WASHINGTON, Jan 19 (Reuters) – The head of the U.S. Senate
Intelligence Committee objected on Sunday to President Barack
Obama’s proposal for the government to give up control of the
storage of the telephone records of millions of Americans it
holds as part of its counterterrorism efforts.
Obama on Friday announced an overhaul of U.S. surveillance
activities following criticism sparked by the disclosure of
leaked documents exposing the wide reach of National Security
Agency spy efforts.
He proposed an overhaul of the government’s handling of bulk
telephone “metadata” – lists of million of phone calls made by
Americans that show which numbers were called and when.
Obama said the government will not hold the bulk telephone
records. A presidential advisory panel had recommended that the
data be controlled by a third party such as telephone companies,
but Obama did not propose who should store the phone information
in the future.
Signaling congressional opposition to the change, Democratic
Senator Dianne Feinstein, who heads the intelligence panel,
criticized the idea of moving the data out of government
control.
“I think that’s a very difficult thing because the whole
purpose of this program is to provide instantaneous information
to be able to disrupt any plot that may be taking place,”
Feinstein told the NBC program “Meet the Press.”
“I think a lot of the privacy people (advocates) perhaps
don’t understand that we still occupy the role of the ‘Great
Satan,’ new bombs are being devised, new terrorists are
emerging, new groups – actually, a new level of viciousness. And
I think we need to be prepared,” she added.
Obama asked Attorney General Eric Holder and the
intelligence community to report back to him by March 28 on how
to preserve the necessary capabilities of the program without
the government holding the metadata.
The usefulness of keeping the metadata records was
questioned by a presidential review panel, which found that
while the program had produced some leads for counterterrorism
investigators, such data had not been decisive in a single case.
Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the
House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, faulted Obama
for creating uncertainty surrounding the program.
“Just in my conversations over the weekend with intelligence
officials, this new level of uncertainty is already having a bit
of an impact on our ability to protect Americans by finding
terrorists who are trying to reach into the United States,”
Rogers told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Democratic Senator Mark Udall, a member of the intelligence
panel, urged an end to the collection of metadata.
“We can be effective in protecting our country but we don’t
need to collect every single phone record of every single
American on every single day,” he told the CBS program “Face the
Nation.”
Feinstein expressed doubt that a proposal to end the
collection of such data could pass in Congress, adding: “The
president has very clearly said that he wants to keep the
capability.”
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Jim Loney and Meredith
Mazzilli)
