NSA considers retaining data for suits, expanding bulk surveillance
20 February 2014, 13:47
The US government may consider enlarging the National Security Agency's controversial collection of American citizens' phone records. Numerous lawsuits seeking to stop the surveillance program have been filed to the government officials. Lawyers believe federal-court rules on preserving relevant evidence require the NSA to stop routinely destroying older phone records. This may result in the government expanding the database beyond its original intent.
No final decision has been made to preserve the data yet. Even if a decision is made to retain the information, it would be held only for the purpose of litigation and will not be a subject of web search.
President Barack Obama has ordered to end the government the data storage and find another place to store and control the records (for instance, phone companies).
Critics of the program, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have sued the government, claiming the NSA's program violates the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.
Patrick Toomey, an ACLU lawyer, said no one in the government has raised with his group the possibility the lawsuits may actually expand the database they call unconstitutional. 'It's difficult to understand why the government would consider taking this position, when the relief we've requested in the lawsuit is a purge of our data,'' he said.
Cindy Cohn, legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which also is suing over the program, said the government should save the phone records, as long as they aren't still searchable under the program. 'If they're destroying evidence, that would be a crime,' she said.
Federal courts have stated that defendants in lawsuits cannot destroy relevant evidence that could be useful to the other side. Generally, those involved in lawsuits are expected to keep records, including electronic ones that could be reasonably considered relevant.
In conformity with the NSA program, the database holds the data having been stored for about five years. About twice a year, any call record more than five years old is purged from the system, officials said.
A particular concern, according to the US official, is that the older records may give certain parties legal standing to pursue their cases and that destroying the data could erase evidence.
If the records are retained, they may remain in government system for some time, because it could take years to resolve the spate of litigation over the NSA project.
It is interesting that a federal judge in New York has admitted the program is legal, while a Washington, D.C., judge has said quite the opposite.
Government retention of old records has long been a major concern for civil-liberties groups as well as for the US senators . The concerned public suppose the longer the government holds data about its citizens, the deeper investigators can dive into the private lives of individuals, making errors or discrimination a common thing.
Voice of Russia, the Wall Street Journal
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