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Government SurveillanceIs government spying on Americans excessive?

How tightly the government should keep tabs on

citizens has long been fiercely debated. But con-

cern about surveillance intensified in June after

National Security Agency computer specialist

Edward Snowden revealed classified details of agency electronic

snooping programs. Civil liberties advocates, lawmakers and others

also have cited growing unease with other surveillance measures,

including the use of unmanned “drone” aircraft and tiny video

cameras. Congress, along with state and local governments, is ex-

pected to take up a variety of bills this fall to protect privacy and

increase transparency about government activities. But the Obama

administration maintains that internal safeguards — including a

federal civil liberties oversight board created in 2004 — have pre-

vented the federal government from becoming “Big Brother.”

Demonstrators in Berlin, Germany, protest on July 27against the sweeping U.S. electronic surveillanceoperations revealed in June by National Security

Agency computer specialist Edward Snowden (shownon placard). Many Germans were outraged at reportsthat the super-secret spy agency had collected data

on German citizens, including emails.

CQ Researcher • Aug. 30, 2013 • www.cqresearcher.comVolume 23, Number 30 • Pages 717-740

RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR

EXCELLENCE � AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD

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THE ISSUES ....................719

BACKGROUND ................725

CHRONOLOGY ................727

CURRENT SITUATION ........730

AT ISSUE........................733

OUTLOOK ......................734

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................738

THE NEXT STEP ..............739

THISREPORT

Published by CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc. www.cqresearcher.com

718 CQ Researcher

THE ISSUES

719 • Is government surveil-lance making the countrysafer?• Does government surveil-lance violate civil rights?• Does surveillance under-mine Americans’ trust ingovernment?

BACKGROUND

725 ‘Unreasonable Searches’British agents had broadauthority to search colonists’homes.

726 Court-Imposed LimitsThe Supreme Court beganlimiting surveillance in the1960s.

726 ‘Vacuum-Cleaner’ SpyingAfter 9/11 the National Security Agency (NSA) developed close ties withtelecommunications com-panies.

728 PRISM ProgramThe NSA has collectedphone records of tens ofmillions of Americans.

CURRENT SITUATION

730 Forthcoming DebateLawmakers want to curbdomestic spying.

732 Obama AdministrationThe president seeks greateroversight over the courtthat approves surveillance.

734 Court ActionCourts have taken differentpositions on whether policeneed warrants to track peo-ple via their cell phones.

OUTLOOK

734 More CamerasSurveillance is expected tobecome more widespreadand less intrusive.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

720 FISA Court Rejects FewSurveillance RequestsThe secret panel has rejectedonly 11 applications since 1979.

721 Government SurveillanceSeen as Too BroadSeventy percent believe thedata are used for purposesother than fighting terrorism.

724 Many Major CompaniesLack Privacy ProtectionApple, AT&T and Verizon dolittle to protect consumers’privacy.

727 ChronologyKey events since 1895.

728 Surveillance TechnologyGoes Mainstream“We should pause to considerthe implications.”

730 U.S. Muslims Seek to EndPolice SurveillanceNYPD’s Kelly: “We will notchange our methods.”

733 At Issue:Is domestic government surveil-lance keeping the U.S. safer?

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

737 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

738 BibliographySelected sources used.

739 The Next StepAdditional articles.

739 Citing CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE

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Government Surveillance

THE ISSUESWhen New York in-

vestment bankerGabriel Silverstein

landed his private plane atan Oklahoma airport in May,he was startled to be met bya group of law enforcementofficials. He was even moretaken aback when, four dayslater at an airport in Iowa,the same thing occurred.

Although the officialswouldn’t comment to the newsmedia, a pilots’ website saysthey apparently relied on afederal database called the Airand Marine Operations Sur-veillance System to suspectthat Silverstein was traffickingdrugs. In both instances, hewas let go after no drugswere found.

“I find it hard to believethat two inspections in fourdays was completely coinci-dental,” he said. 1

To commentators acrossthe political spectrum, suchincidents are prime examplesof what they say the UnitedStates has become — an in-trusive surveillance state thatthey compare to Big Brotherin George Orwell’s ominous novel 1984.

How tightly the U.S. governmentshould keep tabs on its citizens haslong been fiercely debated. 2 But thecontroversy has grown more pro-nounced as technology has become anintegral part of Americans’ everydaylives, as well as an essential tool forlaw enforcement and national securityofficials. And Edward Snowden’s recentdisclosures of National Security Agency(NSA) data-collection programs havefuriously stoked the controversy.

“The scope and variety of the typesof surveillance that are possible today

are unprecedented in human history,”said Neil Richards, a law professor atWashington University in St. Louis. “Thisfact alone should give us pause.” 3

Among the types of surveillance andtechnologies being used:

• Supercomputers that amass andanalyze massive amounts of what hasbecome known as “big data” — phonecalls, tweets, and social media posts —to spot potential terrorist activity. TheNSA said it touches about 1.6 percentof all Internet traffic in a day but an-alyzes just a tiny fraction of it. 4 ButThe Wall Street Journal subsequently

reported that the NSA’s sur-veillance network can reachabout 75 percent of U.S. In-ternet communication. 5

• Remote-controlled droneaircraft, which increasingly aredeployed for domestic sur-veillance. In June, FBI Di-rector Robert Mueller said theagency has used drones in-side the United States. Sen-ate Intelligence CommitteeChairman Dianne Feinstein,D-Calif., called drones “thegreatest threat to the privacyof Americans.” 6

• Video cameras, high-lighted as a surveillance toolafter the Boston Marathonbombings in April, have becomeubiquitous in crime-ravagedDetroit and other cities.

• Cell phone global posi-tioning system (GPS) data,which provide the locationsof cell users.

• National security letters,which allow the FBI to com-pel banks, telephone compa-nies, Internet service providersand others to disclose customerrecords.

• Undercover officers, whohave monitored church groups,anti-war organizations, environ-mental activists and others.

• Facial-recognition programs,which are part of a new generationof biometric tools that have beenwidely deployed to find criminals andpotential terrorists. 7

• “Stingrays,” devices that essen-tially simulate cell phone towers andenable law enforcement officials tocollect serial numbers of individual cellphones and then track their users.

• Fusion centers, a network ofmore than 70 state and local govern-ment offices serving as clearinghousesfor the receipt, analysis, gathering andsharing of threat-related information.

BY CHUCK MCCUTCHEON

Getty Im

ages

/Win M

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ee

Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National SecurityAgency (NSA), tells the House Intelligence Committeeon June 18 that NSA spying prevents terror attacks onU.S. soil. He said the surveillance programs disclosedby NSA computer specialist Edward Snowden haveprevented 54 terrorism plots against the United States

and its allies. Many congressional leaders supportAlexander’s assertions, but critics remain skeptical, sayingtoo many details of the NSA’s operations are secret.

720 CQ Researcher

Congress and independent nationalsecurity groups have questioned theireffectiveness.

U.S. surveillance laws are based onthe Constitution’s Fourth Amendment,which prohibits unreasonable search-es and seizures by government agentsand requires that search warrants besanctioned by a judge and supportedby a suspicion that a crime may havebeen committed. While numerouslaws serve as a check on government’sspying power, many experts say tech-nology is progressing faster than thelaw can keep up.

Chief Justice John Roberts has saidthe biggest constitutional challenge fac-ing the Supreme Court over the next50 years “is the fundamental principleunderlying what constitutional protec-tion is and apply it to new issues andnew technology.” 8

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist at-tacks, the surveillance issue often hassprung to the forefront in the aftermathof significant privacy- or terrorism-relatedincidents. In 2013, it achieved promi-

nence after the disclosure that the Jus-tice Department secretly obtained thephone records of reporters and edi-tors at The Associated Press as wellas after the Boston Marathon bomb-ings, in which the suspects — broth-ers Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev— were identified on video camerafootage from nearby businesses. 9

No one, however, has done moreto plant the issue in the public’s con-sciousness than Snowden. The formerNSA contractor touched off one of thedecade’s biggest national-security con-troversies in June when he exposedclassified details of the spy agency’selectronic eavesdropping.

In leaks to The Washington Post andThe Guardian newspaper in Britain,Snowden revealed that the NSA isamassing data on people across theglobe, including email, Facebook postsand instant messages, through a pro-gram called PRISM. A separate programcollects in bulk the phone records ofcustomers of U.S. phone serviceproviders — specifically the numbers

dialed from and to, plus the date andduration of the calls.

The Guardian later published infor-mation from Snowden on an NSA pro-gram called XKeyscore that the news-paper contended could collect “nearlyeverything a typical user does on theInternet.” 10 However, some experts saythe program’s function is to organize ratherthan independently collect data. 11

Snowden said he went public outof concern that the programs are adangerous form of surveillance. Hisflight from justice as he sought asy-lum overseas became a worldwide storyfor weeks while the nation debatedwhether he was a patriot or a traitor.

To civil liberties advocates, the reve-lations justified their deepest fears aboutgovernment spying on citizens. In asign of the political impact of the dis-closures, the House in July came with-in 12 votes of passing — over theWhite House’s vehement objections —a bipartisan proposal to drastically cur-tail funding for the NSA surveillanceprograms. 12

“It’s my fear that we are on the vergeof becoming a surveillance state,” saidRep. John Conyers of Michigan, theHouse Judiciary Committee’s rankingDemocrat and a chief cosponsor of theproposal. 13

In particular, Conyers and othersregistered extremely strong objectionsto the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance(FISA) Court, a panel of judges that meetsin secret and that the lawmakers andother critics say is a rubber stamp forthe government’s spying requests.

Even the FISA court has objectedto the NSA’s surveillance practices. De-classified documents released in Au-gust showed the agency collected asmany as 56,000 emails and other com-munications from Americans for threeyears, despite limits in the Foreign In-telligence Surveillance Act against suchpractices. After the court issued a secretruling in 2011 that such methods wereunconstitutional, the NSA changed itscollection patterns. 14


FISA Court Rejects Few Surveillance Requests

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court has rejected only 11 of nearly 34,000 Justice Department applications since 1979 requesting permission for government agencies to conduct electronic surveillance. The requests soared after passage of the USA Patriot Act in October 2001. Enacted in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the law significantly relaxed restrictions on intelligence gathering inside the United States.

Source: “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court Orders 1979-2012,” Electronic Privacy Information Center, http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html

FISA Applications, Approvals and Rejections, 1979-2012

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

20122010200520001995199019851979

No. of ApplicationsApprovedRejected

(Number)


President Obama, along with manyin Congress, said Americans havenothing to fear from the NSA or othereavesdropping efforts, which escalatedafter 9/11. (See graph, p. 720.) At thesame time, Obama said the disclosuresshould precipitate a public debate onprivacy. He said companies are amass-ing mountains of personal data on con-sumers and conducting surveillance byother means, such as through the useof drones, but such activities by pri-vate entities are not governed byFourth Amendment safeguards.

“What I want to do is to set upand structure a national conversation,not only about these two [NSA] pro-grams, but also the general problemof data . . . because this is not goingto be restricted to government enti-ties,” Obama said. 15

The public has mixed feelingsabout government surveillance on itsown citizens. (See graph, at right.) Thedifferences in opinion appear to beover whether surveillance is conduct-ed by law enforcement officials, whopolls show retain a high degree oftrust, or the rest of government, whichdoes not.

As lawmakers, civil liberties advo-cates, law-enforcement officials andanti-terrorism agencies weigh the lim-its of domestic government surveil-lance, here are some of the questionsunder discussion:

Is government surveillance makingthe country safer?

Supporters of increased governmentsurveillance say it has made the Unit-ed States markedly safer from terrorists.Civil liberties groups and other criticsquestion that assertion and say the re-sulting erosion of personal privacy out-weighs any improvements in safety.

