<\/p>\n
Ellen Nakashima<\/strong> The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency\u2019s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans\u2019 communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.<\/p>\n In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years \u2013 and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.<\/p>\n What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban \u2013 at the government\u2019s request \u2013 on those kinds of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.<\/p>\n Together the permission to search and to keep data longer expanded the NSA\u2019s authority in significant ways without public debate or any specific authority from Congress. The administration\u2019s assurances rely on legalistic definitions of the term \u201ctarget\u201d that can be at odds with ordinary English usage. The enlarged authority is part of a fundamental shift in the government\u2019s approach to surveillance: collecting first, and protecting Americans\u2019 privacy later.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government says, \u2018We\u2019re not targeting U.S. persons,\u2019\u00a0\u201d said Gregory T. Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. \u201cBut then they never say, \u2018We turn around and deliberately search for Americans\u2019 records in what we took from the wire.\u2019 That, to me, is not so different from targeting Americans at the outset.\u201d<\/p>\n The court decision allowed the NSA \u201cto query the vast majority\u201d of its e-mail and phone call databases using the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of Americans and legal residents without a warrant, according to Bates\u2019s opinion.<\/p>\n The queries must be \u201creasonably likely to yield foreign intelligence information.\u201d And the results are subject to the NSA\u2019s privacy rules.<\/p>\n The court in 2008 imposed a wholesale ban on such searches at the government\u2019s request, said Alex Joel, civil liberties protection officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The government included this restriction \u201cto remain consistent with NSA policies and procedures that NSA applied to other authorized collection activities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But in 2011, to more rapidly and effectively identify relevant foreign intelligence communications, \u201cwe did ask the court\u201d to lift the ban,\u00a0ODNI general counsel Robert S. Litt<\/a>\u00a0said in an interview. \u201cWe wanted to be able to do it,\u201d he said, referring to the searching of Americans\u2019 communications without a warrant.<\/p>\n Joel gave hypothetical examples of why the authority was needed, such as when the NSA learns of a rapidly developing terrorist plot and suspects that a U.S. person may be a conspirator.\u00a0Searching for communications to, from or about that person can help assess that person\u2019s\u00a0involvement and whether he is in touch with terrorists who are surveillance targets, he said. Officials would not say how many searches have been conducted.<\/p>\n
\nWashington Post<\/a>
\nSeptember 7, 2013<\/p>\n