[Infowarrior] - Reagan-Era Order on Surveillance Violates Rights, Says Departing Aide

[Richard Forno]

Reagan-Era Order on Surveillance Violates Rights, Says Departing Aide

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

AUG. 13, 2014

John Napier Tye, a former State Department official, filed a whistle-blower complaint arguing that the N.S.A.’s broader data collection practices abroad violated Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — After President Obama delivered a speech in January endorsing changes to surveillance policies, including an end to the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ domestic calling records, John Napier Tye was disillusioned.

A State Department official, Mr. Tye worked on Internet freedom issues and had top-secret clearance. He knew the Obama administration had also considered a proposal to impose what an internal White House document, obtained by The New York Times, portrayed as “significant changes” to rules for handling Americans’ data the N.S.A. collects from fiber-optic networks abroad. But Mr. Obama said nothing about that in his speech.

So in April, as Mr. Tye was leaving the State Department, he filed a whistle-blower complaint arguing that the N.S.A.'s practices abroad violated Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights. He also met with staff members for the House and Senate intelligence committees. Last month, he went public with those concerns, which have attracted growing attention.

When operating abroad, the N.S.A. can gather and use Americans’ phone calls, emails, text messages and other communications under different — and sometimes more permissive — rules than when it collects them inside the United States. Much about those rules remains murky. The executive branch establishes them behind closed doors and can change them at will, with no involvement from Congress or the secret intelligence court that oversees surveillance on domestic networks.

“It’s a problem if one branch of government can collect and store most Americans’ communications, and write rules in secret on how to use them — all without oversight from Congress or any court, and without the consent or even the knowledge of the American people,” Mr. Tye said. “Regardless of the use rules in place today, this system could be abused in the future.”

Mr. Tye, 38, is speaking out as Congress considers amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs how the N.S.A. operates domestically. The legislation resulted from the uproar over leaks by Edward J. Snowden, a former agency contractor.

But the proposed changes would not touch the agency’s abilities overseas, which are authorized by Executive Order 12333, a Reagan-era presidential directive. The administration has declassified some rules for handling Americans’ messages gathered under the order, but the scope of that collection and other details about how the messages are used has remained unclear.

“The debate over the last year has barely touched on the executive order,” said Jameel Jaffer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer. “It’s a black box.”

The Times interviewed nearly a dozen current and former officials about 12333 rules for handling American communications, bringing further details to light. The rules are detailed in an accompanying chart.


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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/us/politics/reagan-era-order-on-surveillance-violates-rights-says-departing-aide.html