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The Internet Dragnet Was a Clusterfuck … and NSA Didn’t Care

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Here’s my best description from last year of the mind-boggling fact that NSA conducted 25 spot checks between 2004 and 2009 and then did a several months’ long end-to-end review of the Internet dragnet in 2009 and found it to be in pretty good shape, only then to have someone discover that every single record received under the program had violated rules set in 2004.

Exhibit A is a comprehensive end-to-end report that the NSA conducted in late summer or early fall of 2009, which focused on the work the agency did in metadata collection and analysis to try and identify people emailing terrorist suspects.

The report described a number of violations that the NSA had cleaned up since the beginning of that year — including using automatic alerts that had not been authorized and giving the FBI and CIA direct access to a database of query results. It concluded the internet dragnet was in pretty good shape. “NSA has taken significant steps designed to eliminate the possibility of any future compliance issues,” the last line of the report read, “and to ensure that mechanisms are in place to detect and respond quickly if any were to occur.”

But just weeks later, the Department of Justice informed the FISA Court, which oversees the NSA program, that the NSA had been collecting impermissible categories of data — potentially including content — for all five years of the program’s existence.

The Justice Department said the violation had been discovered by NSA’s general counsel, which since a previous violation in 2004 had been required to do two spot checks of the data quarterly to make sure NSA had complied with FISC orders. But the general counsel had found the problem only after years of not finding it. The Justice Department later told the court that “virtually every” internet dragnet record “contains some metadata that was authorized for collection and some metadata that was not authorized for collection.” In other words, in the more than 25 checks the NSA’s general counsel should have done from 2004 to 2009, it never once found this unauthorized data.

The following year, Judge John Bates, then head of FISC, emphasized that the NSA had missed the unauthorized data in its comprehensive report. He noted “the extraordinary fact that NSA’s end-to-end review overlooked unauthorized acquisitions that were documented in virtually every record of what was acquired.” Bates went on, “[I]t must be added that those responsible for conducting oversight at NSA failed to do so effectively.”

Even after these details became public in 2014 (or perhaps because the intelligence community buried such disclosures in documents with dates obscured), commentators have generally given the NSA the benefit of the doubt in its good faith to operate its dragnet(s) under the rules set by the FISA Court.

But an IG Report from 2007 (PDF 24-56) released in Charlie Savage’s latest FOIA return should disabuse commentators of that opinion.

This is a report from early 2007, almost 3 years after the Stellar Wind Internet dragnet moved under FISA authority and close to 30 months after Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered NSA to implement more oversight measures, including those spot checks. We know that rough date because the IG Report post-dates the January 8, 2007 initiation of the FISC-spying compartment and it reflects 10 dragnet order periods of up to 90 days apiece (see page 21). So the investigation in it should date to no later than February 8, 2007, with the final report finished somewhat later. It was completed by Brian McAndrew, who served as Acting Inspector General from the time Joel Brenner left in 2006 until George Ellard started in 2007 (but who also got asked to sign at least one document he couldn’t vouch for in 2002, again as Acting IG).

The IG Report is bizarre. It gives the NSA a passing grade on what it assessed.

The management controls designed by the Agency to govern the collection, dissemination, and data security of electronic communications metadata and U.S. person information obtained under the Order are adequate and in several aspects exceed the terms of the Order.

I believe that by giving a passing grade, the IG made it less likely his results would have to get reported (for example, to the Intelligence Oversight Board, which still wasn’t getting reporting on this program, and probably also to the Intelligence Committees, which didn’t start getting most documentation on this stuff until late 2008) in any but a routine manner, if even that. But the report also admits it did not assess “the effectiveness of management controls[, which] will be addressed in a subsequent report.” (The 2011 report examined here identified previous PRTT reports, including this one, and that subsequent report doesn’t appear in any obvious form.) Then, having given the NSA a passing grade but deferring the most important part of the review, the IG notes “additional controls are needed.”

And how.

As to the issue of the spot checks, mandated by the FISA Court and intended to prevent years of ongoing violations, the IG deems such checks “largely ineffective” because management hadn’t adopted a methodology for those spot checks. They appear to have just swooped in and checked queries already approved by an analyst’s supervisor, in what they called a superaudit.

Worse still, they didn’t write anything down.

As mandated by the Order, OGC periodically conducts random spot checks of the data collected [redaction] and monitors the audit log function. OGC does not, however document the data, scope, or results of the reviews. The purpose of the spot checks is to ensure that filters and other controls in place on the [redaction] are functioning as described by the Order and that only court authorized data is retained. [snip] Currently, an OGC attorney meets with the individuals responsible [redaction] and audit log functions, and reviews samples of the data to determine compliance with the Order. The attorney stated that she would formally document the reviews only if there were violations or other discrepancies of note. To date, OGC has found no violations or discrepancies.

So this IG review was done more than two years after Kollar-Kotelly had ordered these spot checks, during which period 18 spot checks should have been done. Yet at that point, NSA had no documentary evidence a single spot check had been done, just the say-so of the lawyer who claimed to have done them.

Keep in mind, too, that Oversight and Control were, at this point, implementing a new-and-improved spot-check process. That’s what the IG reviewed, the new-and-improved process, because (of course) reviewers couldn’t review the past process because there was no documentation of it. It’s the new-and-improved process that was inadequate to the task.

But that’s not the only problem the IG found in 2007. For example, the logs used in auditing did not accurately document what seed had been used for queries, which means you couldn’t review whether those queries really met the incredibly low bar of Reasonable Articulable Suspicion or that they were pre-approved.  Nor did they document how many hops out analysts chained, which means any given query could have sucked in a great deal of Americans (which might happen by the third or fourth hop) and thrown them into the corporate store for far more intrusive anlaysis. While the IG didn’t point this out directly, the management response made clear log files also didn’t document whether a seed was a US person and therefore entitled to a First Amendment review. In short, NSA didn’t capture any — any!!! — of the data that would have been necessary to assess minimal compliance with FISC orders.

NSA’s lawyers also didn’t have a solid list of everyone who had access to the databases (and therefore who needed to be trained or informed of changes to the FISC order). The Program Management Office had a list that it periodically compared to who was actually accessing the data (though as made clear later in the report, that included just the analysts). And NSA’s Office of General Counsel would also periodically review to ensure those accessing the data had the information they needed to do so legally. But “the attorney conducting the review relie[d] on memory to verify the accuracy and completeness of the list.” DOD in general is wonderfully neurotic about documenting any bit of training a given person has undergone, but with the people who had access to the Internet metadata documenting a great deal of Americans’ communication in the country, NSA chose just to work from memory.

And this non-existent manner of tracking those with database access extended to auditing as well. The IG reported that NSA also didn’t track all queries made, such as those made by “those that have the ability to query the PRTT data but are not on the PMO list or who are not analysts.” While the IG includes people who’ve been given new authorization to query the data in this discussion, it’s also talking about techs who access the data. It notes, for example, “two systems administrators, who have the ability to query PRTT data, were also omitted from the audit report logs.” The thing is, as part of the 2009 “reforms,” NSA got approval to exempt techs from audits. I’ve written a lot about this but will return to it, as there is increasing evidence that the techs have always had the ability — and continue to have the ability — to bypass limits on the program.

