Cyber Round Up: Reactions to NSA Reform Proposal

As promised, here is a mini round up detailing the public’s response, generally, to President Obama’s NSA reform proposal:

• The Hill reports that Obama’s proposal is “sure to come under fire as it heads to Congress.”  The report notes several possible reasons.  Here are a few:

(1) Although lawmakers have generally expressed support for the idea of ending collection and storage of metadata, there is disagreement over the proper manner in which government agents should be permitted to search for records.

(2) Some have expressed concern over the proposal’s failure to address other “symptom[s] of the NSA’s overreach.”  As Kevin Bankston, policy director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute reportedly put it, “Any proposal to address the problem of bulk data is fatally incomplete if it doesn’t prohibit bulk collection of any kind of record under any of the NSA’s different legal authorities.”

(3) “A big factor affecting the outcome of the president’s proposal is who gets authority.”  This is because, as the article explains, the Judiciary Committee would traditionally have jurisdiction over matters concerning foreign intelligence.  But, the House Intelligence Committee “was given primary authority over its leaders’ bill[.]”

This last point brings me to the next article I want to highlight.

• Politico reports that Bob Goodlatte (R-Va), House Judiciary Committee Chairman, declared his intent to “fight any effort to move [NSA] surveillance reform legislation to the House floor without going through his panel.”  Goodlatte further indicated that, although input from the House Intelligence Committee is welcomed, the Judiciary Committee should be the central venue in charge.

• In a separate article, Politico identifies an additional hurdle—“no major force pushing for the changes.”  As the report explains, the NSA’s Section 215 authority is set to expire in June of next year; however, “rank-and-file lawmakers . . . caution that there’s no serious pressure coming from home to support the kinds of changes Obama wants.”

• Alex Jones’ Info Wars has also come out and criticized private companies for failing to take a more active approach in order to force legislation on this issue.  Trevor Timm of the London Guardian stated, Facebook and others are “holding fire” when it comes to pushing reform on the hill.  But, “[t]he keepers of the everyday [I]nternet seem to care more about PR than helping their users.  The truth is, if the major tech companies really wanted to force meaningful surveillance reform, they could do so tomorrow.”

• The Brennan Center’s Elizabeth Goitein has also identified what some believe is a hole in the President’s proposal, MSNBC reports.  “The problem is there are no meaningful limits on what [the government] can do with [the] data, the only limits are on what they have to do to get the data,” Goitein reportedly said.