The debate has become especiallyprominent in the aftermath of Snow-den’s disclosures about the NSA’s data-collection programs. Gen. Keith Alexan-der, the NSA’s director, said theprograms helped to foil 54 terrorism

plots against the United States and itsallies. Documents leaked by Snowdenshowed that the XKeyscore programalone had helped to capture 300 ter-rorists by 2008. 16

Alexander cited the cases of Na-jibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American whopleaded guilty to planning an attack onNew York City’s subway system, and apreviously undisclosed plot to blow upthe New York Stock Exchange. If theNSA programs had been in place be-fore the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in NewYork and at the Pentagon, Alexandersaid, they could have been prevented.NSA surveillance would have revealedthat Khalid al-Midar, one of the 19 hi-

jackers, was in San Diego prior toSept. 11 and communicating with anal Qaeda safe house in Yemen, he said.

“We weren’t able to connect thosedots” before Sept. 11, Alexander said.“So these programs are helping usconnect the dots.” 17

Many congressional leaders back upAlexander’s assertions. Eliminating theprograms “would place this nation injeopardy,” said Senate Intelligence Com-mittee Chairman Feinstein. 18 HouseSpeaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, saidthe Snowden disclosures “put Ameri-cans at risk.” 19

Since the revelations about the NSA’sactivities, intelligence officials say terror-

* Totals may not add to 100 because of rounding

Source: “Few See Adequate Limits on NSA Surveillance Program,” Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, July 26, 2013, www.people-press.org/2013/07/26/few-see-adequate-limits-on-nsa-surveillance-program/

Government Surveillance Seen as Too Broad

More than half of Americans say federal courts do not adequately limit the telephone and Internet data collected by the government’s anti-terrorism surveillance program. Seventy percent believe the data also are used for nonterrorism-related purposes.

Perceptions of the Government’s Data-Collection Program, July 2013

Do courts provide adequate limits on what is collected?

Is the government using this data . . .

Is the government collecting . . .

30%

Yes

56%

No

15%

Don’t know

22%

Only for anti-terror

70%

Also for other purposes

7%

Don’t know

18%

Only metadata

63%

Also what is being said in phone calls and emails

18%

Don’t know

27%

Yes

28%

No

8%

Don’t know

Has the government listened to YOUR calls or read YOUR emails?

722 CQ Researcher

ists are being judicious about using thevideo teleconferencing software Skypeand have advised followers to take otherprecautions. House Intelligence Com-mittee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich.,cited “changes we can already see arebeing made by the folks who wish todo us . . . and our allies harm.” 20

But critics are deeply skeptical. “Idon’t think collecting millions and mil-lions of Americans’ phone calls . . . ismaking us any safer,” said Sen. MarkUdall, D-Colo., who, along with fellowSenate Intelligence Committee memberRon Wyden, D-Ore., raised alarms aboutthe spying community’s surveillancepowers at least a year before the NSArevelations. 21 And Senate Judiciary Com-mittee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.,the phone-tracking program disclosedby Snowden and authorized under theUSA Patriot Act did not thwart “evenseveral” terror plots. 22

In the Zazi case, journalists andbloggers have questioned whether theNSA programs were crucial to his ap-prehension. They cite British and U.S.documents from 2010 and 2011 sug-gesting that old-fashioned police workdeserved the credit instead.

Critics say it is impossible to gaugesafety because so many details of theprograms remain classified.

The NSA programs “demonstrate an-other problem with U.S. counterter-rorism policy: excessive secrecy thatundermines accountability,” says SharonBradford Franklin, outgoing seniorcounsel to the Constitution Project, aprivacy-rights watchdog group, and in-coming executive director of the Pri-vacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board,a newly active, independent agencywithin the executive branch. 23 (See“At Issue,” p. 733.) Her views reflect herposition with the Constitution Project.

As for other types of surveillance,newer tools apparently are having apositive effect on public safety.

Perhaps most significantly, the use ofGPS information from cellphones hasenabled the U.S. Marshals Service to cut

from 42 days to two days the averagetime it takes to locate a fugitive, saidSusan Landau, a fellow at Harvard’s Rad-cliffe Institute for Advanced Study. 24

Video surveillance cameras also havebeen widely regarded as effective inkeeping people safe. Between 2007and 2010, the Urban Institute’s JusticePolicy Center studied public surveil-lance systems in Baltimore, Chicagoand Washington, D.C. They deter-mined that the systems in Baltimoreand Chicago produced more thanenough benefits to justify the cost. Nocost-benefit analysis was conducted inWashington because the cameras did-n’t show a statistically significant effecton crime there. 25

Critics of video surveillance, how-ever, point to a different study show-ing that for every 1,000 surveillancecameras in London in 2008, only onecrime was solved. 26 London has morecameras per capita than any other city,with thousands in use in the city andsurrounding boroughs. 27 Surveillancecritics also say that despite the use-fulness of private cameras at storesand other businesses in identifying theBoston Marathon bombing suspects,laws are needed to ensure that gov-ernment officials don’t abuse civil rightswhen using such devices.

“We want to make sure that oncethat footage comes into law enforce-ment’s hands that they continue toapply the same rules and regulationsas if it were filmed on a governmentcamera,” Franklin says. Private cam-eras have much more legal leeway inwhat they can film when they are lo-cated on commercial as opposed topublic property, she says.

Surveillance drones also have beenviewed as useful for local law en-forcement agencies. In North Dakota,a U.S. Customs and Border Protectiondrone was used in a tense standoffbetween police and cattle thieves. Sher-iff Kelly Janke told NBC News thedrone helped police time their raid forthe safest moment. 28

Does government surveillanceviolate civil rights?

Recent revelations about the extentof the NSA’s data-collection activitieshave thrust the question of civil lib-erties before many Americans whomight have previously regarded it asan abstract concept.

Americans have accepted new tech-nology that enables companies to learnabout them — through Internet “cook-ies,” tracking software on social-mediasites such as Facebook and credit-carddata revealing spending patterns. Butthey have been far less sanguine aboutgovernment efforts in that area.

Responding to the NSA revelations,Obama declared, “Nobody is listeningto your telephone calls.” 29 He andother officials stress that NSA surveil-lance has been focused on “metadata”— large amounts of phone-number-to-phone-number records — and that in2012 the records of fewer than 300people were actually examined. 30

A May 2012 internal audit laterleaked by Snowden said the NSA vi-olated privacy rules 2,776 times in aone-year period. However, it said, theviolations largely were inadvertentand stemmed from operator and sys-tem errors. 31

Obama emphasized that safeguardsexist to prevent abuses, such as re-quiring approvals from judges andscrutiny from congressional intelligencecommittees. He noted that the NSAcollection program is authorized underthe 2001 Patriot Act — enacted in theaftermath of 9/11 to beef up the gov-ernment’s authority to fight terrorism— as well as the 1978 Foreign Intel-ligence Surveillance Act (FISA), reau-thorized by Congress in late 2012.

But in the face of mounting con-gressional criticism, Obama later an-nounced several changes to the pro-grams, including a privacy advocate toprovide greater oversight over the FISAcourt. He also said he would estab-lish a group of independent expertsto evaluate spy agency surveillance.



“It’s not enough for me, as presi-dent, to have confidence in these pro-grams; the American people need tohave confidence in them as well,”Obama said. 32

Deputy Attorney General James Colenoted that the FISA court approvesonly requests that meet the standardof a “reasonable, articulable suspicion”of potential terrorist activity. “Unlessyou get that step made, you cannotenter that database and make a queryof any of this data,” he said. 33

Timothy Edgar, a former AmericanCivil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorneywho later worked for the director ofNational Intelligence as its first deputyfor civil liberties, says he was surprised— and that Americans would be as well— by how cautious spy agencies areabout using their surveillance powers.

When he was at the ACLU, “I thoughtthat the government would take what-ever power you had given them andalways interpret it in the broadest pos-sible way,” says Edgar, who now teach-es national security and technology lawat Brown University. But he said hecame to view government officials as“conscientious” and realized they didnot habitually interpret their powersas broadly as civil liberties groups fear.

These kinds of assurances have notplacated civil liberties advocates. “Therecently disclosed surveillance programsaren’t just unwise; they’re unconstitu-tional as well,” said ACLU attorneyJameel Jaffer. 34

Jaffer said the data obtained by theNSA fell into the same category as thatin U.S. v. Jones, in which the U.S. SupremeCourt ruled in 2012 that secretly at-taching a GPS tracking device to a ve-hicle and then using the device to mon-itor the vehicle’s movements constitutesan illegal search under the FourthAmendment. The ACLU is among theprivacy groups that have sued to stopthe NSA programs.

Jaffer and others say the ForeignIntelligence Surveillance Court hasbeen far too willing to readily sign off

on spy agency requests for permissionto conduct surveillance. In 2012, thecourt approved all of the 1,855 appli-cations it received and modified 40. Inits 34-year history, it has rejected only11 of the roughly 34,000 applicationsit has received. 35 (See graph, p. 720.)

The Supreme Court’s chief justice ap-points FISA court members from through-out the federal bench. Chief JusticeRoberts appointed all 11 of its currentmembers, 10 of whom are judges namedto the bench by Republican presidents.Critics say the FISA court’s conservativenature has made it overly sympatheticto government requests.

The court did stand up to the NSAin 2011, when it ruled the agency hadcollected thousands of Americans’ emailsin what appeared to be an unconsti-tutional fashion. John D. Bates, then thecourt’s chief judge, wrote at the time:“The [FISA] court is troubled that thegovernment’s revelations regarding NSA’sacquisition of Internet transactions markthe third instance in less than threeyears in which the government has dis-closed a substantial misrepresentationregarding the scope of a major collec-tion program.” 36

Just as troubling to some observersis the FISA court’s willingness to ex-pand the NSA’s powers. The New YorkTimes reported that the court regularlyassesses broad constitutional questionsand, in a series of classified rulings thatthe newspaper obtained, had establishedimportant judicial precedents with al-most no public scrutiny. 37

Retired FISA judge James Robert-son lamented that the court has be-come “something like an administra-tive agency, which makes and approvesrules for others to follow. . . . That’snot the bailiwick of judges.” 38

Civil libertarians also say the NSA’scollection of “metadata” isn’t as innocuousas Obama and others portray it. Bystudying whom a person calls andwhen they call, intelligence agenciesneed not rely on the content of thecalls. For example, to obtain informa-

tion about someone’s medical history,“you can see a call to a gynecologist,and then a call to an oncologist, andthen a call to close family members,”said Harvard researcher Landau. 39

On other surveillance-related issues,a central question regarding civil lib-erties centers on whether the govern-ment needs a warrant or a subpoenato gather information. Warrants requirejudicial approval, while subpoenas donot. Numerous situations exist in whichonly subpoenas are needed — forphone records, emails, text messages,digitally stored documents and social-media posts, for example.

On that point, a debate has arisenover the use of “stingrays,” which aredevices that mimic cell phone towersand enable police to collect the serialnumbers of phones to locate suspects.The Justice Department generally hasmaintained that warrants are not need-ed for their use because they are notintercepting actual conversations. Somejudges, however, have insisted that war-rants must be obtained.

The issue of warrants versus sub-poenas is important, civil libertarianssay, because new technologies demandas much advance scrutiny as possiblebefore they become commonplace.

Washington University’s Richardscited the forthcoming ability to pairsurveillance cameras with facial-recog-nition technology linked to state dri-vers’ license databases.

“When this technology matures, it’llgive the police the power to monitorall of our movements in public linkedto our real identities, not just to ouranonymous faces,” he said. “Such asystem would conceivably give thegovernment increased power over us— power that could be used not justto monitor, but in some cases, po-tentially, to blackmail, persuade or dis-criminate.” 40

Congress occasionally has unearthedcivil rights abuses connected with newdomestic surveillance technologies. ASenate panel in 2012 found abuses at

724 CQ Researcher

the fusion centers that gather infor-mation on terrorist threats. The cen-ters are financed by the Departmentof Homeland Security and operatedwith state and local law enforcementagencies.

The Senate Governmental AffairsCommittee’s Permanent InvestigationsSubcommittee found that the centers“forwarded intelligence of uneven qual-ity — oftentimes shoddy, rarely time-ly, sometimes endangering citizens’ civilliberties.” 41 Department officials havetaken steps to improve training andoversight at the centers.

Does surveillance undermineAmericans’ trust in government?

