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Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

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Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Daniel Ellsberg
Author of
KQED 07/17/2013
Ellsberg: I would like to see Russell Tice, William Binney, Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe testify before congress under oath as to their knowledge that they these programs are unconstitutional and criminal, which is why 2 of them resigned from the NSA. They have asked to testify and have been ignored by Congress. That is exactly the debate that Edward Snowden wanted to have. And it should take place in a new investigation in Congress, not in the intelligence committees which have been totally co-opted. And obviously not involving the FISA court, which is essentially a joke for how many hundreds of pages it’s put out and it’s thousands and thousands of acceptance, it's clearly a rubber-stamp court we need to change that.
Robert Litt
General Cousel, Office of Director of National Intelligence
CSPAN2 07/19/2013
Litt: Electronic surveillance under FISA's Title 1 implicates the well recognize privacy interests in the context of communication. And is subject to corresponding protection for privacy interest in terms of the requirement that it be narrowly targeted, and have a substantial factual basis approved by the court, and in terms of limitations on the use of that information.
Robert Litt
General Cousel, Office of Director of National Intelligence
CSPAN2 07/19/2013
Litt: referred to as section 215. It allows us to apply to the FISA Court for an order requiring production of documents or other tangible things when they are relevant to an authorized national security investigation. Records can be obtained only if they are the type of records that could be obtained pursuant to a grand jury subpoena or other court process. In other words, where there is no statutory or other protection that would prevent the use of a grand jury subpoena to obtain them. In some respects this process is more restrictive than a grand jury subpoena.
Robert Litt
General Cousel, Office of Director of National Intelligence
CSPAN2 07/19/2013
Litt: the FISA business records provision has been in the news recently because of one particular use of that provision. The FISA court has repeatedly approved orders directing several telecommunications companies to produce certain categories of telephone metadata such as the number making the calls, the number being called and the time, date and duration of the call. It’s important to emphasize as we do every time we talk about this, that under this program we do not get the contents of any conversation. We do not get the identity of any party to the conversation
Robert Litt
General Cousel, Office of Director of National Intelligence
CSPAN2 07/19/2013
Litt: and we do not get any cell site or GPS locational information. This limited scope of what we collect has important legal consequences. As I mentioned earlier, the Supreme Court has held that if you voluntarily provided this kind of information to third parties you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in that information. All of the metadata we get under this program is information that the telecommunication companies
Robert Litt
General Cousel, Office of Director of National Intelligence
CSPAN2 07/19/2013
Litt continued: obtain and keep for their own business purposes. As a result the government can get this information without a warrant consistent with the Fourth Amendment. Non-the less, I recognize there is a difference between getting metadata about one telephone number and getting it in bulk. From a legal point of view, Section 215 only allows us to get records if they are relevant to a national security investigation; and from a privacy perspective people worry that for example the government could apply data mining techniques to a bulk data set and learn new personal facts about them even when the
Robert Litt
General Cousel, Office of Director of National Intelligence
CSPAN2 07/19/2013
Litt continued: underlying set of records is not subject to reasonable expectation of privacy for Fourth Amendment purposes. I do want to make clear however, that as I will explain in a minute, we are not allowed to do that sort of analysis of these records and we don't do it. On the other hand this information is clearly useful from an intelligence perspective. It can help identify links between terrorists overseas and their potential confederates in the United States.
Robert Litt
General Cousel, Office of Director of National Intelligence
CSPAN2 07/19/2013
Litt: Second, the standard of relevance required by the statute is not a standard we think of in a civil or criminal trial under the rules of evidence. The courts have recognized that in other context the term relevance can import an extremely broad standard. For example in the grand jury context the Supreme Court held a grand jury subpoena is proper unless quote – “there is no reasonable possibility that the category of materials the government seeks will produce information relevant to the general
Robert Litt
General Cousel, Office of Director of National Intelligence
CSPAN2 07/19/2013
Litt continued: subject of the grand jury’s investigation. And in civil discovery, Again the Supreme Court has said that relevance is, quote, “construed broadly to encompass any matter that bears on or reasonably could lead to other matters that could bear on any issue that is or may be in the case” end quote. So in each of these contexts the meaning of relevance is sufficiently broad to allow subpoenas or requests for information that encompass large volumes of information in order to locate within those records a smaller
Robert Litt
General Cousel, Office of Director of National Intelligence
CSPAN2 07/19/2013
Litt continued: subset of material that will be directly pertinent to or actually used in furtherance of the investigation or the case. In other words, the request is not limited to obtaining only those records that he or she can specifically identified as potentially incriminating or pertinent to establishing liability because in order to identify such records it’s often necessary to collect a much broader set of records that might potentially bear fruit by leading
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