News World news NSA Edward Snowden, a year on: reformers frustrated as NSA preserves its power A year ago, Edward Snowden exposed the NSAs widespread surveillance practices. Privacy advocates demanded a change in the law – but today, the agencys powers remain largely intact • Trevor Timm: four ways Edward Snowden changed the world Share 683 inShare 31 Email Spencer Ackerman Spencer Ackerman in Washington theguardian, Thursday 5 June 2014 14.01 BST Jump to comments (146) Edward Snowden, NSA surveillance. Senior leaders at the agency say that Edward Snowden thrust them into a new era. Photograph: Itar-Tass/Barcroft Media For two weeks in May, it looked as though privacy advocates had scored a tenuous victory against the widespread surveillance practices exposed by Edward Snowden a year ago. Then came a resurgent intelligence community, armed with pens, and dry, legislative language. During several protracted sessions in secure rooms in the Capitol, intelligence veterans, often backed by the congressional leadership, sparred with House aides to abridge privacy and transparency provisions contained in the first bill rolling back National Security Agency spying powers in more than three decades. The revisions took place in secret after two congressional committees had passed the bill. The NSA and its allies took creative advantage of a twilight legislative period permitting technical or cosmetic language changes. The episode shows the lengths to which the architects and advocates of bulk surveillance have gone to preserve their authorities in the time since the Guardian, 12 months ago today, began disclosing the scope of NSA data collection. That resistance to change, aided by the power and trust enjoyed by the NSA on Capitol Hill, helps explain why most NSA powers remain intact a year after the largest leak in the agencys history. This is not how American democracy is supposed to work, said congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who had supported the bill but ultimately voted against it. Senior leaders at the agency say that Snowden thrust them into a new era. The NSA, adept at cultivating a low profile, is now globally infamous – so much so that even Snowden, in his recent NBC interview, cautioned against writing the agency off as a voracious privacy-killing monstrosity. James Clapper, the director of US national intelligence, said the intelligence agencies need to grant a greater degree of transparency or risk losing public confidence permanently. But exactly one year on, the NSA’s greatest wound so far has been its PR difficulties. The agency, under public pressure, has divested itself of exactly one activity, the bulk collection of US phone data. Yet while the NSA will not itself continue to gather the data directly, the major post-Snowden legislative fix grants the agency wide berth in accessing and searching large volumes of phone records, and even wider latitude in collecting other kinds of data. There are no other mandated reforms. President Obama in January added restrictions on the dissemination of non-Americans personal information, but that has not been codified in law. The coalition of large internet firms demanding greater safeguards around their customers’ email, browsing and search histories have received nothing from the government for their effort. A recent move to block the NSA from undermining commercial encryption and amassing a library of software vulnerabilities never received a legislative hearing. (Obama, in defiance of a government privacy board, permits the NSA to exploit some software flaws for national security purposes.) Even Clapper’s transparency call is questionable after the director recently clamped down on intelligence officials’ ability to speak to the press without the approval of their public-affairs shops, even when not discussing classified material. Some NSA critics look to the courts for a fuller tally of their victories in the wake of the Snowden disclosures. Judges have begun to permit defendants to see evidence gathered against them that had its origins in NSA email or call intercepts, which could disrupt prosecutions or invalidate convictions. At least one such defendant, in Colorado, is seeking the exclusion of such evidence, arguing that its use in court is illegal. Still other cases challenging the surveillance efforts have gotten beyond the government’s longtime insistence that accusers cannot prove they were spied upon, as the Snowden trove demonstrated a dragnet that presumptively touched every American’s phone records. This week, an Idaho federal judge implored the supreme court to settle the question of the bulk surveillances constitutionality. The litigation now is about the merits. It’s about the lawfulness of the surveillance program, said Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director. There have also been significant commercial changes brought by companies that fear the revelations imperiling their businesses. Googles Gmail service broadened its use of encryption and the company will soon present end-to-end encryption for its Chrome browser. After the Washington Post revealed that the NSA intercepts data transiting between Google and Yahoo storage centers, Google expanded encryption for Gmail data flowing across the internet and Yahoo implemented default email encryption. But perhaps the bitterest disappointment has been the diminished ambitions for surveillance reform contained in the USA Freedom Act. That, Jaffer said, was a very frustrating process for us. California congressman Zoe Lofgren California congresswoman Zoe Lofgren: This is not how American democracy is supposed to work. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP
Posted on: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 13:24:48 +0000
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