General Category > Politics/Government
Robb: Rubio is wrong on NSA metadata program
Free Vulcan:
http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/robertrobb/2015/12/08/robb-rubio-wrong-nsa-metadata-program/76999460/
Supporters of the metadata program conducted by the National Security Agency are trying to leverage the San Bernardino terrorist attack to revive it.
Since the program expired, the phone records of the attackers can only be searched for the last two years, rather than the previous five, they lament.
In the first place, this is misleading. The female terrorist only arrived in the country about a year and a half ago. So, there weren’t five years of her calls in the NSA’s metadata collection to begin with. Moreover, there are no restrictions on NSA data collection on foreigners on foreign land. So, whatever the NSA may have on her before she immigrated would still be fair game.
More importantly, however, the NSA metadata program was up and running until just four days before the attack. And it surfaced nothing about the two attackers. It was a bust.
As has been the case throughout the program’s existence. Two independent reviews, with access to classified material, concluded that the metadata program was not yielding terrorist leads that couldn’t be uncovered without it.
Under the program, the NSA swept up the telephone records of virtually every American and stored them on NSA computers. The records included, at a minimum, numbers called and the duration of the call.
This supposedly enabled the NSA to better find the proverbial needle in a haystack. The record indicates that all it really did was add more hay to the stack.
Marco Rubio, who wants to bring the program back, is using it in the presidential campaign against two of his rivals who oppose it, Rand Paul and particularly Ted Cruz, who has some momentum going in the race.
In making his case, Rubio is also being at least a bit disingenuous. In Rubio’s telling, those who voted in Congress to curtail the program were forgetting the lessons of 9/11.
But after 9/11, Congress never approved the NSA metadata program. It did expand the intelligence-gathering authority of the federal government. But only in pursuit of a lead originating in some way from terrorist activity.
The Bush administration hatched the metadata program, concocted a legal rationale for it, and sold that to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
When the program was later revealed, most in Congress who had voted for the original Patriot Act were surprised. That included one of its chief legislative architects, James Sensenbrenner.
In May, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that the NSA metadata program wasn’t authorized by the Patriot Act and was unlawful. Paul and Cruz were voting to restore the original meaning and intent of the Patriot Act, not to retreat from it.
And then there is the matter of the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause and a warrant before seizing personal papers and effects. The legal rationale for the NSA metadata program is that the records being seized don’t belong to the person, but to the telephone company.
In the modern world, however, virtually all our records are held by third parties. The doctor has our medical records. The bank has our financial records.
There is some legal precedent for the Rubio view. But the high court, in recent cases involving tracking devises and cell phones, has recognized that its old jurisprudence has some jarring results given modern technology and ways of living. And it has started restoring Fourth Amendment protections against searches and seizures.
In addition to not being authorized by the Patriot Act, lower courts were finding that the NSA metadata program violated the Fourth Amendment. And rightfully understood, it does.
The San Bernardino terrorist attack will properly shake the country. Hopes that the political flames can be lowered in discussing how best to protect the country against terrorist attacks are doomed to disappointment.
Yet there is a political consensus on intelligence gathering that was reflected in the congressional vote Rubio is criticizing. We want the government to have robust intelligence-gathering capabilities. But to have those capabilities triggered and used in pursuit of specific leads about terrorism. No general dragnets of the records of law-abiding citizens are permitted or required.
Contrary to Rubio and others, the San Bernardino attack doesn’t indicate that this consensus is inadequate to protect us. If anything, it’s additional evidence that the dragnet approach doesn’t produce additional increments of security.
truth_seeker:
I am entirely with Cruz on Rubio this. It is an all out war, and to set aside potentially useful tools is naïve, foolish, and possibly deadly.
Corrected.
sinkspur:
--- Quote from: truth_seeker on December 09, 2015, 06:59:32 pm ---I am entirely with Cruz on this. It is an all out war, and to set aside potentially useful tools is naïve, foolish, and possibly deadly.
--- End quote ---
You misunderstand. Cruz and Rand Paul are the two main sponsors LIMITING the gathering of Metadata. Rubio and the other candidates are not so sensitive to libertarian anxieties.
libertybele:
--- Quote from: truth_seeker on December 09, 2015, 06:59:32 pm ---I am entirely with Cruz on this. It is an all out war, and to set aside potentially useful tools is naïve, foolish, and possibly deadly.
--- End quote ---
I stand with Cruz as well and it will become apparent that Rubio is strongly labeling himself as GOPe -- that too will backfire.
Free Vulcan:
--- Quote from: sinkspur on December 09, 2015, 07:02:56 pm ---You misunderstand. Cruz and Rand Paul are the two main sponsors LIMITING the gathering of Metadata. Rubio and the other candidates are not so sensitive to libertarian anxieties.
--- End quote ---
It just sounds to me like that worthless scumbag Rubio just wants to collect people's data so he can have dirt on them when he needs it to go after his enemies. We already have that in the Oval Office, we don't need another.
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