212 lines
9.0 KiB
Markdown
212 lines
9.0 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2013-06-18T16:22:48.000Z'
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title: E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress (2009)
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url: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/us/17nsa.html?pagewanted=all
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author: uvdiv
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points: 49
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story_text: ''
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 10
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1371572568
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_uvdiv
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- story_5900196
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objectID: '5900196'
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year: 2009
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---
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In an interview, Mr. Holt disputed assertions by Justice Department and
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national security officials that the overcollection was inadvertent.
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“Some actions are so flagrant that they can’t be accidental,” Mr. Holt
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said.
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Other Congressional officials raised similar concerns but would not
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agree to be quoted for the record.
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Mr. Holt added that few lawmakers could challenge the agency’s
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statements because so few understood the technical complexities of its
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surveillance operations. “The people making the policy,” he said, “don’t
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understand the technicalities.”
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The inquiries and analyst’s account underscore how e-mail messages, more
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so than telephone calls, have proved to be a particularly vexing problem
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for the agency because of technological difficulties in distinguishing
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between e-mail messages by foreigners and by Americans. A new law
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enacted by Congress last year gave the N.S.A. greater legal leeway to
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collect the private communications of Americans so long as it was done
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only as the incidental byproduct of investigating individuals
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“reasonably believed” to be overseas.
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But after closed-door hearings by three Congressional panels, some
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lawmakers are asking what the tolerable limits are for such incidental
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collection and whether the privacy of Americans is being adequately
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protected.
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“For the Hill, the issue is a sense of scale, about how much domestic
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e-mail collection is acceptable,” a former intelligence official said,
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speaking on condition of anonymity because N.S.A. operations are
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classified. “It’s a question of how many mistakes they can allow.”
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While the extent of Congressional concerns about the N.S.A. has not been
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shared publicly, such concerns are among national security issues that
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the Obama administration has inherited from the Bush administration,
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including the use of brutal interrogation tactics, the fate of the
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prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and whether to block the release of
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photographs and documents that show abuse of detainees.
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Advertisement
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[Continue reading the main story](#story-continues-4)
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In each case, the administration has had to navigate the politics of
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continuing an aggressive intelligence operation while placating
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supporters who want an end to what they see as flagrant abuses of the
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Bush era.
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The N.S.A. declined to comment for this article. Wendy Morigi, a
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spokeswoman for Dennis C. Blair, the national intelligence director,
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said that because of the complex nature of surveillance and the need to
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adhere to the rules of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the
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secret panel that oversees surveillance operation, and “other relevant
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laws and procedures, technical or inadvertent errors can occur.”
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“When such errors are identified,” Ms. Morigi said, “they are reported
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to the appropriate officials, and corrective measures are taken.”
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Photo
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In April, the Obama administration said it had taken comprehensive steps
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to bring the security agency into compliance with the law after a
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periodic review turned up problems with “overcollection” of domestic
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communications. The Justice Department also said it had installed new
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safeguards.
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Under the surveillance program, before the N.S.A. can target and monitor
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the e-mail messages or telephone calls of Americans suspected of having
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links to international terrorism, it must get permission from the
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Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Supporters of the agency say
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that in using computers to sweep up millions of electronic messages, it
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is unavoidable that some innocent discussions of Americans will be
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examined. Intelligence operators are supposed to filter those out, but
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critics say the agency is not rigorous enough in doing so.
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The N.S.A. is believed to have gone beyond legal boundaries designed to
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protect Americans in about 8 to 10 separate court orders issued by the
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Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, according to three intelligence
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officials who spoke anonymously because disclosing such information is
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illegal. Because each court order could single out hundreds or even
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thousands of phone numbers or e-mail addresses, the number of individual
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communications that were improperly collected could number in the
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millions, officials said. (It is not clear what portion of total court
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orders or communications that would represent.)
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“Say you get an order to monitor a block of 1,000 e-mail addresses at a
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big corporation, and instead of just monitoring those, the N.S.A. also
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monitors another block of 1,000 e-mail addresses at that corporation,”
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one senior intelligence official said. “That is the kind of problem they
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had.”
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Overcollection on that scale could lead to a significant number of
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privacy invasions of American citizens, officials acknowledge, setting
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off the concerns among lawmakers and on the secret FISA court.
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“The court was not happy” when it learned of the overcollection, said an
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administration official involved in the matter.
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Advertisement
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[Continue reading the main story](#story-continues-5)
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Defenders of the agency say it faces daunting obstacles in trying to
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avoid the improper gathering or reading of Americans’ e-mail as part of
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counterterrorism efforts aimed at foreigners.
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Several former intelligence officials said that e-mail traffic from all
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over the world often flows through Internet service providers based in
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the United States. And when the N.S.A. monitors a foreign e-mail
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address, it has no idea when the person using that address will send
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messages to someone inside the United States, the officials said.
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The difficulty of distinguishing between e-mail messages involving
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foreigners from those involving Americans was “one of the main things
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that drove” the Bush administration to push for a more flexible law in
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2008, said Kenneth L. Wainstein, the homeland security adviser under
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President George W. Bush. That measure, which also resolved the long
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controversy over N.S.A.’s program of wiretapping without warrants by
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offering immunity to telecommunications companies, tacitly acknowledged
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that some amount of Americans’ e-mail would inevitably be captured by
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the N.S.A.
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But even before that, the agency appears to have tolerated significant
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collection and examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants,
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according to the former analyst, who spoke only on condition of
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anonymity.
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He said he and other analysts were trained to use a secret database,
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code-named Pinwale, in 2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail
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messages. He said Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes
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of e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within
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certain limits — no more than 30 percent of any database search, he
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recalled being told — and Americans were not explicitly singled out in
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the searches.
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The former analyst added that his instructors had warned against
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committing any abuses, telling his class that another analyst had been
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investigated because he had improperly accessed the personal e-mail of
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former President Bill Clinton.
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Other intelligence officials confirmed the existence of the Pinwale
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e-mail database, but declined to provide further details.
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The recent concerns about N.S.A.’s domestic e-mail collection follow
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years of unresolved legal and operational concerns within the government
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over the issue. Current and former officials now say that the tracing of
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vast amounts of American e-mail traffic was at the heart of a crisis in
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2004 at the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft, then the attorney
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general, as top Justice Department aides staged a near revolt over what
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they viewed as possibly illegal aspects of the N.S.A.’s surveillance
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operations.
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James Comey, then the deputy attorney general, and his aides were
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concerned about the collection of “meta-data” of American e-mail
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messages, which show broad patterns of e-mail traffic by identifying who
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is e-mailing whom, current and former officials say. Lawyers at the
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Justice Department believed that the tracing of e-mail messages appeared
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to violate federal law.
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Advertisement
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[Continue reading the main story](#story-continues-6)
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“The controversy was mostly about that issue,” said a former
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administration official involved in the dispute.
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[Continue reading the main story](#whats-next)
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