Published time: October 02, 2013 20:56
Reuters / Zoran Milich
The director of the National Security Agency admitted this week that the NSA tested a program that collected cellphone location data from American citizens starting in 2010, but suspended it shortly after.
Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of both the NSA and the United
States Cyber Command, told lawmakers in Washington early
Wednesday that the secretive pilot program was taken offline in
2011, but that the intelligence community may someday in the
future make plans to routinely collect location data about US
citizens.
Alexander briefly discussed the program during a Senate hearing
on the Hill early Wednesday that focused on the data provided to
the government through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,
or FISA, including programs that were exposed earlier this year
by unauthorized disclosures attributed to
contractor-turned-leaker Edward Snowden.
Only days earlier, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) asked Alexander
during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing if the NSA was
collecting location data on American citizens.
“I’m asking, has the NSA ever collected, or ever made any
plans to collect, American cell site information?”
Wyden asked last Thursday.
The NSA, Alexander responded at the time, “is not receiving
cell-site location data and has no current plans to do so.”
During this Wednesday’s hearing, Alexander explained that,
“In 2010 and 2011, NSA received samples in order to
test the ability of its systems to handle the data format, but
that data was not used for any other purpose and was never
available for intelligence analysis purposes.”
According to a written copy of the statement obtained by The New
York Times before Wednesday’s hearing, Alexander said that
location information is not being collected by the NSA under
Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Alexander did not discuss if any
other laws are being implemented to otherwise allow for the
collection and analysis of location data.
Moments after Alexander revealed the pilot program before the
Senate committee, he said that the NSA may someday want to seek
approval from Washington to revive that initiative as part of a
fully functioning intelligence gathering operation.
“I would just say that this may be something that is a future
requirement for the country, but it is not right now,”
Alexander said.
Alexander’s statement regarding the new defunct program was
expected, and obtained by The New York Times moments before
Wednesday’s hearing was underway. Times reporter Charlie Savage
wrote that morning that information about the pilot project was
only recently declassified by Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper, and that the draft answer obtained by the paper
and later read aloud by Alexander was prepared in case he was
asked about the topic.
Still unsatisfied by the intelligence community’s explanation
about the collection of cellphone location data, Sen. Wyden
supplied the Times with a response suggesting that the truth
behind the NSA’s activities isn’t being fully acknowledged by the
intelligence community.
“After years of stonewalling on whether the government has
ever tracked or planned to track the location of law-abiding
Americans through their cellphones, once again, the intelligence
leadership has decided to leave most of the real story secret —
even when the truth would not compromise national security,”
Wyden said.
In March, Wyden asked Clapper to say if the NSA was collecting
personal information on millions of Americans. The intelligence
director dismissed that allegation, then later apologized to the Senate for offering a “clearly
erroneous” response.
“Time and time again, the American people were told one thing
about domestic surveillance in public forums, while government
agencies did something else in private,” Wyden told the
Senate Intelligence Committee panel of witnesses last week, which
included Alexander, Clapper, and Deputy Attorney General James
Cole.
During last week’s meeting, Wyden said he “will continue to
explore that because I believe this is something the American
people have a right to know whether the NSA has ever collected or
made plans to collect cell-site information.”
Copyright: RT