There are actually far more problems reported in this short report, including details proving that — as I’ve pointed out before — NSA’s training sucks.

But equally disturbing is the evidence that NSA really didn’t give a fuck about the fact they’d left a database of a significant amount of Americans’ communications metadata exposed to all sorts of control problems. The disinterest in fixing this problem dates back to 2004, when NSA first admitted to Kollar-Kotelly they were violating her orders. They did an IG report at the time (under the guidance of Joel Brenner), but it did “not make formal recommendations to management. Rather, the report summarize[d] key facts and evaluate[d] responsibility for the violation.” That’s unusual by itself: for audits to improve processes, they are supposed to provide recommendations and track whether those are implemented. Moreover, while the IG (who also claimed the clusterfuck in place in 2007 merited a passing grade) assessed that “management has taken steps to prevent recurrence of the violation,” it also noted that NSA never really fixed the monitoring and change control process identified as problems back in 2004. In other words, it found that NSA hadn’t fixed key problems IDed back in 2004.

As to this report? It did make recommendations and management even concurred with some of them, going so far as to agree to document (!!) their spot checks in the future. With others — such as the recommendation that shift supervisors should not be able to make their own RAS determinations — management didn’t concur, they just said they’d monitor those queries more closely in the future. As to the report as a whole, here’s what McAndrew had to say about management’s response to the report showing the PRTT program was a clusterfuck of vulnerabilities: “Because of extenuating circumstances, management was unable to provide complete responses to the draft report.”

So in 2007, NSA’s IG demonstrated that the oversight over a program giving NSA access to the Internet metadata of a good chunk of all Americans was laughably inadequate.

And NSA’s management didn’t even bother to give the report a full response.

The FISA Court’s Uncelebrated Good Points

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I’m working on a post responding to this post from Chelsea Manning calling to abolish the FISA Court. Spoiler alert: I largely agree with her, but I think the question is not that simple.

As background to that post, I wanted to shift the focus from a common perception of the FISC — that it is a rubber stamp that approves all requests — to a better measure of the FISC — the multiple ways it has tried to rein in the Executive. I think the FISC has, at times, been better at doing so than often given credit for. But as I’ll show in my larger post, those efforts have had limited success.

Minimization procedures

The primary tool the FISC uses is in policing the Executive is minimization procedures approved by the court. Royce Lamberth unsuccessfully tried to use minimization procedures to limit the use of FISA-collected data in prosecutions (and also, tools for investigation, such as informants). Reggie Walton was far more successful at using and expanding very detailed limits on the phone — and later, the Internet — dragnet to force the government to stop treating domestically collected dragnet data under its own EO 12333 rules and start treating it under the more stringent FISC-imposed rules. He even shut down the Internet dragnet in fall (probably October 30) 2009 because it did not abide by limits imposed 5 years earlier by Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

There was also a long-running discussion (that involved several briefs in 2006 and 2009, and a change in FISC procedure in 2010) about what to do with Post Cut Through Dialed Digits (those things you type in after a call or Internet session has been connected) collected under pen registers. It appears that FISC permitted (and probably still permits) the collection of that data under FISA (that was not permitted under Title III pen registers), but required the data get minimized afterwards, and for a period over collected data got sequestered.

Perhaps the most important use of minimization procedures, however, came when Internet companies stopped complying with NSLs requiring data in 2009, forcing the government to use Section 215 orders to obtain the data. By all appearances, the FISC imposed and reviewed compliance of minimization procedures until FBI, more than 7 years after being required to, finally adopted minimization procedures for Section 215. This surely resulted in a lot less innocent person data being collected and retained than under NSL collection. Note that this probably imposed a higher standard of review on this bulky collection of data than what existed at magistrate courts, though some magistrates started trying to impose what are probably similar requirements in 2014.

Such oversight provides one place where USA Freedom Act is a clear regression from what is (today, anyway) in place. Under current rules, when the government submits an application retroactively for an emergency search of the dragnet, the court can require the government to destroy any data that should not have been collected. Under USAF, the Attorney General will police such things under a scheme that does not envision destroying improperly collected data at all, and even invites the parallel construction of it.

First Amendment review

The FISC has also had some amount — perhaps significant — success in making the Executive use a more restrictive First Amendment review than it otherwise would have. Kollar-Kotelly independently imposed a First Amendment review on the Internet dragnet in 2004. First Amendment reviews were implicated in the phone dragnet changes Walton pushed in 2009. And it appears that in the government’s first uses of the emergency provision for the phone dragnet, it may have bypassed First Amendment review — at least, that’s the most logical explanation for why FISC explicitly added a First Amendment review to the emergency provision last year. While I can’t prove this with available data, I strongly suspect more stringent First Amendment reviews explain the drop in dragnet searches every time the FISC increased its scrutiny of selectors.

In most FISA surveillance, there is supposed to be a prohibition on targeting someone for their First Amendment protected activities. Yet given the number of times FISC has had to police that, it seems that the Executive uses a much weaker standard of First Amendment review than the FISC. Which should be a particularly big concern for National Security Letters, as they ordinarily get no court review (one of the NSL challenges that has been dismissed seemed to raise First Amendment concerns).

Notice of magistrate decisions

On at least two occasions, the FISC has taken notice of and required briefing after magistrate judges found a practice also used under FISA to require a higher standard of evidence. One was the 2009 PCTDD discussion mentioned above. The other was the use of combined orders to get phone records and location data. And while the latter probably resulted in other ways the Executive could use FISA to obtain location data, it suggests the FISC has paid close attention to issues being debated in magistrate courts (though that may have more to do with the integrity of then National Security Assistant Attorney General David Kris than the FISC itself; I don’t have high confidence it is still happening). To the extent this occurs, it is more likely that FISA practices will all adjust to new standards of technology than traditional courts, given that other magistrates will continue to approve questionable orders and warrants long after a few individually object, and given that an individual objection isn’t always made public.

Dissemination limits

Finally, the FISC has limited Executive action by limiting the use and dissemination of certain kinds of information. During Stellar Wind, Lamberth and Kollar-Kotelly attempted to limit or at least know which data came from Stellar Wind, thereby limiting its use for further FISA warrants (though it’s not clear how successful that was). The known details of dragnet minimization procedures included limits on dissemination (which were routinely violated until the FISC expanded them).

More recently John Bates twice pointed to FISA Section 1809(a)(2) to limit the government’s use of data collected outside of legal guidelines. He did so first in 2010 when he limited the government’s use of illegally collected Internet metadata. He used it again in 2011 when he used it to limit the government’s access to illegally collected upstream content. However, I think it likely that after both instances, the NSA took its toys and went elsewhere for part of the relevant collection, in the first case to SPCMA analysis on EO 12333 collected Internet metadata, and in the second to CISA (though just for cyber applications). So long as the FISC unquestioningly accepts EO 12333 evidence to support individual warrants and programmatic certificates, the government can always move collection away from FISC review.

