Privacy Board: Terror Surveillance Program Protects Civil Rights
After over a year of supervising two of the most controversial programs adopted by the Bush administration after 9/11, a review panel has given both a clean bill of health on civil-rights protections. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Board will announce next week that the NSA's Terrorist Surveillance Program and the Swift banking transaction monitoring operation contain enough checks and balances to ensure that Americans will not fall victim to their own government:
A White House privacy board is giving its stamp of approval to two of the Bush administration's controversial surveillance programs — electronic eavesdropping and financial tracking — and says they do not violate citizens' civil liberties. ...After operating mostly in secret for a year, the five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Board is preparing to release its first report to Congress next week.
The report finds that both the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program and the
Treasury Department's monitoring of international banking transactions have sufficient privacy protections, three board members told The Associated Press in telephone interviews.Both programs have multiple layers of review before sensitive information is accessed, they said.
The one point where the panel recommended action was on an "error-ridden" no-fly list, which has relied too much on subjective data, according to their analysis. They want it reworked so that it doesn't interfere with travel for people who pose no threat. I'm sure the TSA would like to comply; it would rather focus on the real threats as well, but it may be difficult to square that with the shades of gray found in intelligence work.
The sunny analysis includes the endorsement of the Democrat on the panel, Clinton administration figure Lanny Davis. Davis wants to continue the group's monitoring of the programs, but agrees that they have put into place the proper safeguards against civil-rights violations. He told the AP that the work the panel did was "modest", but that the panel members were impressed with the mulitple layers of security for information parsing. It also includes detailed audit records to identify anyone who accesses the data.
This will not keep people from claiming that the TSP and Swift programs inherently damage civil liberties. In this new kind of warfare, though, we have to ensure that we maintain the quickest gathering and analysis of the potential threats arrayed against us -- and that requires intense effort in preventive intel operations. Thankfully, the board can confirm that the Bush administration has taken its responsibilities in defense of both the nation and our liberties seriously.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on March 6, 2007 4:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (3)
