A presidential task force charged with determining what reforms are needed for the NSA and its surveillance activities has recommended the agency be led by a civilian commander, instead of a military one, and that bulk phone records the NSA wants to collect be retained by phone companies or held by a third party, rather than being stored by the NSA.
The task force also recommended restrictions on when and how the NSA can search the data, according to the Wall Street Journal. And it recommended separating the code-making division of the NSA, which develops and promotes codes, from the NSA division that breaks electronic security codes. Documents recently leaked by Edward Snowden described a decade-long effort by the NSA to crack different types of encryption and other security mechanisms in order to provide access to protected data for surveillance, a task at odds with the NSA's traditional role in helping to develop public algorithms.
The proposal to have data retained by phone companies or held by a third party would effectively end the controversial bulk collection program, the paper said, since the NSA would be able to collect data only after meeting a higher standard of proof. It closely match recommendations included in two recent House and Senate bills created by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R- Wisconsin) and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont).
The Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, established in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks describing near-unfettered collection of data, is expected to present its recommendations to the White House before Sunday. The panel's recommendations, however, are not binding, and the White House is currently conducting its own review of NSA practices.
The five-member task force includes Richard Clarke, a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations; Michael Morell, former CIA deputy director; Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago law professor; Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law School professor; and Peter Swire, a former privacy official in the Clinton administration.
In addition to making changes to the NSA's leadership and handling of phone records, the group also recommended dozens of other changes to the NSA's structure, transparency and internal security, the paper said, including developing international norms for government activity in cyberspace and the use of cyberweapons, and separating the NSA from U.S. Cyber Command, the Defense Department's division for cyberwarfare. Currently, Gen. Keith Alexander oversees both the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, which critics charge gives him too much power.
The latter proposal, however, has already been nixed by the president who has reportedly decided to preserve the current structure of having one leader for both the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command.
“Following a thorough interagency review, the administration has decided that keeping the positions of NSA Director and Cyber Command Commander together as one, dual-hatted position is the most effective approach to accomplishing both agencies’ missions,” White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told the Washington Post.
Former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden told the Post that the White House's own review of NSA surveillance leaves the spy agency's collection activities largely intact and instead focuses on collection of intelligence about heads of state and coordination with U.S. allies and partners, such as British and German intelligence agencies.
The White House has already taken over supervision of the program that focuses on surveillance of foreign leaders, according to the New York Times, taking it out of the hands of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
The Times reported that the task force is also likely to recommend that the White House conduct a regular review of the NSA's collection activities, the way covert action by the CIA is reviewed annually, and that the government establish a commission of legal advocates who would argue against government lawyers before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret court that oversees some of the NSA's collection activities, in order to provide a stand-in for the interests of the public and make the process of obtaining court orders more adversarial.
"Nothing short of stopping the mass, suspicionless surveillance of Americans is acceptable," said Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel at the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office. "We look forward to evaluating the report's details and whether the reported 'stricter rules' for obtaining US records are a meaningful and substantive improvement. In the end, however, Congress must pass legislation to end bulk collection of Americans’ sensitive call records. Requiring third parties to store Americans’ records for the government is not a solution."