Moreover, with USAF, Congress partly eliminated this tool as a retroactive control on upstream collection; it authorized the use of data collected improperly if the FISC subsequently approved retention of it under new minimization procedures.

These tools have been of varying degrees of usefulness. But FISC has tried to wield them, often in places where all but a few Title III courts were not making similar efforts. Indeed, there are a few collection practices where the FISC probably imposed a higher standard than TIII courts, and probably many more where FISC review reined in collection that didn’t have such review.

A Brief History of the PATRIOT Reauthorization Debate

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I wanted to provide some background of how we got to this week’s PATRIOT Reauthorization debate to explain what I believe the surveillance boosters are really aiming for. Rather than a response to Edward Snowden, I think it is more useful to consider “reform” as an Intelligence Community effort to recreate functionalities they had and then lost in 2009.

2009 violations require NSA to start treating PATRIOT data like PATRIOT data and shut down automated functions

That history starts in 2009, when NSA was still operating under the system they had established under Stellar Wind while pretending to abide by FISC rules.

At the beginning of 2009, the NSA had probably close to full coverage of phone records in the US, and coverage on the most important Internet circuits as well. Contrary to the explicit orders of the FISC, NSA was treating all this data as EO 12333 data, not PATRIOT data.

On the Internet side, it was acquiring data that it considered Dialing, Routing, Addressing, and Signaling information but which also constituted content (and which violated the category limits Colleen Kollar-Kotelly had first imposed).

On the phone side, NSA was not only treating PATRIOT data according to NSA’s more general minimization procedures as opposed to those dictated by the FISC. But in violation of those minimization procedures, NSA was submitting phone dragnet data to all the automated procedures it submitted EO 12333 data to, which included automated searches and automatic chaining on other identifiers believed to belong to the same user  (the latter of which NSA calls “correlations”). Either these procedures consisted of — or the data was also treated to — pattern analysis, chaining users on patterns rather than calls made. Of key importance, one point of having all the data in the country was to be able to run this pattern analysis. Until 2008 (and really until 2009) they were sharing the results of this data in real time.

Having both types of data allowed the NSA to chain across both telephony and Internet data (obtained under a range of authorities) in the same query, which would give them a pretty comprehensive picture of all the communications a target was engaging in, regardless of medium.

I believe this bucolic state is where the surveillance hawks want us to return to. Indeed, to a large extent that’s what Richard Burr’s bill does (with a lot of obstructive measures to make sure this process never gets exposed again).

But when DOJ disclosed the phone violations to FISC in early 2009, they shut down all those automatic processes. And Judge Reggie Walton took over 6 months before he’d even let NSA have full ability to query the data.

Then, probably in October 2009, DOJ finally confessed to FISC that every single record NSA had collected under the Internet dragnet for five years violated Kollar-Kotelly’s category rules. Walton probably shut down the dragnet on October 30, 2009, and it remained shut down until around July 2010.

At this point, not only didn’t NSA have domestic coverage that included Internet and phone, but the phone dragnet was a lot less useful than all the other phone data NSA collected because NSA couldn’t use its nifty automatic tools on it.

Attempts to restore the pre-2009 state

We know that NSA convinced John Bates to not only turn the Internet dragnet back on around July 2010 (though it took a while before they actually turned it on), but to expand collection to some or all circuits in the US. He permitted that by interpreting anything that might be Dialing, Routing, Addressing, and Signaling (DRAS) to be metadata, regardless of whether it also was content, and by pointing back to the phone dragnet to justify the extension of the Internet dragnet. Bates’ fix was short-lived, however, because by 2011, NSA shut down that dragnet. I wildarseguess that may partly because DOJ knew it was still collecting content, and when Bates told NSA if it knew it was collecting content with upstream collection, it would be illegal (NSA destroyed the Internet dragnet data at the same time it decided to start destroying its illegal upstream data). I also think there may have been a problem with Bates’ redefinition of DRAS, because Richard Burr explicitly adopted Bates’ definition in his bill, which would have given Bates’ 2010 opinion congressional sanction. As far as we know, NSA has been coping without the domestic Internet dragnet by collecting on US person Internet data overseas, as well as off PRISM targets.

Remember, any residual problems the Internet dragnet had may have affected NSA’s ability to collect any IP-based calls or at least messaging.

Meanwhile, NSA was trying to replace the automated functions it had up until 2009, and on November 8, 2012, the NSA finally authorized a way to do that. But over the next year plus, NSA never managed to turn it on.

The phone records gap

Meanwhile, the phone dragnet was collecting less and less of the data out there. My current theory is that the gap arose because of two things involving Verizon. First, in 2009, part or all of Verizon dropped its contract with the FBI to provide enhanced call records first set up in 2002. This meant it no longer had all its data collected in a way that was useful to FBI that it could use to provide CDRs (though Verizon had already changed the way it complied with phone records in 2007, which had, by itself, created some technical issues). In addition, I suspect that as Verizon moved to 4G technology it didn’t keep the same kind of records for 4G calls that transited its backbone (which is where the records come from, not from customer bills). The problems with the Internet dragnet may have exacerbated this (and in any case, the phone dragnet orders only ask for telephony metadata, not IP metadata).

Once you lose cell calls transiting Verizon’s backbone, you’ve got a big hole in the system.

At the same time, more and more people (and, disproportionately, terrorist targets) were relying more and more on IP-based communications — Skype, especially, but also texting and other VOIP calls. And while AT&T gets some of what crosses its backbone (and had and still has a contract for that enhanced call record service with the FBI, which means it will be accessible), a lot of that would not be available as telephony. Again, any limits on Internet collection may also impact IP based calls and messaging.

Edward Snowden provides a convenient excuse

Which brings you to where the dragnets were in 2013, when Edward Snowden alerted us to their presence. The domestic PATRIOT-authorized Internet dragnet had been shut down (and with it, potentially, Internet-based calls and messaging). The phone dragnet still operated, but there were significant gaps in what the telecoms would or could turn over (though I suspect NSA still has full coverage of data that transits AT&T’s backbone). And that data couldn’t be subjected to all the nifty kinds of analysis NSA liked to subject call data to. Plus, complying with the FISC-imposed minimization procedures meant NSA could only share query results in limited situations and even then with some bureaucratic limits. Finally, it could only be used for counterterrorism programs, and such data analysis had become a critical part of all of NSA’s analysis, even including US collection.

And this is where I suspect all those stories about NSA already considering, in 2009 and in 2013, shutting down the dragnet. As both Ken Dilanian stories on this make clear, DOJ believed they could not achieve the same search results without a new law passed by Congress. Bob Litt has said the same publicly. Which makes it clear these are not plain old phone records.

