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Editorial: Now cut out Web, e-mail collection
Op-Ed · June 11, 2015
Some two years after learning the National Security Agency collects phone, e-mail and Internet data on Americans, Congress finally changed the law to back off from the phone part of the program.
About the time of the repeal, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont visited West Branch and told the audience the practice of bulk collection of Americans’ data is “Orwellian,” and has citizens “looking over our shoulders.”
While we may not agree with everything Sanders had to say during his visit, this is one where we can. The renewed USA Patriot Act no longer allows the federal government to collect phone record data; instead, it requires phone companies to save the data while the feds may ask a special court for permission to search the records.
Some reports on the updated law run along the “true, but misleading” vein. The New York Times’ headline reads “U.S. Surveillance in Place Since 9/11 Is Sharply Limited,” and the Washington Post headline reads, “Congress turns away from post-9/11 law, retooling U.S. surveillance powers.”
Yes, the law was enacted because of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but we did not know about the data mining until 2013.
The belief was that the law went after terrorists, not that it violated citizen rights in the process. The dragnet cast by this bulk collection of data seems more in line with martial law, where civil law and civil rights are suspended, not Constitutional law.
A federal appeals court last month ruled against collecting phone call records, so Congress gets little credit for the change when this aspect of the law seemed doomed. We look to see similar rulings against the e-mail and Web data sections of the law, and similar compromises that leave the data in the hands of the Web and e-mail companies, only accessible through warrants.
During his visit, Sanders made a very good observation about how technology has “far, far outpaced social policy in terms of protecting privacy rights.”
Perhaps this is what Congress, and the private sector, should tackle next — an outline of how Constitutional rights play out online — apparently those rights are not as self-evident as some of us think they are.
We like companies that boast that they will not share customers’ private data with third parties. Government needs to get the hint that they are a “third party” and have no right to that information without probable cause and due process.
It appears society is counting on the separation of powers to weed out social policy, but that takes far too long. Consider that it took two years after Edward Snowden’s revelation for the phone calling data collection to end. How much longer will it take to repeal the Web and e-mail parts of this law?
America needs to press Congress to remember our civil rights and remind our security agencies the difference between doing their job the easy way and the right way. End the mass collection of data and restore the right of privacy.
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