The ongoing surveillance controversyhas rekindled a perennial debateabout how much Americans shouldtrust government. The revelations aboutNSA activity came at a time when pollsshow that confidence in governmentis at historic lows.

Supporters of the NSA’s efforts, how-ever, accept the Obama administration’scontention that the agency isn’t spyingon ordinary Americans. They say strin-gent surveillance shouldn’t bother any-one who isn’t a terrorist or lawbreaker.

A Twitter account with the handle@_nothingtohide collected assertionsfrom people sharing that viewpoint. “TheNSA is not spying on you,” wrote onecontributor. “There’s too many of us.Unless you set off red flags they don’tcare about you. You are not special.” 42

One of the most prominent peopleto stick up for the government is tele-vision producer David Simon, creatorof the HBO crime drama “The Wire.”In a widely publicized essay on hisblog, he said that in the absence ofproof of actual abuses, the NSA reve-lations didn’t bother him.

“The question is not should the re-sulting data exist. It does. . . . Thequestion is more fundamental: Is gov-ernment accessing the data for the le-gitimate public-safety needs of the so-ciety, or are they accessing it in waysthat abuse individual liberties and vi-olate personal privacy — and in amanner that is unsupervised?” Simonwrote. “And to that, The Guardian andthose who are wailing jeremiads aboutthis pretend discovery of U.S big datacollection are noticeably silent.” 43

Another high-profile advocate oftight surveillance has been New YorkTimes columnist Thomas Friedman,who said the prospect of a secondSept. 11 is far more troubling thanwhether government officials mighthave illegally accessed private data.

“What I cherish most about Ameri-ca is our open society, and I believethat if there is one more 9/11 — orworse, an attack involving nuclear ma-terial — it could lead to the end ofthe open society as we know it,” Fried-man wrote. “If there were another9/11, I fear that 99 percent of Amer-icans could tell their members of Con-gress: ‘Do whatever you need to do,privacy be damned, just make surethis does not happen again.’ That iswhat I fear most.” 44

Even the Patriot Act, which generat-ed considerable controversy for grantingofficials new powers to gather informa-tion in terrorism-related investigations,


Many Major Companies Lack Privacy Protection

Some of the nation’s biggest communications companies — including Apple, AT&T, Verizon and Yahoo — do little to protect consumers’ information from government surveillance or notify users when officials request their data. Twitter and Internet service provider Sonic.net have the toughest protections.

Source: “Who Has Your Back?” Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2013, https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013

Company Policies on Protecting Privacy

Requires Tells users Publish- Publish- Fights for Fights for a warrant about gov- es trans- es law en- users’ users’ for con- ernment parency forcement privacy privacy tent data reports guide- rights in rights in requests lines courts Congress

AmazonAppleAT&TComcastDropboxFacebookFoursquareGoogleLinkedInMicrosoftMyspaceSonic.netSpideroakTwitterVerizonWordPressYahoo!


has enjoyed public-approval ratings ashigh as 69 percent. (Support for the mea-sure has fluctuated over the years, de-pending on how opinion poll questionshave been worded.) 45

But the NSA controversy may betaking a toll in that area. A Washing-ton Post/ABC News poll in late Julyfound that 57 percent believed it wasmore important to investigate terroristthreats than to ignore them in orderto respect personal privacy. That fig-ure was the lowest since the Post start-ed asking the question in 2002, when79 percent of people accepted priva-cy intrusions in the name of safety. 46

Civil liberties advocates say the be-lief that Americans have nothing tofear from strict surveillance is danger-ous. To them, any government thatcan’t prevent a rogue contractor suchas Snowden from keeping importantdata secure shouldn’t be trusted withthe data in the first place.

The I’ve-got-nothing-to-hide mindsetis “probably right — as long as they’reonly using that vast, rich database tolook for specific terror or espionage sus-pects,” said Julian Sanchez, a researchfellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarianthink tank in Washington.

Sanchez maintains that targetingAmericans isn’t merely theoretical. Heinvokes longtime FBI Director J. EdgarHoover’s well-documented domesticspying efforts in prior decades.

“It’s slow and subtle, but surveil-lance societies inexorably train us forhelplessness, anxiety and compliance,”he said. “Maybe they’ll never look atyour call logs, read your emails or lis-ten in on your intimate conversations.You’ll just live with the knowledge thatthey always could — and if you hadanything worth hiding, there would benowhere left to hide it.” 47

George Washington University lawprofessor Daniel Solove makes a sim-ilar argument. “Even if a person isdoing nothing wrong, in a free soci-ety, that person shouldn’t have to jus-tify every action that government of-

ficials might view as suspicious,” hesaid. “A key component of freedom isnot having to worry about how to ex-plain oneself all the time.” 48

Other forms of surveillance haveprovoked less controversy. Law en-forcement officials, for instance, enjoyhigher levels of public confidence thanfederal intelligence agencies do whenthey deploy surveillance tools.

A National Journal/Allstate poll inJune found that law enforcement orga-nizations received a 71 percent approvalrating for trustworthiness regarding theuse of citizens’ personal information. Incontrast, the category of “government”drew just 48 percent approval. 49

Security experts says it will be in-teresting to see if that level of supportis sustained as more and more policedepartments acquire surveillance equip-ment, such as drones, now being usedmainly in the military and spy worlds.

“The technology is getting so smalland it’s becoming so easy for the non-specialist to deploy it,” says John Davis,an engineer who works on surveillanceissues for the RAND Corp., a nationalsecurity research center.

BACKGROUND‘Unreasonable Searches’

T he Fourth Amendment grew outof American colonists’ deep frus-

tration with England. The British hadgiven government agents broad au-thority to search homes and business-es wherever they suspected evidenceof criminal activity or political dissent.The Founders believed that freedomfrom government intrusion into peo-ples’ homes was a natural right grant-ed by God and an essential compo-nent of liberty.

The amendment, ratified in 1791,bans general search warrants: “The

right of the people to be secure intheir persons, houses, papers, and ef-fects, against unreasonable searchesand seizures, shall not be violated, andno Warrants shall issue, but uponprobable cause, supported by Oath oraffirmation, and particularly describingthe place to be searched, and the per-sons or things to be seized.” 50

Advances in technology, however,made less clear the definition of pro-tection against “unreasonable search-es.” By the mid-19th century, for ex-ample, states were divided on whetherthe contents of a telegram should bedisclosed to anyone other than the re-cipient. Meanwhile, the military seizedon the telegraph as a surveillance tool;during the Civil War, Confederate Gen.Jeb Stuart traveled in the field withhis own wiretap specialist. 51

When the telephone became pop-ular in the late 1880s, there was littleexpectation of privacy because groupsof families generally shared a “partyline” on which calls were placed withan operator’s help. The telephone’s semi-public nature led law enforcementofficials to begin using it to monitorcitizens. An 1892 New York state lawmade wiretapping a felony, but NewYork City police didn’t believe the lawapplied to them. 52

Wiretapping came into vogue dur-ing World War I as a means of keep-ing watch on immigrants suspected ofspying for their home countries. It alsowas used during Prohibition againstbootleggers, prompting one of theera’s most famous Supreme Court cases.In Olmstead v. United States (1928),the court ruled 5-4 that when policetapped a suspected bootlegger’sphone it was not an “unreasonablesearch” under the Constitution. 53

The dissenters included Justice LouisD. Brandeis, who noted in what hasbecome a widely quoted opinion thatnewer technologies were likely to be-come available and that the FourthAmendment guards against “every un-justifiable intrusion by the Government

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upon the privacy of the individual,whatever the means employed.” 54

Hoover, the longtime FBI director,was admired in his day for catchingcriminals. But today he is perhaps bestremembered for his national counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO),which he used during the 1950s and’60s to investigate the Communist Partyand numerous dissident groups, in-cluding anti-Vietnam War demonstra-tors. With the reluctant support of At-torney General Robert F. Kennedy, theFBI aggressively monitored civil rightsleader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., bug-ging his hotel rooms and tapping hiscalls — though Hoover also had agentssecretly tail King on a trip through theSouth for his protection after learninghe was a target of assassins. 55

Immediately after World War II, thePentagon began “Project Shamrock.” TheArmed Forces Security Agency (AFSA)and its successor, the NSA, were givendirect access to daily microfilm copiesof all incoming and outgoing telegraphsvia Western Union and its associates.At its height, the project analyzed 150,000messages per month. 56

Court-Imposed Limits

T he Supreme Court began impos-ing limits on surveillance. In 1967,

in Katz v. United States, it overturnedthe earlier Olmstead ruling. 57 Five yearslater, it unanimously upheld an appel-late ruling that the government — inresponse to the bombing of CIA officesin Michigan by anti-Vietnam War ac-tivists — could not conduct warrantlesswiretapping. 58

Congress began taking a tougherline. The Select Committee to StudyGovernmental Operations With Respectto Intelligence Activities — known asthe Church committee after its chairman,Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho — in 1975and 1976 uncovered a litany of do-mestic surveillance abuses dating backdecades. Among its disclosures: TheFBI and CIA opened hundreds ofthousands of pieces of mail betweenthe 1950s and 1973.

In reaction to the Church committeereports, Congress passed the Foreign In-telligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA),which established a special court, meet-

ing in secret, to issue warrants for do-mestic wiretapping. Eight years later, itpassed the Electronic CommunicationsPrivacy Act (ECPA), which bars war-rantless government wiretaps of elec-tronic communications. But in 1994, itpassed the Communications Assistancefor Law Enforcement Act, which re-quires telecommunications providers tobuild networks in ways that enablegovernment surveillance.

Within two months of the 9/11 at-tacks, Congress swiftly passed the USAPatriot Act, giving agencies new au-thority to fight terrorists. One especial-ly controversial provision, Section 215,allowed the FBI to ask the FISA courtto permit the inspection of books, busi-ness documents, tax records, librarycheck-out lists or “any tangible thing”as part of a foreign intelligence or in-ternational terrorism investigation.

Despite the uproar among civil-liberties activists, the act was renewedfive years later with broad bipartisanbacking — including the support ofthen-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.The new version included new pro-tections for records under Section 215.

‘Vacuum-Cleaner’ Spying

T he Patriot Act led increasing num-bers of news media outlets, politi-

cians and the public to pay greater at-tention to surveillance. Among thedevelopments that drew attention wasAT&T technician Mark Klein’s discov-ery of what he suspected was newlyinstalled NSA equipment at a compa-ny facility in San Francisco. Klein laterfiled suit in 2006 against the compa-ny, alleging that the equipment en-abled “vacuum-cleaner surveillance ofall the data crossing the Internet,whether that be peoples’ e-mail, websurfing or any other data.” 59

The NSA adamantly denied doingdomestic spying, but it developed closerelationships with telecommunications

Continued on p. 728

A surveillance camera monitors traffic near the Palace of Westminster clock —known as Big Ben — in London. Thousands of cameras are deployed in GreaterLondon, more per capita than any other city. An Urban Institute study of camerasin Baltimore and Chicago said their benefits more than justified their cost. Butcritics say that despite the usefulness of private cameras at stores and otherbusinesses, laws are needed to ensure that they don’t trample civil rights.

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Chronology1890s-1960sPhone wiretapping raises priva-cy concerns.

1895New York City Police Departmentbegins wiretapping to seek criminalevidence.

1928Supreme Court declares in Olmsteadv. United States that warrantlesspolice wiretaps don’t violate Con-stitution’s ban on “unreasonablesearches and seizures.”

1945Military begins Project Shamrock,which for three decades interceptstelegrams to and from U.S.

1956FBI launches COINTELPRO coun-terintelligence program to monitorCommunist Party and other dissi-dent groups.

1967Supreme Court overturns Olmstead,ruling warrants are required beforepolice can wiretap.

•

1970s-1990sGovernment surveillance drawsscrutiny.

1972Supreme Court requires warrants forwiretapping in national security cases.

1974Privacy Act requires federal agenciesto safeguard individuals’ privacywhen collecting personal information.

1976Congressional Church committeeconcludes that from World War Ithrough the 1970s U.S. presidents

have claimed national security reasonsfor spying on political enemies. Thefinding leads to the creation ofHouse and Senate intelligence com-mittees to monitor spy agencies.