So while Edward Snowden was a huge pain in the ass for the IC, he also provided the impetus to make a decision on the phone dragnet. Obama made a big show of listening to his Presidential Review Group and PCLOB, both of which said to get rid of it (the latter of which said it was not authorized by Section 215). But — as I noted at the time — moving to providers would fix some of their problems.

In their ideal world, here’s what we know the IC would like:

  • Full coverage on both telephony and IP-based calls and messaging and — ideally — other kinds of Internet communications
  • Ability to share promiscuously
  • Ability to use all NSA’s analytical tools on raw data (the data mandates are about requiring some kind of analytical work from providers)
  • Permission to use the “call” function for all intelligence purposes
  • Ability to federate queries with data collected under other authorities

And the IC wants this while retaining Section 215’s use of bulky collections that can be cross-referenced with other data, especially the other Internet collection it conducts using Section 215, which makes up a majority of Section 215 orders.

Those 5 categories are how I’ve been analyzing the various solutions (which is one of about 10 reasons I’m so certain that Mitch McConnell would never want straight reauthorization, because there’s nothing that straight reauthorization would have ratified that would have fixed the existing problems with the dragnet), while keeping in mind that as currently constructed, the Internet 215 collection is far more important to the IC than the phone dragnet.

How the bills stack up

USA F-ReDux, as currently incarnated, would vastly expand data sharing, because data would come in through FBI (as PRISM data does) and FBI metadata rules are very permissive. And it would give collection on telephony and IP-based calls (probably not from all entities, but probably from Apple, Google, and Microsoft). It would not permit use for all intelligence purposes. And it is unclear how many of NSA’s analytical tools they’d be able to use (I believe they’d have access to the “correlations” function directly, because providers would have access internally to customers’ other accounts, but with the House report, other kinds of analysis should be prohibited, though who knows what AT&T and Microsoft would do with immunity). The House report clearly envisions federated queries, but they would be awkward to integrate with the outsourced collection.

Burr’s bill, on the other hand, would expand provider based querying to all intelligence uses. But even before querying might —  maybe — probably wouldn’t — move to providers in 2 years, Burr’s bill would have immediately permitted NSA to obtain all the things they’d need to return to the 2009 bucolic era where US collected data had the same treatment as EO 12333 collected data. And Burr’s bill would probably permit federated queries with all other NSA data. This is why, I think, he adopted EO 12333 minimization procedures, which are far more restrictive than what will happen when data comes in via FBI, because since it will continue to come in in bulk, it needs to have an NSA minimization procedure. Burr’s bill would also sneak the Section 215 Internet collection back into NSL production, making that data more promiscuously available as well.

In other words, this is why so many hawks in the House are happy to have USA F-ReDux: because it is vastly better than the status quo. But it’s also why so many hawks in the Senate are unsatisfied with it: because it doesn’t let the IC do the other things — some of the analytical work and easy federated queries — that they’d like, across all intelligence functions. (Ironically, that means even while they’re squawking about ISIS, the capabilities they’d really like under Burr’s bill involve entirely other kinds of targets.)

A lot of the debate about a phone dragnet fix has focused on other aspects of the bill — on transparency and reporting and so on. And while I think those things do matter (the IC clearly wants to minimize those extras, and had gutted many of them even in last year’s bill), what really matters are those 5 functionalities.

 

The IOB Reports on the Internet Dragnet Violations: “Nothing to Report”

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I’ve been working through the NSA’s reports to the Intelligence Oversight Board. Given that we know so much about the phone and Internet dragnets, I have been particularly interested in how they got reported to the IOB.

By and large, though, they didn’t. Even though we know there were significant earlier violations (some of the phone dragnet violations appear in this timeline; there was an Internet violation under the first order and at least one more of unknown date), I believe neither gets any mention until the Q1 2009 report. These are on the government’s fiscal year calendar, which goes from October to September, so this report covers the last quarter of 2008. The Q1 2009 reports explains a few (though not the most serious) 2008-related phone dragnet problems and then reveals the discovery of the alert list, which technically happened in Q2 2009.

Now, it may be that the IOB received other notice of the earlier violations. Or it may be that the NSA still treated them under the “reported to the President” loophole created for Stellar Wind. (That loophole was still in the reports in 2013, so they could still be using it today!)

In any case, with the notice of the phone dragnet orders in Q1 2009, NSA also listed the Internet dragnet, but said it had nothing to report.

Before its discussion of the known systemic phone dragnet problems, the Q2 2009 report includes this violation which doesn’t appear in this form (it may well be described in different fashion) in the other phone dragnet discussions.

On 7 January 2009, while searching collection [redacted] NSA analysts found BR FISA data included in the query results. Of the [redacted] selectors used in queries, only [redacted] had been approved under the reasonable articulable suspicion (RAS) standard. Although the numbers were associated with a foreign target, the selectors had not been approved for call chaining in the BR FISA data. The analyst did not know that approval must be sought for BR FISA[redacted–note, not space] call chaining. No data was retained, and no reports were issued.

I find it interesting because that’s precisely where the problem with the phone dragnet stemmed from: BR FISA data had gotten thrown into the EO 12333 data without any technical controls or markings. Indeed, it’s possible this is how the phone dragnet problems were first discovered.

It then has a 3 paragraph description of the phone dragnet problems. Read more →

Some Torture Facts

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At the request of some on Twitter, I’m bringing together a Twitter rant of some facts on torture here.

1) Contrary to popular belief, torture was not authorized primarily by the OLC memos John Yoo wrote. It was first authorized by the September 17, 2001 Memorandum of Notification (that is, a Presidential Finding) crafted by Cofer Black. See details on the structure and intent of that Finding here. While the Intelligence Committees were briefed on that Finding, even Gang of Four members were not told that the Finding authorized torture or that the torture had been authorized by that Finding until 2004.

2) That means torture was authorized by the same Finding that authorized drone killing, heavily subsidizing the intelligence services of countries like Jordan and Egypt, cooperating with Syria and Libya, and the training of Afghan special forces (the last detail is part of why David Passaro wanted the Finding for his defense against abuse charges — because he had been directly authorized to kill terror suspects by the President as part of his role in training Afghan special forces).

3) Torture started by proxy (though with Americans present) at least as early as February 2002 and first-hand by April 2002, months before the August 2002 memos. During this period, the torturers were operating with close White House involvement.

4) Something happened — probably Ali Soufan’s concerns about seeing a coffin to be used with Abu Zubaydah — that led CIA to ask for more formal legal protection, which is why they got the OLC memos. CIA asked for, but never got approved, the mock burial that may have elicited their concern.

5) According to the OPR report, when CIA wrote up its own internal guidance, it did not rely on the August 1, 2002 techniques memo, but rather a July 13, 2002 fax that John Yoo had written that was more vague, which also happened to be written on the day Michael Chertoff refused to give advance declination on torture prosecutions.

6) Even after CIA got the August 1, 2002 memo, they did not adhere to it. When they got into trouble — such as when they froze Gul Rahman to death after hosing him down — they went to John Yoo and had him freelance another document, the Legal Principles, which pretend-authorized these techniques. Jack Goldsmith would later deem those Principles not an OLC product.

