Obama administration wont reveal how many Americans emails the NSA has reviewed without warrantsTrevor Timm The question arose soon after Congress passed the FAA, which among other things sought to create immunity for telecoms that helped the NSA conduct warrantless wiretapping and gutted privacy protections for Americans communicating overseas. A New York Times investigation described how, under the FAA, a significant and systemic practice of overcollection of communications resulted in the NSAs intercepting millions of purely domestic emails and phone calls between Americans. In addition, documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU, although heavily redacted, revealed that violations [of the FAA and the Constitution] continued to occur on a regular basis through at least March 2010 the last month anyone has public data for. The FISA Amendments Act is currently up for renewal, and Sen. Wyden, along with Sen. Mark Udall, wants the NSA answer questions about these violations before Congress extends the law for five more years. We have concluded that section 702 [of the Act] currently contains a loophole that could be used to circumvent traditional warrant protections and search for the communications of a potentially large number of American citizens, the Senators alleged. Well, what about just a rough estimate? Last week, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community officially responded for himself and the NSA Inspector General: such an estimate was beyond the capacity of his [the NSA IGs] office and dedicating sufficient additional resources would likely impede the NSAs mission. Then, almost unbelievably, the NSA IG excused itself further from oversight by saying that an IG review of the sort suggested would itself violate the privacy of U.S. persons. Thats right. The government says that it would violate Americans privacy for the NSAs inspector general to estimate how many Americans privacy have been violated by the NSA. The loophole that Wyden is likely talking about appears to be so-called back door searches. As Wyden explains it, since communications are sucked up without an individual warrant under the FAA, there must be clear rules prohibiting the government from searching through these communications in an effort to find the phone calls or emails of a particular American, unless the government has obtained a warrant or emergency authorization permitting surveillance of that American. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) rejected an amendment stating that as well. SSCI chairman Dianne Feinstein insisted no such loophole existed, but still refused to support the amendment that would have cleared up any ambiguity. In response, Sen. Ron Wyden commendably put a hold on the FAAs reauthorization in the Senatea procedural maneuver that will at least temporarily keep the bill from going forward without debateciting the potential massive privacy violations that the government will not explain to the American public. Unfortunately, the House has so far refused to compel such information as well. Two weeks ago, the House Judiciary Committee passed the re-authorization of the FISA Amendments Act 23-11, yet voted down all amendments that would have forced the government to be more transparent about the communications it had collected. Rep. Jackson-Lees amendmentsimilar to Sen. Wydens requestfor an estimate on how many times Americans emails have been read without a warrant was rejected, despite testimony from ACLUs Jameel Jaffer laying out all the evidence that dragnet surveillance of Americans communcations was rampant. The Judiciary committee also rejected an amendment requiring the release of redacted FISA rulingswhich are all classifiedand a shorter re-authorization period. Yesterday, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) did the same thing, unanimously voting to extend the law for five years as wellagain, with no known changesand in secret. These bills both still need to be voted on by the full House and Senate before going to the Presidents desk, and without amendments adding robust oversight, transparency, and privacy protections, they should be voted down. Please call your member of Congress and tell them you strenously oppose the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act. Please visit Electronic Frontier Foundation to support internet freedom and privacy. You can share this information by voting on Reddit HERE linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 