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David Kris Outlines the Internet Dragnet Elephant

Way back on page 64 (of 67) of former Assistant Attorney General for National Security David Kris’ paper “On the Bulk Collection of Tangible Things,” he invokes the elephant metaphor the President used to promise more NSA disclosures on multiple programs.

What I’m going to be pushing the IC to do is rather than have a trunk come out here and leg come out there and a tail come out there, let’s just put the whole elephant out there so people know exactly what they’re looking at.

In keeping with the President’s direction, the Intelligence Community has released many new details about the bulk telephony metadata collection program, as described above. In addition, as also noted above, the FISC itself has released significant new information. The key remaining question is whether there will be additional, authorized releases concerning intelligence activity that has not been subject to prior, unauthorized releases. [my emphasis]

Kris uses the President’s elephant to ask whether they really will disclose their intelligence programs. He mentions just the phone dragnet (even though the Administration, in response to two FOIAs, also released information about their Section 702 upstream collection programs), even as he suggests the Administration might do well to admit to other programs before they are exposed by an Edward Snowden leak.

Which is interesting, because Kris’ paper — in spite of his title and in spite of that reference to the phone dragnet — is really about what the government has declassified (the phone dragnet) as well as what the government has left partly hidden (the Internet dragnet and broader phone dragnet).

Kris discusses the PATRIOT-authorized Internet dragnet along with the phone dragnet

Kris, after all, provides the following facts about the PATRIOT-authorized Internet dragnet, citing the named sources:

  • Internet and telephony metadata was collected starting in 2001, until the 2004 hospital disagreement led to the former being moved to Pen Register/Trap & Trace authority in 2004, which was the first bulk order (“purported” NSA IG Report)
  • One company — which the “purported” IG report makes clear was an Internet one and is probably Yahoo — did not participate in the illegal wiretap program (“purported” NSA IG Report)
  • The Internet metadata collection ended in 2011 (an ODNI spokesperson in a Charlie Savage story)

Kris also points to four different Administration acknowledgements of the Internet metadata program. He refers to the 2009 and 2011 notice letters to Congress (though he focuses on the phone dragnet language in them), and the James Clapper response to Wyden and 25 other Senators. Perhaps most interestingly, Kris notes that government witness(es) have confirmed the program and the use of PR/TT to authorize it…

At a July 17, 2013 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, government witnesses confirmed the pen-trap bulk collection.

But unlike just about every other comment in a hearing cited in his paper, Kris doesn’t quote the exchange, which went like this.

SUZAN DELBENE: The public also now knows that the telephone metadata collection is under Section 215, the Business Records provision of FISA, and that allows for the collection of tangible things. But we’ve also seen reports of a now-defunct program collecting email metadata. With regard to the email metadata program that is no longer being operated, can you confirm that the authority used to collect that data was also Section 215?

GEN. COLE: It was not. It was the Pen Register Trap and Trace Authority under FISA, which is slightly different, but it amounts to the same kind of thing. It does not involve any content. It is, again, only to and from. It doesn’t involve, I believe, information about identity. It’s just email addresses. So it’s very similar, but not under the same provision.

REP. DELBENE: And could you have used Section 215 to collect that information?

GEN. COLE: It’s hard to tell. I’d have to take a look at that.

The transcript from this hearing is up at the I Con the Record site, so it’s unclear why Kris didn’t quote it.  Read more