A letter from Dan Coats (director of the NSA) to the heads of two key Senate committees argues that powers revoked by the intelligence service should be reinstated permanently, rather than needing a bill that requires renewal.
The letter of the Coats [PDF] was sent yesterday, the last day of his term, and refers to the provisions contained in article 215 of the Patriot Act. The letter posted by the New York Times.
The powers to which he refers are highly controversial since they were revealed by him Edward Snowden in 2013. In fact, the program, which is based on two different, ridiculous interpretations of the law, has been repeatedly ruled unconstitutional.
Of course, even if the law changes, the NSA will not be able to make the system work, as it has been forced to admit twice in the past that it was collecting millions of call records that it should not have.
In June 2018, he deleted 534 million phone records he had collected the previous year, but did not provide practical details on how and why this happened.
The exact same thing happened again a few months later – in October 2018. Of course, we learned the news a little later, in June 2019, when the NSA was forced to declassify classified documents after a lawsuit by the American Unionof Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The services intelligence officials knew that the second failure of her program was about to become public, so she began letting congressional advisers know that she was considering refocusing on the program beginning in early 2019.
Since then, the NSA has repeatedly refused to discuss the program or even confirm that it has stopped.
But Coats' letter this week not only proposes a review of the program, but also boldly states that it should be approved on a permanent basis.
It is no secret that intelligence services are able to circumvent democratic processes by arguing that these are national security issues, but that a service seeking permanent access to a highly contested spy is unprecedented.
Recall that the NSA has been forced to admit twice, following Snowden's revelations that their program violates the constitution.
But why did Coats send the letter on his last day in office?
Coats did not want to be publicly confronted with Trump's insistence that Russia not be confused in the presidential election.
Coats refused to ignore the security services' conclusions about the role played by Russia and President Vladimir Putin in the US election, and of course Trump did not want him in power.
He also publicly expressed disappointment when Trump said he had invited Putin to the White House.
The security services have been and are in an extremely awkward position with the president close to the leaders of several of the United States' longtime enemies.
In light of the above, Trump has been (and is) extremely cautious about oversight of security services. As you can see, Coats's letter could be seen as a last-ditch effort to protect their secret services and responsibilities before losing their position and influence.
_________________________
- Knoppix 8.6 Live DVD: high performance
- Socratic by Google: AI in the study
- Bluetooth; attention vulnerable to attacks
