[R-G] Domestic spying quietly goes on

[Anthony Fenton]

Domestic spying quietly goes on
NSA faces new limits, but surveillance thrives
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.fisa07jul07,0,2783557.story
By Bradley Olson | Sun reporter
     July 7, 2008

With Congress on the verge of outlining new parameters for National  
Security Agency eavesdropping between suspicious foreigners and  
Americans, lawmakers are leaving largely untouched a host of  
government programs that critics say involves far more domestic  
surveillance than the wiretaps they sought to remedy.

These programs - most of them highly classified - are run by an  
alphabet soup of federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies.  
They sift, store and analyze the communications, spending habits and  
travel patterns of U.S. citizens, searching for suspicious activity.

The surveillance includes data-mining programs that allow the NSA and  
the FBI to sift through large databanks of e-mails, phone calls and  
other communications, not for selective information, but in search of  
suspicious patterns.

Other information, like routine bank transactions, is kept in  
databases similarly monitored by the Central Intelligence Agency.

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"There's virtually no branch of the U.S. government that isn't in some  
way involved in monitoring or surveillance," said Matthew Aid, an  
intelligence historian and fellow at the National Security Archives at  
The George Washington University. "We're operating in a brave new  
world."

Federal rules limit the ways some of the information can be used and  
shared among government agencies. Pending changes to the Foreign  
Intelligence Surveillance Act contain numerous provisions set up to  
safeguard the privacy of Americans. But there are few similar  
protections with other types of surveillance.

Under the FISA proposal, for example, a CIA transcript or NSA summary  
of an innocent social conversation between a foreign terrorist and his  
relative in the United States would not be shared with other  
intelligence analysts. Even if the conversation was later found to  
have investigative merit, the U.S. relative's name and other  
identifying information would either be redacted or revealed only  
under limited circumstances to select agencies.

The Bush administration argues that the privacy and civil liberties  
protections in place for surveillance not covered by the FISA rules  
are "unprecedented." In addition to the data-mining, use of financial  
transaction databases and satellite imagery, the surveillance includes  
monitoring the travel patterns of airline passengers.

Use of satellites by local law enforcement agencies, for instance, is  
supposed to go through a stringent approval protocol at the Department  
of Homeland Security's newly formed National Applications Office.

But critics say the safeguards don't always work. Some blunders in the  
use of such protections have become public. NewYorker writer Lawrence  
Wright wrote in January about one such experience. In 2002, while he  
was researching The Looming Tower, his Pulitzer Prize-winning book on  
al-Qaida, two members of an FBI terrorism task force arrived at his  
home. Why, they asked, had his daughter been speaking with someone in  
the United Kingdom who was in touch with suspected al-Qaida operatives?

It wasn't his daughter, he told them flatly. Wright himself had made  
the calls. And the person he contacted was a British civil rights  
lawyer who had asked him not to speak with her clients, some of whom  
are relatives of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant.

"My daughter is no terrorist - she went to high school with the Bush  
twins," Wright said. "I was taken aback. They were apparently  
monitoring my phones."

Wright said he was particularly surprised because he was aware of  
protections supposedly in place to conceal his name and other  
identifying information that would have been gathered during the  
creation of transcripts of the call.

Wright said he doubted the government would have been able to get a  
warrant for the information, and he said he didn't know how the FBI  
obtained his daughter's name, let alone got the impression that she  
was communicating with the British lawyer.

Critics say such stories recall 1960s and 1970s-era abuses - the CIA's  
involvement in political activities, and the FBI monitoring of peace  
groups and civil rights activists - that prompted Congress to pass far- 
reaching laws bringing foreign-intelligence gathering and any domestic  
surveillance under strict controls and judicial oversight.

Although the latest FISA proposal includes numerous provisions for a  
secret court to monitor and authorize surveillance, and for inspectors  
general to keep tabs on who's being monitored by various agencies,  
little oversight exists for surveillance programs that fall outside  
FISA scrutiny.

Congress has requested, and in many cases received, briefings on some  
of the programs. But its dissatisfaction with the amount of  
information provided by the administration has frequently resulted in  
holding back funding for programs.

The House Appropriations Committee took such a step this week, holding  
back funding for the National Applications Office's effort to use U.S.  
satellites for domestic purposes until August, when the Government  
Accountability Office will release a report about how the program will  
handle civil liberties and privacy concerns.

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said  
the department had repeatedly met with lawmakers and would comply with  
any review process. He called efforts to stall the funding "misguided"  
and a potential threat to public safety and security missions.

Even when Congress has received information, lawmakers say their  
questions or concerns are often addressed within the agency that is  
responsible for the surveillance, amounting to a practice of self- 
policing.

"You don't have to look far into history to know that when the  
government, any government, is given secret authorities, that those  
authorities are ultimately abused," said Mike German, a former FBI  
agent who is now policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties  
Union. "You don't even have to attribute bad motives to anyone. In an  
intelligence officer's zeal to protect the country, they often will  
overstep their bounds."

In part to assuage privacy concerns, the Department of Homeland  
Security has established a privacy czar to ensure that the  
technologies and programs initiated by the federal agency do not erode  
privacy laws or violate civil liberties. While many have lauded the  
creation of such a position, some believe it should be expanded to a  
Cabinet-level post in the executive branch, a step that some advocates  
say would send a powerful message in an age when digitized  
communications have ballooned and made safeguarding private  
information vastly more complicated.

"We should have what Canada has, which is a minister of privacy,  
someone looking out for the privacy issues of Americans," said James  
Bamford, an intelligence expert and author on two books about the  
history of the NSA. "We have armies of people out there trying to pick  
into everyone's private life, but we have nobody out there who's an  
advocate."

bradley.olson at baltsun.com