As the National Security Agency (NSA) winds down its bulk phone data surveillance program, the government well begin purging that data and cutting off access to it by the end of the year.
The NSA won’t be allowed to query the telephony metadata collection in the last five years after Nov. 29, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said in a statement Tuesday.
“NSA has determined that analytic access to that historical metadata collected under Section 215 (any data collected before November 29, 2015) will cease on November 29, 2015,” the ODNI wrote.
The agency’s metadata surveillance program — as permitted under the Patriot Act — was shut down and reformed in June with the passage of the USA Freedom Act. With that congressional action, the government retained its ability to survey phone records under tighter guidelines including having the records stored and operated by telecommunications companies. The government also approved a 180-day transition period that allows the agency to continue using the database and transition to the new system.
But it’s not all glory and the NSA’s promise comes with two catches: The agency can’t dump the data until it’s out of civil litigation (but it plans to do so “as soon as possible”), and moreover, technical personnel will be allowed to access the database for maintenance until the lawsuits conclude and to verify information collected under USA Freedom’s terms, according to Tuesday’s statement.
The intelligence director wrote:
Solely for data integrity purposes to verify the records produced under the new targeted production authorized by the USA Freedom Act, NSA will allow technical personnel to continue to have access to the historical metadata for an additional three months.
NSA remains under a continuing legal obligation to preserve its bulk 215 telephony metadata collection until civil litigation regarding the program is resolved, or the relevant courts relieve NSA of such obligations. The telephony metadata preserved solely because of preservation obligations in pending civil litigation will not be used or accessed for any other purpose, and, as soon as possible, NSA will destroy the Section 215 bulk telephony metadata upon expiration of its litigation preservation obligations.
Controversy surrounding the NSA’s bulk data collection program first revealed by the 2013 Edward Snowden document leaks has come to a head this year. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit determined the program wasn’t legally justified by the Patriot Act and Congress passing a bill that limited some of the agency’s spy powers. In June, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled in the agency’s favor, and against the aforementioned federal judge’s previous decision, by approving the surveillance program as a legal intelligence gathering method.
Privacy advocates celebrated a victory in the bipartisan USA Freedom Act as a legal salvo against domestic government surveillance. But surveillance concerns remain as the bill didn’t address other forms of surveillance such as internet data collection through tech companies in the PRISM program authorized under Sections 701 and 702 of the Patriot Act, and the broadly permissive Reagan Executive Order 12333.