Editorial: Snowden's actions hurt the debate

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Editorial: Snowden's actions hurt the debate

Opinion

USA Today, July 3

When Edward Snowden alerted the public last month to secret government programs that threaten to trample Americans’ privacy, he cast himself as a heroic, self-sacrificing whistle-blower. His leaks were selective, the recipients were responsible news organizations.

But since fleeing the U.S. for Hong Kong, getting stuck in a drab no man’s land in the Moscow airport and casting about the world for asylum, Snowden has looked more like a desperate man bent on revenge against his native country.

Facing charges of espionage, he has allied himself with the publish-anything WikiLeaks website, and he has spilled additional beans — about U.S. hacking into Chinese computers and spying on its European allies — that do more to embarrass the United States than to protect its citizens’ civil liberties.

Snowden’s self-destructive mystery tour does more than tarnish his image. It threatens to short-circuit the useful debate sparked by his original revelations. The government can use the flawed messenger to divert attention from his alarming message about two National Security Agency programs, one that targets the contents of foreign emails, at times sweeping in messages from Americans, and another that vacuums up domestic phone records by the billions.

Of the two programs, the compilation of phone “metadata” is the more troubling and subject to abuse. It warrants tough questions, closer scrutiny and new legal limits. But ever since its disclosure, the Obama administration has underplayed the program's reach by focusing on what it doesn’t do — listen in on calls — and overplayed its effectiveness.

One prime example: The administration says it needs everyone’s phone records. But the NSA “queried” the data fewer than 300 times last year.

Top officials testified at a House intelligence hearing June 18 that before each query, the government needs “reasonable articulable suspicion” that the number being checked has a connection to a terrorist organization. Because this is all the government needs to subpoena records from a phone company, why not use that far less intrusive method?

NSA Director Keith Alexander told the hearing his agency is “going to look at that,” but added that the “concern is speed in crisis.” He didn’t elaborate. Nor did anyone from the congenial panel press him.

Opposing view: Activities based on law

In its report, the 9/11 Commission criticized the intelligence community because it was unable to link terrorist organizers overseas with their operatives already positioned in the United States. The telephone metadata collection program that was leaked in early June was established to help fill that gap.

Under this program, authorized by a court order pursuant to Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, the government receives information about telephone calls — not the content of any call, not the identity of any party, and not location information — and is authorized to query that information under carefully controlled circumstances to help discover links between terrorists and persons in the U.S.
The program relies on collection of this data in bulk, rather than individual subpoenas to telephone companies, for several reasons:

First, telecommunications providers are not required to keep these records. Planning for terrorist activity may have been going on for several years, and we can’t subpoena a record that doesn’t exist.

Second, detecting planning is often like peeling an onion; each layer of discovery can provide a link to another. The government could be in a race against time to detect and prevent an attack, and successive rounds of subpoenas could result in potentially critical delays.

As we engage in a national dialogue about how to balance government transparency with the need for secrecy in our counterterrorism and intelligence efforts, every member of the intelligence community remains focused on providing the necessary intelligence to ensure the safety and security of Americans and our allies across the globe, within the framework established by the law.


Robert Litt is general counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence.