[4853] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Congress, NSA butt heads over Echelon
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Putrefied Cow)
Mon Jun 7 14:36:08 1999
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 1999 13:00:14 +0300 (EEST)
From: Putrefied Cow <waste@zor.hut.fi>
To: cryptography@c2.net
Congress, NSA butt heads over Echelon
BY DANIEL VERTON (dan_verton@fcw.com)
Congress has squared off with the National Security Agency over a
top-secret U.S. global electronic surveillance program, requesting top
intelligence officials to report on the legal standards used to prevent
privacy abuses against U.S. citizens.
According to an amendment to the fiscal 2000 Intelligence Authorization
Act proposed last month by Sen. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), the director of
Central Intelligence, the director of NSA and the attorney general must
submit a report within 60 days of the bill becoming law that outlines
the legal standards being employed to safeguard the privacy of American
citizens against Project Echelon.
Echelon is NSA's Cold War-vintage global spying system, which consists
of a worldwide network of clandestine listening posts capable of
intercepting electronic communications such as e-mail, telephone
conversations, faxes, satellite transmissions, microwave links and
fiber-optic communications traffic. However, the European Union last
year raised concerns that the system may be regularly violating the
privacy of law-abiding citizens [FCW, Nov. 17, 1998].
However, NSA, the supersecret spy agency known best for its worldwide
eavesdropping capabilities, for the first time in the history of the
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence refused to hand over
documents on the Echelon program, claiming attorney/client privilege.
Congress is "concerned about the privacy rights of American citizens and
whether or not there are constitutional safeguards being circumvented by
the manner in which the intelligence agencies are intercepting and/or
receiving international communications...from foreign nations that would
otherwise be prohibited by...the limitations on the collection of
domestic intelligence," Barr said. "This very straightforward
amendment...will help guarantee the privacy rights of American citizens
[and] will protect the oversight responsibilities of the Congress which
are now under assault" by the intelligence community.
Calling NSA's argument of attorney/client privilege "unpersuasive and
dubious," committee chairman Rep. Peter J. Goss (R-Fla.) said the
ability of the intelligence community to deny access to documents on
intelligence programs could "seriously hobble the legislative oversight
process" provided for by the Constitution and would "result in the
envelopment of the executive branch in a cloak of secrecy."
Copyright 1999 FCW Government Technology Group
