Pulling the plug on the NSA’s metadata collection -- By David Medine and Patricia Wald, The Washington Times

Review of program’s key section reveals disparity between authorization, operation 

In the months since Edward Snowden's unauthorized release of information about National Security Agency (NSA) programs involving collection of data on Americans at home and foreigners abroad, there has been a long overdue debate about the legality, as well as the need and desirability, of these programs.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent, bipartisan agency created by Congress and reporting to both the president and Congress, as well as to the public, just completed a seven-month extensive review of the most controversial of the programs, the Section 215 counterterrorism program of the Patriot Act.

Under Section 215, the NSA may collect records on calls made by virtually all Americans, accessible for three-tiered queries by NSA analysts based upon a determination that a particular number may be affiliated with terrorism.

The dialing and receiving numbers, the time and duration of calls made by Americans (though not the content), are amassed and retained for up to five years, even though the vast majority have no connection to terrorism.

The revelation of the Section 215 program has provoked intense debate about whether it is a relatively harmless invasion of Americans' privacy and civil rights necessary to protect their security. Heated debates have also arisen about the value and necessity of collecting this kind of bulk data on all Americans.
It was in this vortex that the oversight board conducted its inquiry, at the behest of 13 members of Congress and President Obama, to provide an independent look at the legality, value, and privacy and civil liberties implications of the program.

We examined the history and operation of the Section 215 program, its statutory foundations and the constitutional issues it raises. Our analysis of the program's statutory basis — the most detailed on record to date — led us to conclude that a series of fundamental disparities between the operation of the program and the language in Section 215 makes reconciliation of the two impossible under traditional rules of statutory construction.

(Click link below to read more)
READ MORE Sphere: Related Content