1978Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Actcreates special FISA court to secretlyassess government requests for na-tional security wiretaps.

1986Electronic Communications PrivacyAct expands warrantless governmentwiretaps of telephones to electroniccommunications by computer.

1994Communications Assistance for LawEnforcement Act requires telecommu-nications providers to build networksin ways that make surveillance andthe interception of electronic com-munications possible.

•

2000s Terrorism fearsand burgeoning electronic tech-nology increase governmentsurveillance initiatives.

2001Terrorists attack U.S. on Sept. 11,shifting attention from privacy pro-tection to national security. . . .USA Patriot Act passed Oct. 25,giving government sweeping newsurveillance powers.

2005Real ID Act requires nationallystandardized driver’s licenses to beelectronically linked to personal dataand accessible to all states. . . .Congress reauthorizes Patriot Act,but with new surveillance limits.

2006AT&T and other companies accusedof helping Bush administration

wiretap Americans’ phone callswithout warrants.

2007Protect America Act removes warrantrequirement for government surveil-lance of foreign intelligence targets“reasonably believed” to be outsideUnited States. . . . NSA starts PRISMdata collection program.

2008FISA Amendments Act bolstersgovernment’s intelligence-gatheringpowers while limiting FISA court’sauthority; American Civil LibertiesUnion unsuccessfully challengesthe act in court.

2010Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appealsholds in United States v. Warshak thatFourth Amendment protects usercommunications stored with an Inter-net provider and law enforcementgenerally must get a warrant to ac-cess content of those communications.

2011Parts of Patriot Act renewed again.. . . Associated Press details NewYork Police Department’s surveil-lance of Muslims.

2012Congress reauthorizes FISA program.. . . National Security Agency (NSA)begins building $2 billion data stor-age center in Utah. . . . DemocraticSens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udallwarn of Patriot Act overreaches.

2013Surveillance cameras help catchBoston Marathon bombing suspects.. . . Privacy and Civil Liberties Over-sight Board discusses protecting Amer-icans’ privacy against abuses from gov-ernment programs. . . . NSA contractorEdward Snowden reveals secretagency phone and Internet surveil-lance programs, sparking controversyand calls for new privacy protections.

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and technology companies, such asRedmond, Wash.-based giant Microsoft.

“This is a home game for us,” saysformer NSA director Michael Hayden.“Are we not going to take advantagethat so much of it goes through Red-mond, Washington? Why would we notturn the most powerful telecommuni-cations and computing managementstructure on the planet to our use?” 60

President George W. Bush’s ad-ministration in 2002 launched the TotalInformation Awareness program aimedat “data-mining” in search of terroristactivity. Congress banned further spend-ing on the program in 2003 becauseof objections from lawmakers concernedabout its intrusiveness. But the admin-istration maintained its aggressive sur-veillance efforts.

The New York Times reported inDecember 2005 that Bush had au-thorized the NSA to eavesdrop onAmerican phone calls and emailswithout obtaining a warrant from theFISA court. Congress in 2007 passedinto law a temporary amendment to

FISA called the Protect America Act,which removed the warrant require-ment for government surveillance offoreign intelligence targets “reason-ably believed” to be outside of theUnited States.

A new law passed a year later, theFISA Amendments Act, addressedconcerns over warrantless wiretapping,bolstering the government’s intelli-gence-gathering powers while limit-ing the FISA court’s scope of reviewwhen court approvals were required.The law’s section 702 allowed thegovernment to acquire foreign intel-ligence by targeting foreign residents“reasonably believed” to be outsideU.S. borders.

To do so, the law says, the gov-ernment had to establish certain “tar-geting procedures,” which critics ob-served can be difficult to ascertainwhen dealing with Internet or cellphone communications. 61 In addition,the law required the government toadopt “minimization procedures” toguard against inadvertent collection ofinformation about U.S. citizens. 62

PRISM Program

S ection 702 of the FISA AmendmentsAct became the justification for the

NSA’s PRISM program, established in2008. Under PRISM, according to doc-uments leaked by Snowden, the agencypulled material from the servers of com-panies such as Google, Facebook, Skypeand Apple in search of patterns thatcould signal possible terrorist activity.

But multiple news reports indicate thatthe program was just part of a much big-ger data-collection effort. The AssociatedPress reported that for years FBI agentshad shown up at Microsoft and othercompanies with court orders demandinginformation on certain customers. 63 AndUSA Today reported in 2006 that the NSAsecretly collected phone records of tensof millions of Americans, using data pro-vided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth. 64

Obama administration officials said thatcollection program — which the Snow-den-provided documents revealed waseven more widespread — was justifiedunder the Patriot Act’s section 215.


Continued from p. 726

S urveillance gadgets once considered the province of JamesBond or CIA operatives have made snooping an everydayconsumer activity.

Online stores and specialty spy shops are selling a wide rangeof high-tech products once available only to intelligence and lawenforcement officials. They include cameras disguised as coat hooks,key chains, pens and iPod docking stations; tiny telephone recordersenabling the surreptitious taping of both ends of a conversation;magnetic Global Positioning System trackers that can be secretlyplaced underneath a car to determine its whereabouts; and tinycameras capable of recording images at night.

The trend has drawn sharp criticism from some national se-curity experts. “Before we get too far down this road of ubiq-uitous surveillance, real-time upload and comprehensive ana-lytics . . . we should pause to consider the implications,” saidMichael Chertoff, former secretary of the Department of Home-land Security, who now heads a security consulting firm. 1

Yet, the mechanics of snooping are deeply intriguing tomany people. “That fascination people have with the tools that

can unearth secrets — that’s a long-standing thing,” says PeterEarnest, a veteran CIA spy who now is executive director ofthe International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. “It’s one ofthe reasons why the museum is so popular.”

Google Glass is the latest technology to prompt debates overconsumer access to surveillance gadgetry. The wearable-computerdevices, introduced by the tech giant this year, have a head-mounted optical display that allows users to take an automaticphoto every few seconds and send it back to Google’s servers,essentially turning any wearer into a walking surveillance camera.Though wearers of Google Glass choose to be connected toGoogle, the people in their lines of sight do not. 2

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt says people shouldn’t auto-matically assume the worst about how the new product couldbe used. “Society adapts to these new things, and wearablecomputing is very much a real thing, of which Glass is justone example,” he said. “We have to have rules about how youuse them. And that may literally be just etiquette — what’s ap-propriate and what’s not. There’s obviously places where Google

Surveillance Technology Goes Mainstream“We should pause to consider the implications.”


Meanwhile, law-enforcement agenciesincreasingly were using non-FISA-approved wiretapping, mostly for druginvestigations. According to a 2011 fed-eral report, 95 percent of federal wiretapand 81 percent of state wiretap ordersthat year were related to narcotics. 65

To aid in criminal investigations, au-thorities also began using information fromtechnology companies, which began mak-ing that fact public. Google reported morethan 21,000 government requests for userdata during 2012, up 70 percent since2009. 66 And during the first half of 2013,Twitter reported a 15 percent increase inrequests over the previous six months.Most requests were in the form of sub-poenas or search warrants. 67

Physical surveillance remained a toolat some law enforcement agencies.Maryland’s state police, concerned aboutpossible violence at future executions,infiltrated meetings of anti-death penal-ty groups in 2008. State lawmakers sub-sequently banned those tactics. 68 Policealready had begun taking advantage ofemerging technologies; before the 2001Super Bowl, cops in Tampa, Fla., used

facial-recognition software to spot crim-inals in the crowd; it found 19 peoplewith pending arrest warrants. 69

Before the 2004 Republican NationalConvention in New York City, The NewYork Times reported that the New YorkPolice Department monitored churchgroups, anti-war organizations and envi-ronmental advocates. It later continuedthe practice, sending an officer to a NewOrleans gathering of liberal groups in2008 and aggressively surveilling Muslims.(See sidebar, p. 730.) The department saysits efforts were essential to maintainingsecurity. It cited internal rules allowing of-ficers to go anywhere the public is al-lowed and preparing reports for “opera-tional planning” purposes. 70

Congress extended the Patriot Actduring the Obama administration. ButDemocratic Sens. Wyden and Udallbegan raising alarms about what theybelieved was excessive and unneces-sarily secret surveillance.

In a March 2012 letter to AttorneyGeneral Eric Holder, they wrote, “Webelieve most Americans would be stunnedto learn the details” of how the gov-

ernment has interpreted Section 215. 71

That December, Congress voted to reau-thorize the FISA program. Wyden andfellow Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkleytried to amend the legislation to requiremore public disclosure about the impactof the law, but their proposals failed.

At a Senate Intelligence Committeehearing several months later, Wyden point-edly asked National Intelligence DirectorJames Clapper whether the NSA collect-ed “any type of data at all on millionsor hundreds of millions of Americans.”Clapper answered, “No sir,” then added,“Not wittingly.” After the Snowden dis-closures, some commentators accusedClapper of lying; he said he responded“in what I thought was the most truth-ful or least untruthful manner” and thathe was probably “too cute by half.” 72

Despite restrictions against revealingwhat data the NSA collects, agency of-ficials have openly acknowledged thatthey gather unprecedented amounts ofinformation that never get reviewed.“There are massive gaps in our abilityto actually analyze data — much of thedata just sits there and nobody looks

Glass is not appropriate.” 3

The Spy Museum’s Earnest attributes much of the interest insurveillance technology to the Bond movies and a stream ofother films and TV shows that play up the glamour of spying.

But surveillance devices have become popular for more prac-tical reasons. Their users include people checking on the careof elderly relatives in nursing homes and parents monitoringtheir babysitters. One especially popular client base has beensuspicious people looking to catch cheating by their spouse orsignificant other. Recorders and cameras can accomplish far morecheaply what a private investigator used to do.

The use of surveillance devices has become so popular, infact, that it has triggered lawsuits over alleged invasions of pri-vacy. In a well-publicized case in 2009, a Nebraska womanwas sued for placing a voice recorder inside her 4-year-olddaughter’s favorite teddy bear to help her learn how her daugh-ter was being treated. A judge ordered the woman and her fa-ther to pay a total of $120,000 to six people who complainedof being illegally recorded. 4

“With technology getting smaller, almost invisible, and theprice coming down, it does tend to encourage people” to mounttheir own spy operations, said Houston family-law attorney Regi-nald Hirsch, who has represented clients who have sought touse the devices. 5

— Chuck McCutcheon

1 Michael Chertoff, “Google Glass: The Beginning of Wearable Surveillance,”CNN.com, May 1, 2013, www.cnn.com/2013/05/01/opinion/chertoff-wearable-devices.2 For background, see Gary Shteyngart, “O.K., Glass,” The New Yorker, Aug. 5,2013, www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/05/130805fa_fact_shteyngart.3 Curt Woodward, “Schmidt: Google Glass Critics Afraid of Change, SocietyWill Adapt,” XConomy.com, April 26, 2013, www.xconomy.com/boston/2013/04/26/schmidt-google-glass-critics-afraid-of-change-society-will-adapt/.4 Nate Anderson, “Modern Divorce: Wiretapped Teddy Bears, $120,000 inFines,” Ars Technica, March 8, 2011, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/modern-divorce-wiretapped-teddy-bears-120000-in-fines/.5 Mike Tolson, “Spy Gadgets Infiltrate Divorces As Domestic SnoopingBooms,” The Houston Chronicle, April 28, 2012, www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Spy-gadgets-infiltrate-divorces-as-domestic-3518643.php.

730 CQ Researcher

at it,” an anonymous former agency of-ficial told National Journal. 73

The NSA’s ambitious collection effortsled it to begin building a massive $2 bil-lion data-storage center in rural Utah es-timated to be more than five times thesize of the U.S. Capitol. The center is ex-pected to open this fall and will report-edly play a crucial role in enabling theagency to break complex encryption sys-tems that cloak many financial and per-sonal transactions in secrecy.

