WASHINGTON — In a heated confrontation over domestic spying, members of Congress said Wednesday that they never intended to allow the National Security Agency to build a database of every phone call in America. And they threatened to curtail the government’s surveillance authority. Top Obama administration officials countered that the once-secret program was legal and necessary to keep America safe. And they left open the possibility that they could build similar databases of people’s credit card transactions, hotel records and Internet searches. The clash on Capitol Hill undercut President Barack Obama’s assurances that Congress had fully understood the dramatic expansion of government power it authorized repeatedly over the past decade. The House Judiciary Committee hearing also represented perhaps the most public, substantive congressional debate on surveillance powers since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Previous debates have been largely theoretical and legalistic, with officials in the Bush and Obama administrations keeping the details hidden behind the cloak of classified information. That changed last month when former government contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents to the Guardian newspaper in Britain revealing that the NSA collects every American’s phone records, knowing that the overwhelming majority of people have no ties to terrorism. Civil rights groups have warned for years that the government would use the USA Patriot Act to conduct such wholesale data collection. The government denied it. The Obama administration says it needs a library of everyone’s phone records so that when it finds a terrorist suspect, it can search its archives for the suspect’s calling habits. The administration says the database was authorized under a provision in the Patriot Act that Congress hurriedly passed after 9/11 and reauthorized in 2005 and 2010. The sponsor of that bill, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said Wednesday that Congress meant only to allow seizures directly relevant to national security investigations. No one expected the government to obtain every phone record and store them in a huge database to search later. As Deputy Attorney General James Cole explained why that was necessary, Sensenbrenner cut him off and reminded him that his surveillance authority expires in 2015. “And unless you realize you’ve got a problem,” Sensenbrenner said, “that is not going to be renewed.” The government says it stores everybody’s phone records for five years. Cole explained that because the phone companies don’t keep records that long, the NSA had to build its own database. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, asked why the government didn’t simply ask the phone companies to keep their data longer. That way, the government could ask for specific information, rather than collecting information on millions of innocent people. NSA Deputy Director John Inglis said it would be challenging, but the government was looking into it. Obama has said he welcomes the debate over surveillance. But his administration never wanted the debate to be quite so specific. That was obvious when Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., asked Robert Litt, general counsel in the Office of Director of National Intelligence, whether he really believed the government could keep such a vast surveillance program a secret forever. “Well,” Litt replied, “we tried.” Filibuster fight ends: The Senate voted Wednesday to end a filibuster against President Barack Obama’s choice to head the Labor Department. By 60-40, senators rejected Republican objections and voted to halt delaying tactics aimed at killing Thomas Perez’s nomination to become labor secretary. In the deal, top Republicans agreed to end delays against seven stalled Obama nominations and Democrats promised to drop efforts to change Senate rules to limit filibusters.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Jul 2013 17:54:51 +0000
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