7) During both the August 1, 2002 and May 2005 OLC memo writing processes, CIA lied to DOJ (or provided false documentation) about what they had done and when they had done it. This was done, in part, to authorize the things Yoo had pretend-authorized in the Legal Principles.

8) In late 2002, then SSCI Chair Bob Graham made initial efforts to conduct oversight over torture (asking, for example, to send a staffer to observe interrogations). CIA got Pat Roberts, who became Chair in 2003, to quash these efforts, though even he claims CIA lied about how he did so.

9) CIA also lied, for years, to Congress. Here are some details of the lies told before 2004. Even after CIA briefed Congress in 2006, they kept lying. Here is Michael Hayden lying to Congress in 2007

10) We do know that some people in the White House were not fully briefed (and probably provided misleading information, particularly as to what CIA got from torture). But we also know that CIA withheld and/or stole back documents implicating the White House. So while it is true that CIA lied to the White House, it is also true that SSCI will not present the full extent of White House (read, David Addington’s) personal, sometimes daily, involvement in the torture.

11) The torturers are absolutely right to be pissed that these documents were withheld, basically hanging them out to dry while protecting Bush, Cheney, and Addington (and people like Tim Flanigan).

12) Obama’s role in covering up the Bush White House’s role in torture has received far too little attention. But Obama’s White House actually successfully intervened to reverse Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s attempt to release to ACLU a short phrase making it clear torture was done pursuant to a Presidential Finding. So while Obama was happy to have CIA’s role in torture exposed, he went to great lengths, both with that FOIA, with criminal discovery, and with the Torture Report, to hide how deeply implicated the Office of the President was in torture.

Bonus 13) John Brennan has admitted to using information from the torture program in declarations he wrote for the FISA Court. This means that information derived from torture was used to scare Colleen Kollar-Kotelly into approving the Internet dragnet in 2004.

The FBI PRTT Documents: The Paragraph 31 PCTDD Technique

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I’ve been working my way through a series of documents in EPIC’s FOIA for FISA PRTT documents. This is the last of a series of posts where I unpack the Internet dragnet documents. This post tracks what the reports to Congress reveal (largely about the language the government used to hide programs). And this post shows that the government probably used combined PRTT and Section 215 orders to get real-time cell location. The last chunk of documents withheld pertain to what I’ll call “the Paragraph 31” technique, after the entirely redacted paragraph in the first David Hardy declaration describing it. The technique is some application of what gets treated as Post Cut-Through Dialed Digits (PCTDD), those digits a person enters after being connected to a phone number, which might include phone tree responses, credit card information, or password information.

The PCTDD DIOG section withheld

We know Paragraph 31 pertains to PCTDD because one of the documents withheld — described as document 1 in the first Hardy declaration — is a section of the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide that pertains to PCTDD.

The first document is comprised of pages 186-189 of the DIOG. The DIOG is a manual used by FBI Special Agents in conducting and carrying out investigations. This particular excerpt of the DIOG provides a step-by-step guide in assisting Special Agents in determining whether to utilize a specific method in collecting information such as (1) when to use the method and technique; (2) factors to consider when making this determination; (3) how to go about using the specific method and technique; and (4) the type of information that can be gleaned from it

The paragraph cites paragraph 31, so we know it’s the same method. As reflected by the Vaughn Index, the pages in question appear to be from the 2008 DIOG, not the 2011 one. The pagination of the two documents reinforces that. There’s no way to work the pagination of the 2011 DIOG to land in the PRTT section, whereas those page numbers do point to the PRTT section in the 2008 DIOG. The section in question starts at PDF 79. The key unredacted part reads,

The definition of both a pen register device and a trap and trace device provides that the information collected by these devices “shall not include the contents of any communication.” See 18 U.S.C. § 3127(3) and (4). In addition, 18 U.S.C. § 3121(c) makes explicit the requirement to “use technology reasonably available” that restricts the collection of information “so as not to include the contents of any wire or electronic communications.” “Content” includes any information concerning the substance, purport, or meaning of a communication. See 18 U.S.C. §2510(8). When the pen register definition is read in conjunction with the limitation provision, however, it suggests that although a PR/TT device may not be used for the express purpose of collecting content, the incidental collection of content may occur despite the use of “reasonably available” technology to minimize, to the extent feasible, any possible over collection while still allowing the device to collect all of the dialing and signaling information authorized.

In addition to this statutory obligation, DOJ has issued a directive in [redacted half line in 2011 DIOG] to all DOJ agencies requiring that no affirmative investigative use may be made of PCTDD incidentally collected that constitutes content, except in cases of emergency–to prevent an immediate danger of death, serious physical injury, or harm to the national security.

The criminal context of FBI’s PCTDD FISA usage

As with the “hybrid” use of PRTT and toll record orders, the concern about PCTDD may have had some tie to criminal proceedings.

On May 24, 2002, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson issued a directive on “avoiding collection and investigative use of content in the operation of Pen Registers.” It explicitly said that FISA was “outside the scope of this Memorandum.”

In 2006 and 2007, the government applied for Pen Registers in EDNY, including PCTDD. The magistrate judge denied the request for PCTDD as content, which led to a process of reconsideration and further briefing, including amicus briefs from EFF and Federal Defenders of NY. [Update: I’ve been reliably informed that Kollar-Kotelly’s request was a response to a MJ Stephen Smith ruling issued in Texas in July 2006.]

During this period, on August 7, 2006, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered briefing in docket PRTT 06-102 on how FBI was fulfilling its obligation, apparently under the 2002 DOJ directive FBI maintained did not apply to FISA, not to affirmatively use PCTDD for any investigative purpose.  PDF 39-40

Judge Kotelly has ordered the FBI to submit a report no later than September 25 (2006). This report must contain:

(1) an explanation of how the FBI is implementing its obligation to make no affirmative investigative use, through pen register authorization, of post-cut-through digits that do not constitute call dialing, routing, addressing or signaling information, except in a rare case in order to prevent an immediate danger of death, serious physical injury or harm to the National Security, addressing in particular: a) whether post-cut-through digits obtained via FISA pen register surveillance are uploaded into TA, Proton, IDW, EDMS, TED, or any other FBI system; and b) if so what procedures are in place to ensure that no affirmative investigative use is made of postcut-through digits that do not constitute call dialing, routing, addressing or signaling information, including whether such procedures mandate that this information be deleted from the relevant system.

(2) an explanation of what procedures are in place to ensure that the Court is notified, as required pursuant to the Courts Order in the above captioned matter, whenever the government decides to make affirmative investigative use of post-cut-through digits that do not constitute call dialing, routing, addressing or signaling information in order to prevent an immediate danger of death, serious physical injury, or harm to the national security.

