelated to foreign terrorists. This calls to mind the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal in which the IRS improperly handled applications submitted by conservative groups, requesting information from them as irrelevant as what kind of prayer the group might say at the beginning of its meetings in an apparent effort to deny the group certain tax benefits. The past bad actions of the IRS during the tenure of this Administration make me worry about another agency also improperly collecting and storing political and religious conversations.
I will continue fighting to dismantle the NSA spying programs on American citizens until we have an oversight system that can assure us that the laws regarding the surveillance programs are not being flagrantly broken, and Americans’ rights are not being violated.
U.S. District Court Judge James Turk
It is with sadness that I note the passing of Judge James Turk, who for more than 40 years served the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, which has courthouses in Abingdon, Big Stone Gap, and Roanoke, among others.
Throughout his legal career, Judge Turk was helpful to numerous young lawyers, including myself. Two of his sons followed in his footsteps, with the eldest Jimmy serving as a defense attorney in Montgomery County and his other son Bobby as a Circuit Court Judge for the 27th Judicial Circuit of Virginia.
Judge Turk was a man I greatly respected, and he will be missed. My thoughts and prayers go out to his loved ones at this difficult time.
As always, if you have concerns or comments or wish to inquire about legislative issues, feel free to contact my offices. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov.
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