The center will enable the agencyto further extend its eavesdropping

reach. As an anonymous senior intelli-gence official told Wired: “Everybody’sa target; everybody with communicationis a target.” 74

Not surprisingly, that approach troublescivil libertarians, who contend that the gov-ernment does not need to acquire everyhaystack in sight just to look for needles.ACLU analyst Jay Stanley argues that col-lecting too much data is just as great aproblem as collecting too little. “Whensurveillance takes place on such a massscale,” he wrote, “it is impossible to payclose attention to everything.” 75

CURRENTSITUATIONForthcoming Debate

E dward Snowden’s leaks, along withother revelations of NSA snooping,

have spurred a flood of proposed legis-lation aimed at curbing the powers ofthe NSA and FISA court.


A fter the 9/11 attacks, law enforcement agencies aroundthe country tightened surveillance of Muslims in an ef-fort to prevent another major terrorist attack. But the

New York City Police Department (NYPD), which boasts thenation’s most advanced anti-terrorism capabilities, took its sur-veillance to controversial new levels.

Using undercover officers, informants and other methods, theNYPD monitored Muslims both in the city and beyond its borders.

The intensive surveillance has sparked a series of lawsuits againstthe department, including a pending suit filed in June in U.S. Dis-trict Court by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rightsorganizations on behalf of a group of Muslims. It seeks to end allsurveillance of Muslims and mosques by New York City police whilecalling for the destruction of data collected by the surveillance andthe naming of an independent monitor to oversee the NYPD. 1

In a separate District Court lawsuit, which also is pending,civil rights activists accused the department of violating its reg-ulations governing how it can conduct surveillance of politicalor religious groups. A third pending suit in District Court inNew Jersey alleges that Muslims there had their constitutionalrights violated by NYPD spying that crossed state lines. 2

New York police officials say their tactics are appropriate, es-pecially given the extreme risk the city faces. They emphaticallydeny targeting suspects based on their religious affiliation.

“Undercover investigations begin with leads, and we gowhere the leads take us,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kellysaid. 3 Responding to the ACLU lawsuit, other city officials de-fended the NYPD. “Cities cannot play catch-up in gathering in-telligence about a terrorist threat,” said Celeste Koeleveld, a se-nior lawyer in the city’s Law Department. 4

Nationwide, post-9/11 surveillance of the country’s 2.8 mil-lion Muslim-Americans permitted under the USA Patriot Act andthe George W. Bush administration unleashed a flood of com-plaints from Muslims and others.

Since 9/11, some lawmakers periodically have called foreven more aggressive national surveillance of Muslims, partic-ularly after the Boston Marathon bombings in April.

Police must “realize that the threat is coming from the Mus-lim community and increase surveillance there,” said Rep. PeterKing, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Sub-committee on Counterintelligence and Terrorism. 5

In fact, the CIA helped the NYPD create a special intelli-gence unit to conduct surveillance. A CIA inspector general’s re-port disclosed in June that one agency official — in an appar-ent violation of the prohibition against CIA domestic spying onAmericans — helped police conduct surveillance operations. 6

The NYPD unit sent officers to neighborhoods throughoutthe city to look for any behavior by Muslims or people whoappeared to be Muslim that could legally allow them to stopcars and people for questioning, according to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles by The Associated Press. The articlesconcluded that the department did so “in ways that would runafoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal govern-ment.” 7 Undercover officers also visited bars, shops, bookstoresand restaurants to study customers’ habits.

Kelly and other police officials say they have followed guide-lines established in 1985 as part of a legal settlement thatsharply restricted undercover work. The guidelines require thatpolice have “specific information” that a group is engaged inor is threatening to engage in criminal conduct. 8

“The Police Department will not apologize for our lawfulefforts to protect New York,” Kelly said, “and we will not changeour methods to satisfy those who would impugn them withoutunderstanding them.” 9

But Muslims contend the department has gone too far. AsadDandia, a Brooklyn-born Muslim and community activist, wroteon the ACLU’s blog in June that he received a Facebook messagefrom a man asking for religious self-improvement. He says the

U.S. Muslims Seek to End Police SurveillanceNYPD’s Kelly: “We will not change our methods.”


In June and July, members of the Houseand Senate Intelligence and Judiciary com-mittees introduced several bills that augura high-profile debate this fall. More activ-ity is occurring in the courts, as well asamong state and local governments.

Despite Washington’s polarized polit-ical climate, lawmakers are working onsurveillance across party lines, with law-makers on the far left and far right form-ing unusual alliances. “There is a grow-ing sense that things have really gonea-kilter here,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, aliberal Democrat from California. 76

In the House Judiciary Committee,she and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.,plan to have a surveillance bill readywhen Congress returns from its Augustrecess. It would restrict NSA phone sur-veillance to only those named as targetsof a federal terrorism investigation andtoughen oversight of the FISA court. 77

A separate measure to reauthorizeall spy agencies for fiscal 2014 will in-clude additional privacy protections inresponse to the NSA revelations,promised House Intelligence Commit-tee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich. 78

A senior member of the panel, Rep.Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has introduced abill requiring public disclosure of allFISA court opinions that re-interpretsurveillance laws in significant legalways, to listen to both sides of classi-fied cases instead of basing decisionssolely on information from Justice De-partment lawyers.

In the Senate, three Democrats haveintroduced bills that would create aspecial advocate with the power toargue in the FISA court in favor ofprivacy concerns.

man turned out to be a police informant who collected thephone numbers of everyone to whom he was introduced andoften tried to photograph them.

Dandia said one of the leaders of his mosque asked him tostop holding meetings of his community group there, and that so-liciting donations from congregants was no longer permitted. “TheNYPD surveillance program has made it harder for me to practicemy religion, even though I have done nothing wrong,” he wrote. 10

Some congressional Democrats have pressed the Obama ad-ministration to examine the NYPD’s policies. Attorney General EricHolder said a review was under way, but the lawmakers have crit-icized Holder for not acting more swiftly. “I have patiently waitedfor the Department of Justice to complete its review of the situa-tion, but it has been nearly two years since the story broke andover a year since the Department of Justice committed to doinga review of NYPD’s actions,” said Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif. 11

In the meantime, recent reports that domestic surveillance bythe National Security Agency (NSA) broke privacy rules or wentbeyond its legal authority thousands of times have intensifiedMuslims’ fears of unwarranted scrutiny. “After all, most of us reallydo have nothing to hide — so why is it that we have everythingto fear?” a Muslim woman asked in The Guardian, the Britishnewspaper that first reported on the NSA programs. 12

— Chuck McCutcheon

1 Hamid Hassan Raza, et al. v. City of New York, 2013, www.aclu.org/files/assets/nypd_surveillance_complaint_final.pdf.2 Maura O’Connor, “N.J. Lawsuit Targets NYPD’s Muslim Surveillance,” TheWall Street Journal, June 6, 2012, blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/06/06/n-j-lawsuit-targets-nypds-muslim-surveillance/.3 “Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s Speech to Fordham Law School,”New York Daily News, March 6, 2012, www.nydailynews.com/opinion/police-commissioner-raymond-kelly-speech-fordham-law-school-article-1.1033598.4 Adam Goldman, et al., “Civil rights groups sue NYPD over Muslim spying,”The Associated Press, June 18, 2013, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/civil-rights-groups-sue-nypd-over-muslim-spying.

5 Katrina Trinko, “GOP Congressman: Increase Surveillance of Muslim Com-munity,” National Review, April 19, 2013, www.nationalreview.com/corner/346125/gop-congressman-%E2%80%98increase-surveillance%E2%80%99-muslim-community.6 Charlie Savage, “CIA Report Finds Concerns With Ties to New York Police,”The New York Times, June 26, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/nyregion/cia-sees-concerns-on-ties-to-new-york-police.html?pagewanted=all.7 Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, “With CIA Help, NYPD Moves CovertlyIn Muslim Areas,” The Associated Press, Aug. 23, 2011, www.ap.org/Content/APintheNews/2011/With-CIA-help-NYPD-moves-covertly-in-Muslim-areas.8 “Handschu Guidelines Govern How NYPD Can Monitor Groups,” The Asso-ciated Press, Feb. 23, 2012, www.nydailynews.com/news/handschu-guidelines-govern-nypd-monitor-groups-article-1.1027761.9 “Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s Speech to Fordham Law School,”op. cit.10 Asad Dandia, “My Life Under NYPD Surveillance: A Brooklyn Studentand Charity Leader on Fear and Mistrust,” ACLU.com, June 18, 2013, www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-religion-belief-criminal-law-reform-technology-and-liberty/my-life-under-nypd.11 Adam Serwer, “Whatever Happened to the Obama Administration’s Reviewof NYPD Spying?” Mother Jones, April 4, 2013, www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/nypd-muslim-surveillance-justice-department-eric-holder.12 Anna Lekas Miller, “If Your Name is Ahmed or Fatima, You Live in Fear ofNSA Surveillance,” The Guardian, June 19, 2013, www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/19/nsa-surveillance-muslim-arab-americans.

A New York University student attends a town hallmeeting on Feb. 29, 2012, to discuss surveillance of

Muslim communities by the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

Getty Im

ages

/Mario Tam

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732 CQ Researcher


California Democrat Feinstein wantsthe following data to be made public:

• the number of Americans’ phonenumbers that have been formally scru-tinized as part of the NSA database;

• the number of FBI warrants seek-ing the contents of phone conversa-tions; and

• the number of times a phonecompany has been required to pro-vide data. 79

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., also has in-troduced a bill calling for the governmentto regularly report on how many Amer-icans’ data is subject to NSA collection.

Such changes, however, are unlike-ly to mollify some lawmakers who —to the surprise of many congressionalobservers — narrowly lost a battle inJuly over an amendment to slash fund-ing for the NSA’s surveillance programs.

Supporters of the measure, led bylibertarian-leaning Rep. Justin Amash,R-Mich., have pledged to continue topress the issue. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.,who shares many of Amash’s views,also has introduced bills to sharply limitdomestic surveillance. “I think the con-stitutionality of these programs needsto be questioned,” said Paul, who oftenis mentioned as a potential 2016 GOPpresidential candidate. 80

In the Senate, Richard Durbin, D-Ill.,added language to the pending fiscal2014 defense appropriations bill thatwould require the NSA to provide moredetails about its data collection, such ashow many phone records of U.S. citi-zens it has acquired and how manyNSA personnel have reviewed them.

Senate Judiciary’s Leahy has introduceda bipartisan bill that would narrow thescope of the Patriot Act’s Section 215,which authorizes the phone-records sur-veillance program disclosed by Snow-den. The measure also would requirethe inspector general of the intelligencecommunity to review how the FISAAmendments Act has affected Americans’privacy rights.

A separate Leahy-sponsored bill await-ing Senate floor action would require

authorities to obtain a search warrantto gain access to emails and to notifyan individual whose electronic com-munications have been obtained.

Not all bills would curtail the spyworld’s power. A bill that passed theHouse and is awaiting Senate action, theCyber Intelligence Sharing and Protec-tion Act, would tighten cybersecurity and,according to civil liberties and privacyadvocates, broaden the government’s sur-veillance powers. That bill was debatedprior to the Snowden disclosures andhas the backing of Republicans whogenerally support the NSA’s actions.

Comprehensive immigration reform,another major issue before Congress,features a side debate on surveillance.The Senate-passed version of an immi-gration overhaul, which the House isexpected to debate this fall, would allowemployers to tap into a Homeland Se-curity Department system called E-Verifyto check the identity and legal status ofprospective hires The system includesdrivers’ license photographs and otherbiographical information, leading privacyadvocates to warn it could mark thestart of a national ID system. 81

Meanwhile, to regulate the domesticuse of federal drone aircraft, Reps. Sensen-brenner, Lofgren and Ted Poe, R-Texas,have introduced a bill that would requirea warrant for drones to collect informa-tion that could identify individuals in aprivate area. The measure also would re-quire a court order and advance publicnotice for the government to use dronesto collect information that could identi-fy individuals in defined public areas.

And Wyden and Rep. Jason Chaffetz,R-Utah, each has introduced a bill re-quiring the government to obtain a war-rant in order to use the Global Position-ing System to track criminal suspects.

Obama Administration

D espite the Obama administration’sinsistence that its surveillance

initiatives strike the right balance be-

tween safety and privacy, it has showna willingness to adjust those efforts,especially in the face of withering criti-cism from civil liberties advocates.