At the time, at least some of FBI’s lawyers believed that for FISA Pen Registers, FBI retained all the PCTDD. PDF 38

When DSC 3000 is used for a FISA collection, doesn’t the DCS 3000 pass all to the [redacted](DSC 5000) including the PCTDD–in other words for FISAs the DCS3000 does NOT use the default of not recoding [sic] the PCTTD???? [sic]

This report — dated September 25, 2006 — appears to be the report Kollar-Kotelly requested. It implores her not to follow [redacted], which appears to is a reference the EDNY court Texas decision.

That report is followed by this one — which was submitted on November 1, 2006 — which appears to propose new procedures to convince her to permit the FBI to continue to collect and retain PCTDD.

In other words, during the early part of the period when the FBI was bumping up against a criminal standard prohibiting the retention of PCTDD under protection of minimization procedures, Judge Kollar-Kotelly required FBI to prove its existing (and new) minimization procedures to ensure they were strong enough to comport with the law.

The original PCTDD question was still burbling away in EDNY, however, and in November 2008 Judge Nicholas Garaufis mooted the question of PCTDD based on the government’s representation that it would delete the information when it received it.

On June 11, 2008, the Government applied to Judge Orenstein for authorization to install and use a pen register and trap and trace device on two wireless telephones (the “SUBJECT WIRELESS TELEPHONES”). (Gov. Br. at 5.) The Government requested, inter alia, an Order authorizing the recording of post-cut-through dialed digits (“PCTDD”) via pen register. PCTDD are digits dialed from a telephone after a call is connected or “cut through.” In the Matter of Applications, 515 F.Supp.2d 325515F.Supp.2d325, 328 (E.D.N.Y.2007) *204 (“Azrack Opinion”). Because PCTDD sometimes transmit information such as bank account numbers and Social Security numbers which constitutes “contents of communications,” and because the Pen Register Statute defines a pen register as “a device or process which records or decodes dialing … or signaling information… provided, however, that such information shall not include the contents of any communication,” 18 U.S.C. § 3127(3) (emphasis added), Judge Orenstein denied the Government’s request for authorization to record PCTDD. The Government subsequently appealed Judge Orenstein’s denial of its request to this court, asking this court to authorize it to record PCTDD.

On September 23, 2008, in response to the court’s request for clarification of the specifics of its request for pen register data, the Government informed the court that the law enforcement agency involved in the investigation of the SUBJECT WIRELESS TELEPHONES will configure its computers so as to immediately delete all PCTDD received from the provider. (Government’s September 23, 2008 letter to the court.) Therefore, as the pen registers sought by the Government in this application will not “record” or “decode” content within the meaning of the Pen Register Statute, the legal question presented by the Government in its appeal is moot.[3] As the Government is entitled to the information it now seeks, the court directs the Magistrate Judge to issue, if still necessary, an order authorizing the installation of the pen registers on the SUBJECT WIRELESS TELEPHONES that is consistent with the representations in the Government’s letter of September 23, 2008.

Note that Garaufis also embraced the hybrid theory other judges had started rejecting in 2005, which I believe lies behind the BRPR orders.

Behind the scenes, there appear to have been changes to the way the government dealt with PCTDD information under FISA collection. This August 17, 2009 Memo of Law appears to revisit the issue (perhaps in light of the final ruling in EDNY in 2008 and/or as part of the PRTT review of that year). It argues over some of the same Pat Leahy language as the other documents do. It appears to refer to the November 2006 document. It discusses the May 24, 2002 over-collection directive as applying only to the criminal context.

But it also describes some changes implemented in July and December 2008 (it’s possible there are references to revisions to the DIOG in this section).

That’s one reason why several changes between the 2008 and 2011 DIOG are of interest. In addition to the redacted passage on DOJ’s 2002 directive (above) probably affirmatively asserting now that the directive does not apply to FISA, there are two other changes in the Pen Register that are unclassified between the two DIOGs. First, the 2011 one reflects a 2010 change in FISC procedure (see Procedure 15 and Section 18 .6.9.5.1.4), no longer permitting (or requiring) the sequestration of over-collected information at FISC. In addition, the 2011 DIOG appears to show an extra use of PCTDD collection (showing 7 total across subsections A and B, as compared to 6).

What becomes clear reviewing the public records (these reports say this explicitly) is that the 2002 DOJ directive against retaining PCTDD applies to the criminal context, not the FISA context. When judges started challenging FBI’s authority to retain PCTDD that might include content under criminal authorities, FBI fought for and won the authority to continue to treat PCTDD using minimization procedures, not deletion. And even the standard for retention of PCTDD that counts as content permits the affirmative investigative use of incidentally collected PCTDD that constitutes content in cases of “harm to the national security.”

Whateverthefuck that is.

Which is, I guess, how FBI still has 7 uses of PCTDD, including one new one since 2008.

The details on the withheld documents

Which brings us to the remaining documents on Paragraph 31 the FBI is withholding. In addition to the DIOG and a Westlaw print out (which I would guess is the opinion in the criminal case), there are 4 memoranda and one report described in the first Hardy Declaration, as well as a PRBR motion to retain data that I wouldn’t be surprised if FBI used to request the authority to retain, under FISA authority, the materials it said it wouldn’t obtain in the EDNY case (in any case, it requested approval to retain some data collected under a hybrid PRBR order). One of the documents in that bunch includes both electronic surveillance (the collection of content) and the use of a pen register (ostensibly non-content).  The second Hardy declaration includes 9 FISC orders pertaining to the method, along with a District Court order pertaining to it (which might be that 2008 opinion).

Significantly, 4 of those orders are Primary Orders, suggesting multiple Secondary Orders to providers of some sort, and a program of some bulk. And those documents are only the ones that got shared with Congress, so only the ones that reflected some significant decision.

The declarations don’t tell us much about how they’re using this PCTDD information. Here are the most informative passages (some of which show up in both).

The ability to conduct electronic surveillance through the installation and use of pen registers and trap and trace devices has proven to be an indispensable investigative tool and continues to serve as a building block in many of the FBI’s counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations. The specific type of electronic surveillance has resulted in numerous benefits by providing the FBI valuable substantive information in connection with national security investigations. The information gathered has either confirmed prior investigative information or has contributed to the development of additional investigative information, and has been invaluable in providing investigative leads.

[snip]

[T]he release of such information would reveal actual intelligence activities and methods used by the FBI against specific targets who are the subject of foreign counterintelligence investigations or operations; identify a target of a foreign counterintelligence investigation; or disclose the intelligence gathering capabilities of the activities or methods directed at specific targets.

[snip]

The information protected under this [7(E)] exemption contain details about sensitive law enforcement techniques used by the FBI in gathering valuable intelligence information in current and prospective criminal, counterintelligence, and national security investigations.

What I find most interesting about these declarations, however, is the near total (maybe even total) silence about terrorism. These are used for “national security” and “counterintelligence” investigations, but nothing explicitly described as a counterterrorism investigation.

While I can see some especially useful applications of PCTDD information in the CI context — imagine how valuable it would be to know the voicemail passwords of Chinese targets, for example — I also wonder whether the FBI is using this stuff primarily for cyber targets. Whatever it is, the government has apparently argued for and maintained the authority to retain PCTDD data in the FISA context, with the ability to use actual content in the event of possible harm to national security.

