PCLOB: NSA Phone Surveillance Program Cost $100M, Aided Only One Probe
NSA’s call detail records (CDR) program cost more than $100 million between 2015 and early 2019, and led to only one foreign intelligence investigation, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board reported Thursday. Later that day, the House Judiciary Committee postponed a markup on legislation that would end the USA Freedom Act Section 215 CDR program (see 2002250065).
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“It’s been very wasteful,” committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., told us. “It’s one of the things we have to address.” Asked why the markup was postponed, he said it “will be announced in due course.” Ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., blamed postponement on “stall tactics.“ He said that "critical counterterrorism provisions are hanging in the balance because Democrats chose to delay an already ill-timed markup.”
The CDR program “doesn’t sound very efficient,” Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., told us, raising general concerns about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and privacy implications. “I will not support a clean reauthorization. We’ve got to have more safeguards in this bill.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told us Tuesday his “understanding” is NSA won’t request funding for the CDR program in the upcoming budget (see 2002250065). Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said that seems likely. The agency, which didn’t comment, suspended collection of CDRs in early 2019, decommissioning the equipment used to gather information from providers.
Officials cited USA Freedom Act CDRs in 15 intelligence reports over the program’s four-year operation, PCLOB reported. The FBI received “unique information” from two of the 15 reports. The FBI vetted one individual before determining no further action was needed in one of those instances. The second report “provided unique information about a telephone number, previously known to US authorities, which led to the opening of a foreign intelligence investigation,” PCLOB reported.
“It is not easy for any government agency to acknowledge that a program was not successful, despite the resources and effort it consumed,” Chairman Adam Klein said in a statement. “Agencies should be encouraged to periodically reassess their collection activities and terminate them when they outlive their usefulness or when their costs outweigh their value.”
The report suggested applying the CDR program to different media in the tech sector might solve the underlying issues. Shifting the CDR program from the telecom sector to higher tech sector would likely increase the data quality issues, board member Ed Felten told us. The telecom industry is a more stable, more regulated industry than the tech sector, he said. The likelihood of errors increases with more data, he said, warning it could lead to gathering of data from more innocent internet users.
It would be very difficult for Attorney General William Barr and other officials to justify reauthorization, Felten said. Such justification would have to depend on hypotheticals that haven’t borne out in practice, he said.
“The inescapable conclusion is that the program was a $100 million waste,” board member Travis LeBlanc said in a statement. “It is the surveillance equivalent of the Bridge to Nowhere.”
The program was “expensive, plagued with data-integrity concerns, and produced minimal intelligence,” said board members Aditya Bamzai and Jane Nitze. “We have a hard time looking at this particular program as it actually operated and concluding much other than that the game is not worth the candle.” They didn’t rule out the possibility that a “well-designed metadata program, one not restricted by some of the USA Freedom Act’s statutory limitations” could succeed.
The program should remain shuttered, and Congress shouldn’t reauthorize, Felten and LeBlanc said. It produced minimal national security value while costing a disproportionate amount and intruding on civil liberties of millions of Americans, they said. Felten and LeBlanc disagreed with the report’s findings “that the same program with data from different media would solve the problems experienced” with the CDR program.
The reason for the markup postponement wasn’t immediately clear, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told us. “We need significant reform of the FISA process, which has to be meaningful in nature. The best approach is to mend it, not end it, in terms of the totality of the reforms.”
Mass surveillance is a threat to privacy, as well as an “ineffective tool” for fighting crime, so that’s why the markup is important, said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.