Before Obama’s August announcementthat he would seek more oversight ofthe FISA process, Robert Litt, the toplawyer in the Office of the Director ofNational Intelligence, said the adminis-tration was “open to re-evaluating” theNSA’s surveillance efforts to create greaterpublic confidence that they protect pri-vacy while “preserving the essence ofthe program.” 82

The NSA’s Alexander also said he isamenable to considering having telephonecompanies collect and retain caller recordsinstead of immediately routing them tohis agency, with the NSA then request-ing data for each case under investiga-tion. That approach could allay concernsthat the NSA is sitting on a massive troveof secretly gathered data. 83

Meanwhile, the administration hasbecome more open about justifyingthe need for surveillance. The direc-tor of national intelligence in July re-leased three declassified documentsthat authorized and explained the bulkcollection of telephone data.

Many involved in the surveillance de-bate are watching to see if the Privacyand Civil Liberties Oversight Board, anindependent executive branch agency,can become an important player in im-plementing solutions.

Congress created the board in 2004,and it first met in 2006. But then itlanguished without a chairman untilDavid Medine, a Washington lawyer andformer Federal Trade Commission of-ficial, finally was confirmed in May,enabling the hiring of staff members.

The board held a public hearing inJuly at which several privacy officialsurged it to support the formation ofa watchdog over the FISA court. “Itwould be good to have someone withaccess to classified information whocould play an adversarial role,” saidthe ACLU’s Jaffer. 84

Continued on p. 734

no


At Issue:Is government domestic surveillance keeping the U.S. safer?yes

yesPAUL ROSENZWEIGVISITING FELLOW, HERITAGE FOUNDATION;FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY,DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, AUGUST 2013

t he question of surveillance’s effectiveness is impossible toanswer. It is difficult to prove a counter-factual — thatwithout surveillance programs we would not have been

safer. But it seems the public record supports a modest claimthat surveillance has been effective, and I suspect the classifiedrecord is even stronger.

It is generally very difficult to discern successes for surveil-lance techniques when those successes often occur in a classi-fied domain. But a careful observer can detect the outlines ofother intelligence successes based on domestic surveillance insome events. When Pakistani-American David Headley was ar-rested in 2009 for allegedly seeking to commit terrorist acts inDenmark, a key factor in his identification was his pattern oftravel to the Middle East and his efforts to conceal those tripsfrom the government. Review of his travel both provided thetrigger to ask questions and the factual cross-check on theveracity of his answers.

Likewise, surveillance tapes from a shopping center inBridgeport, Conn., played a modest role in the hunt for failedTimes Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, while surveillance cameraswere instrumental in the apprehension of the Boston Marathonbombers.

What does all this say about the National Security Agency(NSA) telephone call record program that is at the forefront ofthe news today? The bare information we have is that the NSAhas been authorized to access the phone-record databaseroughly 300 times in the last 10 years.

It is difficult to be certain how effective these surveillanceefforts are. The NSA says it has thwarted several attacks, in-cluding a New York City subway bombing plot. And if Sen.Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is correct (and there is no reason tothink she isn’t), this program has played a role in thwartingmore than one terrorist attack — though how essential a role,we cannot say.

More to the point, however, a focus on public evidenceof successfully thwarted attacks misses the issue of deter-rence altogether. Perhaps the best evidence that our surveil-lance programs are effective is the concrete evidence thatwhen our methods are disclosed, those who would wish todo us harm alter their own tactics to less optimal ones toavoid scrutiny.

The surveillance we undertake may not make the programwise or necessarily lawful, but the evidence does suggest thatit works.no

SHARON BRADFORD FRANKLINSENIOR COUNSEL, THE CONSTITUTIONPROJECT

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, AUGUST 2013

t he public really has no way of knowing whether domesticgovernment surveillance is keeping us safer. The Office ofthe Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reports that it

gave Congress a list of 54 cases in which it believes the two re-cently revealed National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance pro-grams have provided information that helped detect and disruptpotential terrorist activity.

However, the ODNI has not disclosed that list publicly, norhas it provided any public details on how critical the programswere to the government’s ability to detect and thwart theseplots. Much of this information — such as the evidence andoperational details of particular investigations — should legiti-mately remain classified. But the need for secrecy regardingspecific operations only reinforces the urgency of holding apublic debate on the appropriate scope of the government’ssurveillance programs and the laws governing those programs.

We do know that under the NSA program for collectingphone records, the government is obtaining information onmillions of Americans who have no known or suspected tiesto terrorism. Although the NSA is not permitted to obtain thecontent of those calls, the government is gathering datashowing what numbers are called from each phone numberand the duration and frequency of those calls. So, even if theprogram is making us safer, it is also scooping up lots of in-formation that has no counter-terrorism value.

Although courts traditionally have said such noncontent infor-mation is not protected by the Fourth Amendment right to befree from unreasonable government searches and seizures, rapidchanges in technology have transformed the nature and extentof this data, and the courts are beginning to catch up. Last year,in United States v. Jones, a case involving global positioning sys-tem tracking of a car on public roads, five Supreme Court jus-tices, in their concurrences, acknowledged that continuous use ofpowerful electronic surveillance technologies over extensive peri-ods can impinge on reasonable expectations of privacy.

The phone information being collected by the NSA, likethe pattern of the car’s movements in Jones, can be highlyrevealing of individuals’ activities and associations. Such exten-sive monitoring threatens both the First Amendment right offree association and Fourth Amendment rights. Therefore, it isnot enough to ask whether domestic surveillance programsare making us safer. We must also examine whether the pro-grams adequately protect Americans’ constitutional rights —and if not, what safeguards are needed.

734 CQ Researcher

Others said the court’s rulings shouldcontain an unclassified explanation of itsfindings. “It is crucial for the Americanpublic to better understand FISA Courtdecisions and the appropriateness of itsinterpretation of relevant case law,” HouseMinority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.,wrote in a July letter to Medine. 85

Court Action

F ederal and state courts have begunaddressing a hotly debated surveil-

lance issue: whether law enforcementofficials need a search warrant to ob-tain information on a suspect’s where-abouts from cell phone companies.

The New Orleans-based Fifth U.S. Cir-cuit Court of Appeals ruled in July thata warrantless search of cell phone lo-cation data was “not per se unconstitu-tional” because that data was “clearly abusiness record” and thus not protect-ed by the Fourth Amendment. The de-cision came just after the New JerseySupreme Court ruled the opposite way,saying that search warrants were required.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled inMay that the police could seize a cellphone without a warrant but needed awarrant to search it. And the Fourth U.S.Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., isweighing whether investigators actedlegally when they got a court order, butnot a warrant, to obtain location datafor suspects in an armed robbery. 86

The Supreme Court has yet to takeup the issue of cell phone warrants, thoughthe growing public interest in surveillancehas led to speculation that it may do soin the near future. Many observers arecurious to see how last year’s U.S. v. Jonesruling regarding the illegal attachment ofa GPS device will influence future cases.

“The Jones case was extremely im-portant, but nobody knows where thereasoning of the concurring justiceswill take us,” says Gregory Nojeim, se-nior counsel for the Center for Democ-racy and Technology, a Washington,

D.C., privacy-rights group. “They allsaid that it didn’t matter whether therewas a [criminal] trespass. What mat-tered was the surveillance.”

But the overall issue of surveillanceis difficult for the judicial system, giventhe rapid pace of change in technol-ogy, according to legal experts.

“The law and courts are not per-fectly equipped to look at new tech-nology,” says Mills, the University ofFlorida law professor. “With law, . . .you always have to look backwards.”

States and Localities

S everal legislatures are moving aheadon efforts to ensure surveillance

is done with prior judicial approval.In May, Montana became the first state

to require police to obtain a search war-rant, based on probable cause, beforeusing a cell phone carrier’s records toestablish a suspect’s location. Maine soonfollowed suit, and the issue has surfacedin Texas and Massachusetts. Though Cal-ifornia’s legislature passed a similar mea-sure last year, Democratic Gov. JerryBrown vetoed it, contending it did notstrike what he called the proper balancebetween privacy and security. 87

States also are starting to consider howto regulate drones. Idaho passed a lawrequiring police to get warrants beforeusing the planes, and several other statesare considering similar measures. Virginiaenacted a two-year moratorium on policeuse of drones, except in emergencies. 88

Local governments, meanwhile, aretaking steps to make video surveil-lance more widespread. In most cases,city ordinances require businesses suchas bars and liquor stores to keep cam-eras in certain locations and make thefootage available to police.

But a few cities are taking a moreprivacy-oriented approach. Seattle’s CityCouncil decided in March that policemust receive the council’s permissionbefore using certain cameras and dronesfor surveillance. 89

OUTLOOKMore Cameras

C ontinued technological progressis expected to make surveillance

far more widespread and less overtlyintrusive. That raises the question: Willnew mechanisms be put in place toprevent potential abuses?

For now, Congress and the Obamaadministration appear poised to makeseveral modifications to laws in reac-tion to the recent NSA disclosures.Whether that continues in the futurehinges on several factors, experts say:

• The extent of leaks about classi-fied programs. More leaks could fuelpublic discontent, which could lead tonew laws aimed at curtailing surveil-lance and promoting greater transparency.

• Whether technology has beenshown to prevent or solve a major ter-rorist incident or crime. After video cam-eras helped locate the Boston Marathonbombing suspects in April, for exam-ple, experts predicted the devices wouldbecome far more common.

• How future presidents and othertop government officials utilize surveil-lance and how expansive they decideto be about revealing the details. A fu-ture large-scale terrorist attack is likelyto make a president tilt his or her pri-orities toward national security, poten-tially at the expense of civil liberties.

Privacy advocates are pressing forfar-reaching changes to surveillancelaws. But the prospect of new limitsis worrisome to some current and for-mer government officials.

“If we’re going to do effective in-telligence, we can’t talk about it inpublic,” said Stewart Baker, a formerNSA general counsel and frequent com-mentator on surveillance issues. “Andinstead, we need to come up with avariety of controls and safeguards thatoperate in classified space.” 90


Continued from p. 732


Baker and others agree that willpose a formidable challenge. Anequally big challenge, they say, willbe to fashion laws that can adapt tochanging in technology.

Facial-recognition software is ex-pected to become much more accu-rate and sophisticated over the nextdecade. Video cameras are becomingso small and mobile they can see andrecord events in previously unthink-able places. Surveillance drones alsoare becoming smaller and are likelyto be deployed in large numbers bygovernments and private interests. 91

“You’re not going to stop the tech-nology,” says the RAND Corp.’s Davis.“What’s happened recently, and what willcontinue to happen, is that technologywill make it so easy to collect this dataand process it. But it does mean youhave to be checking to see if the tech-nology and the legal system are appro-priately paired. That hasn’t had to hap-pen, not at the rate we’re about to seeit in so many different domains.”