No One Benefits from a One (Wo)Man FISC Court

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Over at Just Security, Steve Vladeck takes issue with yet another proposal for a Drone Court.

A new chapter by Professors Amos Guiora and Jeffrey Brand–“Establishment of a Drone Court: A Necessary Restraint on Executive Power“–has been receiving a fair amount ofmedia and blog attention. The chapter differs from some prior calls for a “drone court” in seeing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) not as a model, but rather as a lesson in what not to do–a “non-starter,” in the authors’ words. Nevertheless, the chapter argues, we need a special “Operational Security Court” (OSC) comprised of already sitting Article III district and circuit judges (selected through a far different process from FISC judges) to strike the right balance between the government’s need to protect operational (and national) security and the rights of those targeted for drone operations to contest their targeting (through security cleared lawyers) ex ante.

My take on the proposal is slightly different from Vladeck’s. I take it as a proposal for a Sparkle Pony. The proper response to such a proposal is to point out all the reasons why we can’t have Sparkle Ponies. But I would end up largely where Valdeck is, looking at all the reasons FISC is failing its task, especially now that it has been blown up beyond proportion in the wake of President Bush’s illegal spy program. And Vladeck’s solution — to ensure people can sue after the fact — is a reasonable start.

That said, Vladeck asks an important question.

Finally, there’s the question of why an entire new court(the “OSC”) is needed at all. What’s wrong with giving the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia exclusive original jurisdiction over these proceedings–as the Supreme Court has effectively provided in the secrecy-laden Guantánamo habeas cases? Even if one believes that ex ante judicial review of drone strikes is constitutionally and pragmatically feasible, why reinvent the wheel when there are perfectly good judges sitting in a perfectly good courthouse replete with experience in highly classified proceedings? 

In my insistence it’s time to get rid of FISC, I’ve been thinking the same thing: why can’t we just have all the DC District judges rule on these cases?

The biggest drawback I see in this is that it would mean the judges presiding over national security criminal cases — not even Espionage cases, which are more likely to be charged in EDVA — are not the same who preside over the National Security Court decisions. Just as an example, I think it important that a bunch of judges in Portland, OR are presiding over some of the more interesting national security cases. And for that reason I’m fascinated that Michael Mosman, who is presiding over the case of Reaz Qadir Khan, is also a FISC judge. While I don’t think Mosman brings a neutral approach to the Khan case, I do think he may be learning things about how the FISC programs work in practice.

But both sides of this debate, both the government and reformers, could point to Vladeck’s proposal as a vast improvement. That’s because it gets us out of what has become a series of one person courts.

Partly for logistical reasons (and potentially even for security reasons), rather than a court of 11 judges presiding over these expanding counterterrorism programs, we’ve actually had a series of single judges: Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who presided over at least the Internet dragnet, some other important Pen Register rulings, and several initial Protect America Act reviews, then mostly Reggie Walton presiding over the Yahoo challenge and then the phone and Internet dragnet fixes, then John Bates presiding over the upstream fix (as well as reauthorizing and expanding the Internet dragnet). Presumably, presiding judge Thomas Hogan has assumed the role of one person court (though I suspect Rosemary Collyer, who is next in line to be presiding in any case, takes on some of this work).

And while I’d find great fault with some of Kollar-Kotelly and Bates’ rulings (and even some of Walton’s), I suspect the NatSec establishment was thrilled to see the end of  Walton on the court, because he dared to consider questions thoughtfully and occasionally impose limits on the intelligence programs.

No one benefits from having what works out to be primarily one judge review such massive programs. But that’s what we’ve effectively got now, and because it operates in secret, there’s no apparent check on really boneheaded decisions by these individual judges.

There are a lot of reasons to replace the FISC with review by normal judges, and one of them is that the current system tends to concentrate the review of massive spying programs in the hands of one or two judges alone.

DOJ Changed Its FISA Disclosure Policy on January 10, 2008

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While wandering through FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide today, I realized that on January 10, 2008, DOJ changed its FISA use policy (at PDF 104) . In a memo announcing the new policy, Ken Wainstein explained that “this revised policy includes significant changes from current practice that will streamline the process for using FISA information in certain basic investigative processes, while still ensuring that important intelligence and law enforcement interests are protected.”

It then lists 4 (entirely redacted) investigative processes for which FISA information could be used.

While I’m sure this letter has been reported in the past, it has far greater significance given several newly disclosed facts.

First, just days earlier, Attorney General Michael Mukasey reversed existing policy by permitting NSA to contact chain on US person data in EO 12333-collected information. That decision would make it far easier to identify existing communications implicating Americans.

Even more importantly, this move took place just weeks before the government revamped the PRISM program, such that FBI had a much more central role in the process and obtained selected PRISM material directly. In effect, Mukasey made it easier to use FISA information just weeks before FBI started getting a lot more of it, and getting it directly.

This change adds to the already significant evidence that the FBI started back door searches on PRISM information with that change in January 2008.

It’s interesting, too, that FBI had already decided to make these changes before Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled the initial Protect America Act certifications met the statute on January 15, 2008. There’s growing evidence that DOJ long planned to involve FBI more centrally, but waited on her decision (and the day the PAA was originally scheduled to expire) to roll out the change formally.

One more critical detail: The letter indicated that the new policy would be tied to a new interpretation of information “derived from” FISA.

The revised policy requires that it be reviewed one year from its effective date and requires NSD to issue guidance on what constitutes information “derived from” FISA collections by March 31, 2008.

Note that that initial annual review date would mean Bush’s DOJ would conduct such a review in the last days before Obama came in.

In any case, the redacted parts of this letter are probably, arguably, unclassified and FOIAble at this point, since PCLOB has revealed that FBI uses its back door searches for assessments.

Yes, the Government Does Spy Under Grandfathered Approvals

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Charlie Savage is catching no end of shit today because he reported on a provision in the PATRIOT Act (one I just noticed Tuesday, actually, when finding the sunset language for something else) that specifies ongoing investigations may continue even after a sunset.

The law says that Section 215, along with another section of the Patriot Act, expires on “June 1, 2015, except that former provisions continue in effect with respect to any particular foreign intelligence investigation that began before June 1, 2015, or with respect to any particular offense or potential offense that began or occurred before June 1, 2015.”

Michael Davidson, who until his retirement in 2011 was the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top staff lawyer, said this meant that as long as there was an older counterterrorism investigation still open, the court could keep issuing Section 215 orders to phone companies indefinitely for that investigation.

“It was always understood that no investigation should be different the day after the sunset than it was the day before,” Mr. Davidson said, adding: “There are important reasons for Congress to legislate on what, if any, program is now warranted. But considering the actual language of the sunset provision, no one should believe the present program will disappear solely because of the sunset.”

Mr. Davidson said the widespread assumption by lawmakers and executive branch officials, as well as in news articles in The New York Times and elsewhere, that the program must lapse next summer without new legislation was incorrect.

