President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies Report–“Liberty and Security in a Changing World”

Last week, we posted a link to the December 12 report by the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, entitled “Liberty and Security in a Changing World.”  The report set out recommendations for the Government with an eye toward striking the proper balance between respecting privacy and civil liberties and protecting national security interests.

According to the White House Blog:

The recommendations emphasize risk management and the need to balance a wide range of potential consequences, including both costs and benefits, in considering potential reforms. . . . Free nations must protect themselves, and nations that protect themselves must remain free.

Some of the recommendations offered by the report include:

• A “series of significant reforms” with respect to the surveillance of U.S. persons, such as: (1) ending the storage of bulk telephony metadata and “transition[ing] to a system in which such metadata is held privately for the government to query when necessary for national security purposes”; (2) increasing the safeguards available to Americans against intrusion into their personal domain; and, (3) increased Government transparency and accountability.
• “[S]ignificant steps” to protect non-U.S. person privacy, specifically, by requiring such surveillance programs to satisfy certain steps, as outlined in the report.
• Organizational changes, such as requiring the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) to be a Senate-confirmed position for which civilians are eligible and separating the positions of head of Cyber Command and Director of NSA such that the “dual-hatted” position held by a single official is eliminated.
• Increased efficacy of the Government personnel vetting system by, for example, at least minimizing and perhaps terminating the use of for-profit entities to conduct personnel investigations.
• A series of statutory amendment suggestions regarding, largely, Section 215, as well as a series of recommended legislative enactments reflecting some of the aforementioned suggestions.

Again, you can read the full report here.