AZCentral - NSA is Lying: Congress Must Hold it Accountable

Op-Ed

By Rep. David Schweikert

Every week, new revelations are exposing how the NSA and other intelligence agencies misled Congress and the American people about invasive data gathering that violates our fundamental principles of privacy.

Just last week, a D.C. Circuit Court judge ruled that the NSA's phone data-collection practices likely violate constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. The court proceedings provided a window into operations at the NSA that should give every citizen reason for concern and even more compelling reasons why Congress must work together to reign in the NSA's abuse of power.

At the heart of the issue is "metadata" collection. Current law allows the NSA to request phone records and analyze calling patterns of a person if a judge agrees there is reasonable cause to classify the individual as a suspected terrorist.

But it doesn't stop there. Not only can the NSA gather this information on the specific target's phone calls, but also on the callers whom the target has called or been called by -- and the people those people have called or been called by. This data can be retained and queried for years.

As the circuit court pointed out, if a terror suspect calls for pizza delivery, the pizza company's calling data could be (and is) collected by the NSA. If you call the same pizza company, your data is now fair game, too. In this way, millions of innocent citizens and their calling patterns are finding their way into the NSA database. Once those entries are part of the database, the NSA does not need to get permission to parse through the data in almost any manner it chooses.

The NSA has proven to be unreliable and deceitful stewards of such information. They have been caught repeatedly using the information illegally and lying about it.

Congress has an imperative to act. The House recently introduced several pieces of legislation that I've co-sponsored to curtail the NSA's assault on the Fourth Amendment. The USA Freedom Act (HR 3361) would end the mass collection of phone metadata and give relief to the Americans across the country by allowing companies to publicly disclose the aggregate number of requests made by NSA and the number of users impacted.

Further, this legislation would provide desperately needed transparency by requiring the attorney general to publicly disclose all Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court interpretations of the law. Simply put, the USA Freedom Act would end de facto secret laws, by requiring legal interoperations of the Patriot Act to be disclosed.

Two additional House proposals (HR 2399 and HR 2475) would put similar restrictions on the FBI.

The Senate is taking a different approach. Members there are working on a measure (S.1631) that would grant explicit authorization for metadata collection and put surveillance measures into law. As currently written, this measure, which passed the Senate Intelligence Committee, is a move in the wrong direction.

The intelligence community, Justice Department and President Obama have failed to justify the mass expansions of surveillance that have occurred since 2006. Congress has a responsibility to hold the administration accountable for violations of personal privacy rights.

Conducting information collection on innocent Americans is not a responsible move. It is not enough to make minor adjustments or institute reporting on agencies who by their very nature are masters at concealing information; we need substantial reforms, like those in the USA Freedom Act.

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