[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 24 (Monday, February 10, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S837-S848]
[...]
NSA Security Breach
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the National Security Agency continues its
indiscriminate collection of a massive number of phone records about
Americans under section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act. I have said over
and over again that as a nation we have long needed to have the
national conversation about bulk collection that is now underway, and
the section 215 program should have been declassified long before it
was.
I wish to make very clear, as I have said before, I do not condone
the way this or other highly classified programs were disclosed. I am
deeply concerned about the potential damage to our intelligence-
gathering capabilities, our foreign relationships, and national
security.
I am also deeply concerned that one person with a security clearance
can wreak this much havoc. According to the New York Times, Edward
Snowden accomplished his heist of extraordinarily sensitive information
about NSA activities with ``inexpensive and widely available
software''; in other words, software that any one of us could get. He
didn't even execute a particularly sophisticated breach. He did not,
apparently, face a particularly complex technological challenge while
removing these sensitive documents from the NSA trove. Yet he pulled
off what the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recently
called ``the most massive and most damaging theft of intelligence in
our history.''
I continually ask the leaders of our intelligence community: What are
you doing to stop this from happening again? I have learned that the
NSA has devoted substantial resources to fixing the faults that allowed
this to happen, has taken some steps to address them, and has
identified a range of other actions that need to be taken. But one has
to ask, especially in the wake of the Private Manning leaks, how could
the NSA have allowed this to happen in the first place.
I say this not to beat up on the NSA. I know we have highly
dedicated, patriotic men and women working there, and I applaud them
for their service to their country. But when I hear their leadership
ask us to trust that they will keep our information safe and that we
should have faith in its internal policies and procedures, one has to
ask: Is this accurate?
This is the same NSA that first told us that the section 215 program
was essential to national security. They talked in speeches around the
country that it thwarted dozens of plots. But then when they were asked
questions in a congressional hearing specifically about it, that number
went from in the fifties down to possibly one. The primary defense of
the NSA's bulk collection program now appears to be the program is more
of an insurance policy than anything else. But now even that new
defense of the program has been called into question.
The Washington Post has reported that under this program the NSA
collects less than 30 percent of domestic phone records. The Wall
Street Journal says the number is less than 20 percent. These estimates
are consistent with the public copy of the President's Review Group
report, which cautioned against placing too much value on this program
as a tool to rule out a domestic connection to a terrorist plot; thus,
the so-called insurance policy. The Review Group report tells us it is
precisely because--although the program is unprecedented in scope--it
still covers only a percentage of the total phone metadata held by
service providers.
It appears to this Senator that the intelligence community has
defended its unprecedented, massive, and indiscriminate bulk collection
by arguing that it needs the entire ``haystack'' in order for it to
have an effective counterterrorism tool--and yet the American public
now finds out they only have 20 to 30 percent of that so-called
haystack.
These revelations call even further into question the effectiveness
of this program.
Although the program is ongoing, some preliminary and positive
changes are underway. Just last week, the Director of National
Intelligence announced that the FISA Court has approved procedures
under which the government will seek approval by a FISA Court judge
before querying these phone records--absent a true, almost
instantaneous kind of an emergency. The President has directed the
Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to develop
alternatives to the section 215 phone records program and report back
to him at the end of next month. That is progress but only some
progress. It is not enough. It is not going to be enough to just reform
the government's bulk phone records collection program.
The program, as expensive and extensive as it is, has not proven
effective. But beyond that, it is not worth the massive intrusion on
the privacy of the American people--of the good, law-abiding men and
women in what is supposed to be the greatest democracy on Earth.
Congress should shut it down. We should enact the bipartisan,
bicameral USA FREEDOM Act. Then Congress has to examine carefully--and
to the extent possible publicly--the security breach that led to these
revelations in the first place.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has had a number of hearings on this
issue. We are going to continue working on these issues at a hearing
this week with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board--yet
another voice concluding that the section 215 program should not
continue. If the NSA is to regain the trust of the American people, it
has to spend less time collecting data on innocent Americans and more
time keeping our Nation's secrets safe.
I yield the floor.
I will suggest the absence of a quorum. Is time being divided?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Time is not currently being divided.
Mr. LEAHY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
[...]