Notes

1 James Fallows, “Annals of the Security State:Gabriel Silverstein Edition,” The Atlantic, May 19,2013, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/annals-of-the-security-state-gabriel-silverstein-division/276011/.2 For background, see the following CQ Re-searcher reports: Barbara Mantel, “Terrorism andthe Internet,” Nov. 1, 2009, pp. 285-310; RolandFlamini, “Improving Cybersecurity,” Feb. 15, 2013,pp. 157-180; and Marcia Clemmitt, “Privacy inPeril,” Nov. 17, 2006, pp. 961-984.3 Neil M. Richards, “The Dangers of Surveillance,”Harvard Law Review, 2013, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239412. Alsosee Glenn Greenwald, “NSA Collecting PhoneRecords of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily,”The Guardian, June 5, 2013, www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order; Glenn Greenwald andEwan MacAskill, “NSA PRISM Program Taps InTo User Data of Apple, Google and Others,”The Guardian, June 6, 2013, www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data; Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras, “U.S.,

British Intelligence Mining Data From Nine U.S.Internet Companies in Broad Secret Program,”The Washington Post, June 6, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html.4 David E. Sanger, “NSA Leaks Make Plan forCyberdefense Unlikely,” The New York Times,Aug. 12, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/us/nsa-leaks-make-plan-for-cyberdefense-unlikely.html?pagewanted=all.5 Siobhan Gorman and Jennifer Valentino-Devries, “New Details Show Broader NSASurveillance Reach,” The Wall Street Journal,Aug. 20, 2013, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324108204579022874091732470.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories.6 David Ingram, “FBI Says it Uses SurveillanceDrones on U.S. Soil,” Reuters, June 19, 2013,www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-usa-security-drones-idUSBRE95I1NW20130619.7 For background, see Charlie Savage, “FacialScanning Is Making Gains in Surveillance,” TheNew York Times, Aug. 21, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/us/facial-scanning-is-making-gains-in-surveillance.html?hp.8 Robert Barnes, “Supreme Court May Needto Decide How Private a Cellphone Is,” TheWashington Post, Aug. 4, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-may-need-to-decide-how-private-a-cellphone-is/2013/08/04/e341dc60-fae1-11e2-a369-d1954abcb7e3_story.html?hpid=z3.9 Casey Chan and Brian Barnett, “The TechThat Helped Take Down Marathon BombingSuspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev,” Gizmodo, April 19,2013, gizmodo.com/5995125/the-tech-that-helped-take-down-marathon-bomber-dzhokar-tsarnaev.10 Glenn Greenwald, “XKeyScore: NSA toolcollects ‘nearly everything a user does on theinternet,’ ” The Guardian, July 31, 2013, www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data.11 Marc Ambinder, “What’s XKeyscore?” TheWeek, July 31, 2013, http://theweek.com/article/index/247684/whats-xkeyscore.12 Ed O’Keefe, “Plan to Defund NSA PhoneCollection Program Defeated,” The WashingtonPost, July 24, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/07/24/plan-to-defund-nsa-phone-collection-program-has-broad-support-sponsor-says/.13 Pete Yost, “Robert Mueller, FBI Director,Faces House Panel Questioning On Benghazi,NSA Leaks,” The Huffington Post, June 13, 2013,

www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/13/robert-mueller-fbi_n_3434190.html?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D328892.14 Ellen Nakashima, “NSA Gathered Thousandsof Americans’ E-mails Before Court OrderedIt to Revise Its Tactics,” The Washington Post,Aug. 21, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-gathered-thousands-of-americans-e-mails-before-court-struck-down-program/2013/08/21/146ba4b6-0a90-11e3-b87c-476db8ac34cd_story.html.15 Kimberly Dozier, “Obama: NSA Secret DataGathering Transparent,” Yahoo! News, June 18,2013, http://news.yahoo.com/obama-nsa-secret-data-gathering-114819210.html.16 Greenwald, op. cit.17 Interview with Gen. Keith Alexander, “ThisWeek,” ABC News, June 23, 2013, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-nsa-director-gen-keith-alexander/story?id=19457454&singlePage=true.18 Sen. Dianne Feinstein, comments at SenateJudiciary Committee hearing, July 31, 2013.19 Abby D. Phillip, “House Speaker JohnBoehner: NSA Leaker a Traitor,” ABCNews.com,June 11, 2013, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/06/house-speaker-john-boehner-nsa-leaker-a-traitor/.20 Kimberly Dozier, “Al-Qaida Said to beChanging Its Ways After Leaks,” Yahoo! News,June 26, 2013, http://news.yahoo.com/al-qaida-said-changing-ways-leaks-072102325.html.21 Interview with Sen. Mark Udall, “Meet ThePress,” NBC News, June 14, 2013, www.nbcnews.com/id/52220609/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/june-lindsey-graham-saxby-chambliss-mark-udall-bobby-scott-david-ignatius-james-risen-andrea-mitchell/#.UhUlVLxOBV4.22 Sen. Patrick Leahy, comments at SenateJudiciary Committee hearing, July 31, 2013.23 Sharon Bradford Franklin, “The Interpre-tation of Surveillance Laws Should Not BeSecret,” The Washington Post, June 9, 2013,www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-interpretation-of-surveillance-laws-should-not-be-secret/2013/06/09/256d4994-cf90-11e2-8573-3baeea6a2647_story.html.24 Susan Landau, written testimony to the U.S.House Judiciary Committee, Feb. 11, 2011, http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/Landau02172011.pdf.25 Justin Fenton, “Study of the City Finds ThatCrime Cameras Are Cost-Effective Deterrent,”The Baltimore Sun, Sept. 20, 2011, articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-09-19/news/bs-md-ci-crime-camera-study-20110919_1_crime-cameras-dashboard-cameras-surveillance-cameras.

736 CQ Researcher

26 “1,000 Cameras Solve One Crime,” BBCNews, Aug. 24, 2009, http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8219022.stm?ad=1.27 “Britain is ‘Surveillance Society,’ ” BBC News,Nov. 2, 2006, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6108496.stm.28 Nidhi Subbaraman, “Drones Over America:How Unmanned Fliers Are Already HelpingCops,” NBCNews.com, March 30, 2013, www.nbcnews.com/technology/drones-over-america-how-unmanned-fliers-are-already-helping-cops-1C9135554.29 Michael Pearson, “Obama: No One Listeningto Your Calls,” CNN.com, June 9, 2013, www.cnn.com/2013/06/07/politics/nsa-data-mining.30 Ellen Nakashima, “Call Records of Fewerthan 300 People Were Searched in 2012, U.S.Says,” The Washington Post, June 15, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/call-records-of-fewer-than-300-people-were-searched-in-2012-us-says/2013/06/15/5e611cee-d61b-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html.31 Charlie Savage, “NSA Often Broke Rules onPrivacy, Audit Shows,” The New York Times,Aug. 16, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/us/nsa-often-broke-rules-on-privacy-audit-shows.html?hp&_r=0.32 Siobhan Gorman, et al., “Obama ProposesSurveillance Policy Overhaul,” The Wall StreetJournal, Aug. 9, 2013, online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324522504579002653564348842.html.33 Deputy Attorney General James Cole, com-ments at Senate Judiciary Committee hearing,July 31, 2013.34 “Statement to the Privacy and Civil LibertiesOversight Board by Jameel Jaffer, ACLU DeputyLegal Director,” July 9, 2013, www.aclu.org/files/assets/jameel_jaffer_pclob_statement.pdf.35 “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act CourtOrders 1979-2012,” Electronic Privacy Informa-tionCenter, http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html.36 Nakashima, Aug. 21, 2013, op. cit.

37 Eric Lichtblau, “In Secret, Court Vastly Broad-ens Powers of NSA,” The New York Times,July 6, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/in-secret-court-vastly-broadens-powers-of-nsa.html?pagewanted=all.38 Remarks of James Robertson at Privacyand Civil Liberties Board hearing, July 9, 2013.39 Jane Mayer, “What’s the Matter with Meta-data?” The New Yorker, June 6, 2013, www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/06/verizon-nsa-metadata-surveillance-problem.html.40 Neil Richards, “Surveillance State No Answerto Terror,” CNN.com, April 23, 2013, www.cnn.com/2013/04/23/opinion/richards-surveillance-state.41 James Risen, “Inquiry Cites Flaws in Coun-terterrorism Offices,” The New York Times,Oct. 2, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/us/inquiry-cites-flaws-in-regional-counterterrorism-offices.html?pagewanted=all.42 Tweet from Garrett Mickley, Twitter, July 2,2013, https://twitter.com/garrettmickley/status/352101353272786945.43 David Simon, “We Are Shocked, Shocked. . . ,” DavidSimon.com, June 7, 2013, http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/.44 Thomas Friedman, “Blowing a Whistle,” TheNew York Times, June 11, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/friedman-blowing-a-whistle.html.45 Kara Brandeisky, “On the PATRIOT Act,the Polls Say Everything,” The New Republic,May 27, 2011, www.newrepublic.com/blog/the-study/89142/patriot-act-polls-mixed-obama#.46 Jon Cohen and Dan Balz, “Poll: Privacy Con-cerns Rise After NSA Leaks,” The WashingtonPost, July 25, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-privacy-concerns-rise-after-nsa-leaks/2013/07/23/3a1b64a6-f3c7-11e2-a2f1-a7acf9bd5d3a_story.html?44.47 Julian Sanchez, “NSA Snooping Matters,Even If You Have Nothing to Hide,” Mashable.com, June 14, 2013, http://mashable.com/2013/06/13/julian-sanchez-nsa/.48 Daniel J. Solove, “Five Myths About Privacy,”The Washington Post, June 13, 2013, www.wash

ingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-privacy/2013/06/13/098a5b5c-d370-11e2-b05f-3ea3f0e7bb5a_story.html.49 Press release, “New Poll Shows AmericansAnxious About Privacy,” National Journal/All-state, June 13, 2013, www.theheartlandvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/HeartlandMonitorPoll.pdf.50 LegalDictionary.com, http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fourth+Amendment.51 Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau, Privacyon the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping andEncryption (1998), p. 177.52 Ibid.53Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).54 Louis D. Brandeis, Dissenting Opinion, ibid.,www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0277_0438_ZD.html.55 John Meroney, “What Really HappenedBetween J. Edgar Hoover and MLK Jr.,” TheAtlantic, Nov. 11, 2011, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/11/what-really-happened-between-j-edgar-hoover-and-mlk-jr/248319/.56 Bruce Schneier, “Project Shamrock,”Schneier.com, Dec. 29, 2005, www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/project_shamroc.html.57 Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).58 United States v. United States District Court,407 U.S. 297 (1972).59 Cora Currier, Justin Elliott and TheodoricMeyer, “Mass Surveillance in America: ATimeline of Loosening Laws and Practices,”ProPublica, June 7, 2013, http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/surveillance-timeline.60 Michael Hirsh, “How America’s Top TechCompanies Created the Surveillance State,” Na-tional Journal, July 26, 2013, www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/how-america-s-top-tech-companies-created-the-surveillance-state-20130725.61 “Are They Allowed to Do That? A Break-down of Selected Government Surveillance Pro-grams,” Brennan Center for Justice, June 2013,www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/Government%20Surveillance%20Factsheet.pdf.62 The bill is the FISA Amendments Act of2008 (PL 100-261), http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:H.R.6304.63 Stephen Braun, et al., “Secret to PRISM Pro-gram: Even Bigger Data Seizure,” The Associat-ed Press, June 15, 2013, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/secret-prism-success-even-bigger-data-seizure.64 Leslie Cauley, “NSA Has Massive Database ofAmericans’ Phone Calls,” USA Today, May 11,2006, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm.


About the Author

Chuck McCutcheon is a freelance writer in Washington,D.C. He has been a reporter and editor for CongressionalQuarterly and Newhouse News Service and is co-author ofthe 2012 and 2014 editions of The Almanac of AmericanPolitics. He also has written books on climate change andnuclear waste.

65 Christopher Soghoian, “The Spies We Trust:Third-Party Service Providers and Law Enforce-ment Surveillance,” doctoral thesis, August 2012;http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/spies-we-trust.66 “Transparency Report: What It Takes forGovernments to Access Personal Information,”Google.com, Jan. 23, 2013, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/transparency-report-what-it-takes-for.html.67 Vindu Goel, “Governments, Led By U.S.,Seek More Data About Twitter Users,” The NewYork Times, July 31, 2013, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/governments-led-by-u-s-seek-more-data-about-twitter-users/?src=recg.68 Julie Bykowicz, “Lawmakers Begin Pushto Outlaw Surveillance Tactics,” The BaltimoreSun, March 3, 2009, www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bal-md.spying03mar03,0,759227.story.69 Vickie Chachere, “Biometrics Used to De-tect Criminals at Super Bowl,” ABCNews.com,Feb. 13, 2002, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98871&page=1.70 Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, “Docu-ments: NY Police Infiltrated Liberal Groups,”The Associated Press, March 23, 2012, www.ap.org/Content/AP-In-The-News/2012/Documents-NY-police-infiltrated-liberal-groups.71 Letter from Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udallto Attorney General Eric Holder, March 15, 2012,www.documentcloud.org/documents/325953-85512347-senators-ron-wyden-mark-udall-letter-to.html.72 Andrew Rosenthal, “Making Alberto GonzalesLook Good,” The New York Times, June 11, 2013,takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/making-alberto-gonzales-look-good/?_r=0.73 Michael Hirsh, “The Surveillance State: HowWe Got Here and What Congress Knew,” Na-tional Journal, June 7, 2013, www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/the-surveillance-state-how-we-got-here-and-what-congress-knew-20130607.74 James Bamford, “The NSA Is Building theCountry’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What YouSay),”Wired, March 15, 2012, www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/.75 Jay Stanley, “The Burdens of Total Surveil-lance,” ACLU.org, April 30, 2013, www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-national-security/burdens-total-surveillance.76 Jonathan Weisman, “Momentum BuildsAgainst NSA Surveillance,” The New York Times,July 29, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/us/politics/momentum-builds-against-nsa-surveillance.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp.

77 Ibid.78 Walter Pincus, “NSA Should Be Debatedon the Facts,” The Washington Post, July 30,2013, www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-should-be-debated-on-the-facts/2013/07/29/d57d251e-f63e-11e2-a2f1-a7acf9bd5d3a_story.html.79 Dianne Feinstein, “Make NSA Programs MoreTransparent,” The Washington Post, July 30, 2013,www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/senate-intelligence-committee-chair-reform-nsa-programs/2013/07/30/9b66d9f2-f93a-11e2-8e84-c56731a202fb_print.html.80 Sean Sullivan, “Rand Paul, Peter King ClashOver NSA Surveillance,” The Washington Post,Aug. 18, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/08/18/rand-paul-peter-king-clash-over-nsa-surveillance/.81 Eric Lipton, “Fears of National ID With Im-migration Bill,” The New York Times, June 15,2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/us/politics/as-immigration-bill-moves-forward-fear-of-an-id-system.html.82 Robert Litt, remarks before the Senate Ju-diciary Committee, July 31, 2013.83 Ryan Gallagher, “After Backlash, NSA Direc-tor Weighs Reform of Phone Records Database,”Slate.com, July 19, 2013, www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/07/19/nsa_chief_keith_alexander_weighs_reform_of_phone_records_database.html.84 Jameel Jaffer, remarks at Privacy and CivilLiberties Oversight Board hearing, op. cit.85 Office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, “Letter to Chair-

man of Privacy and Civil Liberties OversightBoard Highlighting Critical Concerns in Needof Board’s Immediate Review,” July 13, 2013,www.democraticleader.gov/Pelosi_Letter_to_Privacy_and_Civil_Liberties_Board_Chairman_July.86 Kate Zernike, “New Jersey Supreme CourtRestricts Police Searches of Phone Data,” TheNew York Times, July 18, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/nyregion/new-jersey-supreme-court-restricts-police-searches-of-phone-data.html?pagewanted=all.87 Somini Sengupta, “With Montana’s Lead,States May Demand Warrants for CellphoneData,” The New York Times, July 2, 2013, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/with-montanas-lead-states-may-demand-warrants-for-cellphone-data/.88 Mary Winter, “It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’sSuperdrone,” Trends and Transitions, Nation-al Conference of State Legislatures, June 2013,www.ncsl.org/Portals/1/Documents/magazine/articles/2013/SL_0613-Trends.pdf.89 The Associated Press, “Seattle City CouncilRestricts Video Surveillance,” KomoNews.com,March 19, 2013, www.komonews.com/news/local/Seattle-City-Council-restricts-video-surveillance-198966791.html.90 “Controversy Over The Scope And OversightOf Domestic Surveillance,” “The Diane RehmShow,” July 30, 2013, http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-07-30/controversy-over-scope-and-oversight-domestic-surveillance/transcript.91 For background, see Peter Katel, “3D Printing,”CQ Researcher, Dec. 7, 2012, pp. 1037-1060.


FOR MORE INFORMATIONBerkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, BakerHouse, 1587 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-495-7547; cyber.law.harvard.edu. Studies legal, technical and social issues surrounding the Internet,including privacy.

Center for Democracy and Technology, 1634 I St., N.W., Suite 100, Washington,DC 20006; 202-637-9800; www.cdt.org. Advocates for the preservation of privacy andother constitutional freedoms in the digital world.

The Constitution Project, 1200 18th St., N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, DC 20036;202-580-6920; www.constitutionproject.org. Explores public-policy issues relating toprivacy and surveillance.

Electronic Frontier Foundation, 454 Shotwell St., San Francisco, CA 94110; 415-436-9333; www.eff.org. Advocates for and litigates on technological issues involvingprivacy, free speech, freedom to innovate and consumer rights.

Electronic Privacy Information Center, 1718 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 200,Washington, DC 20009; 202-483-1140; www.epic.org. Provides information and ad-vocacy on privacy as a civil right.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

738 CQ Researcher

Selected Sources

BibliographyBooks

Baker, Stewart A., Skating On Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stop-ping Tomorrow’s Terrorism, Hoover Institution Press, 2010.A former National Security Agency and Homeland Security

Department official discusses the conflicts between privacyand national security.

Bamford, James, The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11to the Eavesdropping on America, Anchor Books, 2009.The author of several books on the National Security Agency

details its surveillance efforts since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Harris, Shane, The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Sur-veillance State, Penguin Books, 2011.A journalist profiles the leading figures behind the federal

government’s surveillance efforts since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Landau, Susan, Surveillance or Security? The Risks PosedBy New Wiretapping Technologies, MIT Press, 2011.A former Sun Microsystems engineer examines the diffi-

culties of maintaining digital communications security.

Solove, Daniel J., Nothing To Hide: The False Tradeoff Be-tween Privacy and Security, Yale University Press, 2011.An expert on privacy law provides an overview of the con-

flict between digital privacy and the need to combat threatsto national security.

Webster, William R., et al., Living In Surveillance Soci-eties: The State of Surveillance, Create Space Indepen-dent Publishing, 2013.A University of Stirling (Scotland) surveillance researcher

edits a collection of academic essays on global surveillancesubmitted for a 2012 conference in Spain.

Articles

“The National Security Agency: All Too Human,” TheEconomist, Aug. 16, 2013, www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/08/national-security-agency.The British newsweekly examines how the Obama ad-

ministration’s promises not to eavesdrop on Americans squarewith reality.

Luckerson, Victor, “PRISM by the Numbers: A Guide tothe Government’s Secret Internet Data-Mining Program,”Time, June 6, 2013, http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/06/prism-by-the-numbers-a-guide-to-the-governments-secret-internet-data-mining-program/#ixzz2cR9dGe5c.A journalist provides insights into the PRISM surveillance

program.

Richards, Neil M., “The Dangers of Surveillance,” Har-vard Law Review, 2013, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/

papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239412.A Washington University law professor discusses legal and

ethical principles that should guide surveillance law as acheck against what he considers to be the growing gov-ernment temptation to abuse its powers.

Stray, Jonathan, “FAQ: What You Need to Know Aboutthe NSA’s Surveillance Programs,” ProPublica.org, Aug. 5,2013, www.propublica.org/article/nsa-data-collection-faq.Using a question-and-answer format, the author provides a

detailed, up-to-date report on the full extent of the NationalSecurity Agency’s spying program.

Villasenor, John, “Observations from Above: UnmannedAircraft Systems and Privacy,” Harvard Journal of Law &Public Policy, 2013, www.questia.com/library/1G1-330143488/observations-from-above-unmanned-aircraft-systems.A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank looks

at the threat to civil liberties from drones.

Reports and Studies

“Recommendations for Fusion Centers: Preserving Privacyand Civil Liberties While Protecting Against Crime andTerrorism,” The Constitution Project, 2012, www.constitutionproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/fusioncenterreport.pdf.The think tank offers suggestions for improving training

and oversight at the nation’s 77 fusion centers, which dis-seminate information on terrorism and other threats to local,state and federal law enforcement officials.

Marshall, Curtis Erwin, and Edward C. Liu, “NSA Sur-veillance Leaks: Background and Issues for Congress,”Congressional Research Service, 2013, www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/R43134.pdf.The authors provide an overview of the Edward Snowden

leaks controversy, focusing on what information is being col-lected by the National Security Agency and the legal bases forthe collection and current oversight mechanisms.

Stevens, Gina, and Charles Doyle, “Privacy: An Overviewof Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and ElectronicEavesdropping,” Congressional Research Service, 2012,www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/98-326.pdf.The authors explain the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance

Act and other such laws.

Thompson, Richard M. II, “Drones In Domestic Sur-veillance Operations: Fourth Amendment Implicationsand Legislative Responses,” Congressional Research Ser-vice, 2012, www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42701.pdf.The author provides an overview of the privacy implica-

tions of drones, summarizing past legislative attempts to strikea balance between security and privacy.


Civil Rights

Gallagher, Ryan, “U.N. Free-Speech Envoy Blasts ‘ExtremelyDisturbing’ Government Mass Surveillance,” Slate, June 7,2013, www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/06/05/mass_surveillance_tools_u_n_report_slams_governments_use_of_monitoring_technologies.html.A U.N. report outlines privacy concerns about mass-surveillance

technologies.

Perez, Evan, “Documents shed light on U.S. surveillanceprograms,” CNN, Aug. 9, 2013, www.cnn.com/2013/08/09/politics/nsa-documents-scope.The Obama administration reveals that the National Secu-

rity Agency (NSA) monitors 1.6 percent of the world’s dailyInternet traffic.

Tracy, Thomas, “Lawsuit asks federal judge to end NYPD’ssurveillance of Muslims,” New York Daily News, June 18,2013, www.nydailynews.com/new-york/suit-calls-nypd-surveillance-muslims-article-1.1376051.Civil rights advocates call for an end to the NYPD’s surveil-

lance of Muslims, including having informants infiltrate mosques.

Congress

Alberta, Tim, “Ron Paul Protégé Leads Revolution OverSurveillance in Congress,” National Journal, July 25,2013, www.nationaljournal.com/politics/ron-paul-protege-leads-revolution-over-surveillance-in-congress-20130725.A libertarian representative from Michigan forges ties with

liberal Democrats to take on the Republican establishmentand the White House.

Dilania, Ken, and Michael A. Memoli, “House rejects lim-its on NSA collection of phone records,”Los Angeles Times,July 24, 2013, www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-congress-nsa-20130725,0,6938891.story.A bipartisan amendment to the annual defense appropri-

ations bill seeking to curtail the NSA’s collection of phonecall records failed narrowly.

Government Trust

“Few See Adequate Limits on NSA Surveillance Program,”Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, July26, 2013, www.people-press.org/2013/07/26/few-see-adequate-limits-on-nsa-surveillance-program/.While a majority of Americans believe the U.S. government

does not have adequate limits on its data collection pro-gram, 50 percent nonetheless still approve of it.

Savage, Charlie, “N.S.A. Often Broke Rules on Privacy,Audit Shows” The New York Times, Aug. 16, 2013, www.

nytimes.com/2013/08/16/us/nsa-often-broke-rules-on-privacy-audit-shows.html?hp&_r=2&.Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released an in-

ternal NSA audit that showed the agency violated privacyrules 2,776 times over a one-year period.

Timberg, Craig, and Cecilia Kang, “Tech companies urgeU.S. to ease secrecy rules on national security probes,”The Washington Post, June 11, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/tech-companies-urge-us-to-ease-secrecy-rules-on-national-security-probes/2013/06/11/01c489d2-d2bd-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story.html.Google, Facebook and other technology companies call for

greater transparency in government surveillance programs inan effort to stanch damage to their reputations.

Surveillance Technology

Priest, Dana, “Government Surveillance Spurs Americansto Fight Back,”The Washington Post, Aug. 14, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/government-surveillance-spurs-americans-to-fight-back/2013/08/14/edea430a-0522-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html.Designers are coming up with garments and gadgets that

help block electronic eavesdropping, evade facial recognitionand thwart drones.

Soldatov, Andrei, and Irina Borogan, “5 Russian-MadeSurveillance Technologies Used in the West,” Wired, May10, 2013, www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/05/russian-surveillance-technologies/.The United States and other Western countries are buying

Russian technology for data grabbing and voice and facialrecognition.

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