The exception is obscure because it was recorded as a note accompanying Section 215; while still law, it does not receive its own listing in the United States Code. It was created by the original Patriot Act and was explicitly restated in a 2006 reauthorization bill, and then quietly carried forward in 2010 and in 2011.

Now, I’m happy to give Savage shit when I think he deserves it. But I’m confident those attacking him now are wrong.

Before I get into why, let me first say that to some degree it is moot. The Administration believes that, legally, it needs no Congressional authorization to carry out the phone dragnet. None. What limits its ability to engage in the phone dragnet is not the law (at least not until some courts start striking the Administration’s interpretation down). It’s the willingness of the telecoms to cooperate. Right now, the government appears to have a significant problem forcing Verizon to fully cooperate. Without Verizon, you don’t have an effective dragnet, which is significantly what USA Freedom and other “reform” efforts are about, to coerce or entice Verizon’s full cooperation without at the same time creating a legal basis to kill the entire program.

That said, not only is Davidson likely absolutely correct, but there’s precedent at the FISA Court for broadly approving grandfathering claims that make dubious sense.

As Davidson noted elsewhere in Savage’s story, the FBI has ongoing enterprise investigations that don’t lapse — and almost certainly have not lapsed since 9/11. Indeed, that’s the investigation(s) the government appears, from declassified documents, to have argued the dragnet is “relevant” to. So while some claim this perverts the definition of “particular,” that’s not the word that’s really at issue here, it’s the “relevant to” interpretation that USAF leaves intact, effectively ratifying (this time with uncontested full knowledge of Congress) the 2004 redefinition of it that everyone agrees was batshit insane. If you want to prevent this from happening, you need to affirmatively correct that FISA opinion, not to mention not ratify the definition again, which USAF would do (as would a straight reauthorization of PATRIOT next year).

And as I said, there is precedent for this kind of grandfathering at FISA, all now in the public record thanks to the declassification of the Yahoo challenge documents (and all probably known to Davidson, given that he was a lead negotiator on FISA Amendments Act which included significant discussion about sunset procedures, which they lifted from PAA.

For starters, on January 15, 2008, in an opinion approving the certifications for Protect America Act submitted in August and September 2007, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved the grand-fathering of the earlier 2007 large content dockets based on the government’s argument that they had generally considered the same factors they promised to follow under the PAA certifications and would subject the data obtained to the post-collection procedures in the certifications. (See page 15ff)

Effectively then, this permitted them to continue collection under the older, weaker protections, under near year-long PAA certifications.

In the weeks immediately following Kollar-Kotelly’s approval of the underlying certifications (though there’s evidence they had planned the move as far back as October, before they served Directives on Yahoo), the government significantly reorganized their FAA program, bringing FBI into a central role in the process and almost certainly setting up the back door searches that have become so controversial. They submitted new certifications on January 31, 2008, on what was supposed to be the original expiration date of the PAA. As Kollar-Kotelly described in an June 18, 2008 opinion (starting at 30), that came to her in the form of new procedures received on February 12, 2008, 4 days before the final expiration date of PAA.

On February 12, 2008, the government filed in each of the 07 Dockets additional sets of procedures used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) when that agency acquires foreign intelligence information under PAA authorities. These procedures were adopted pursuant to amendments made by the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on January 31, 2008 to the certifications in the 07 Dockets.

Then, several weeks later — and therefore several weeks after PAA expired on February 16, 2008 — the government submitted still new procedures.

On March 3, 2008, the government submitted NSA and FBI procedures in a new matter [redacted]

[snip]

Because the FBI and NSA procedures submitted in Docket No. [redacted] are quite similar to the procedures submitted in the 07 Dockets, the Court has consolidated these matters for purposes of its review under 50 U.S.C. § 1805c.

For the reasons explained below, the Court concludes that it retains jurisdiction to review the above-described procedures under §1805c. On the merits, the Court finds that the FBI procedures submitted in each of the 07 Dockets, and the NSA and FBI procedures submitted in Docket No. [redacted] satisfy the applicable review for clear error under 50 U.S.C. § 1805c(b).

She regarded these new procedures, submitted well after the law had expired, a modification of existing certifications.

In all [redacted] of the above-captioned dockets, the DNI and the Attorney General authorized acquisitions of foreign intelligence information by making or amending certifications prior to February 16, 2009, pursuant to provisions of the PAA codified at 50 U.S.C. § 1805b.

She did this in part by relying on Reggie Walton’s interim April 25, 2008 opinion in the Yahoo case that the revisions affecting Yahoo were still kosher, without, apparently, considering the very different status of procedures changed after the law had expired.

The government even considered itself to be spying with Yahoo under a September 2007 certification (that is, the latter of at least two certifications affecting Yahoo) past the July 10, 2008 passage of FISA Amendments Act, which imposed additional protections for US persons.

These are, admittedly, a slightly different case. In two cases, they amount to retaining older, less protective laws even after their replacement gets passed by Congress. In the third, it amounts to modifying procedures under a law that has already expired but remains active because of the later expiration date of the underlying certificate.

Still, this is all stuff the FISC has already approved.

The FISC also maintains — incorrectly in my opinion, but I’m not a FISC judge so they don’t much give a damn — that the 2010 and 2011 PATRIOT reauthorizations ratified everything the court had already approved, even the dragnets not explicitly laid out in the law. This sunset language was public, and there’s nothing exotic about what they say. To argue the FISC wouldn’t consider these valid clauses grand-fathering the dragnet, you’d have to argue they don’t believe the 2010 and 2011 reauthorizations ratified even the secret things already in place. That’s highly unlikely to happen, as it would bring the validity of their 40ish reauthorizations under question, which they’re not going to do.

Again, I think it’s moot. The “reform” process before us is about getting Verizon to engage in a dragnet that is not actually authorized by the law as written. They’re not doing what the government would like them to do now, so there’s no reason to believe this grandfathered language would lead them to suddenly do so.

How to Fix the FISA Court … Or Not

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The government assures us that it does not maintain a database of incidentally collected information from non-targeted United States persons, and there is no evidence to the contrary. On these facts, incidentally collected communications of non-targeted United States persons do not violate the Fourth Amendment.(26)

That line, from the FISCR opinion finding the Protect America Act constitutional, gets to the core problem with the FISA Court scheme. Even in 2009, when the line was first made public, it was pretty clear the government had made a false claim to the FISA Court of Review.

Now that we know that FBI had already been given authority to keep PAA-collected content in databases that they could search at what is now called the assessment stage of investigations — warrantless searches of the content of Americans against whom the FBI has no evidence of wrong-doing — the claim remains one of the signature moments where the government got approval for a program by being less than candid to the court (the government has been caught doing so in both Title III courts and at FISC, and continues to do so).

That’s also why I find Greg McNeal’s paper on Reforming the FISC, while very important, ultimately unconvincing.

McNeal’s paper is invaluable for the way he assesses the decision — in May 2006 — to authorize the collection of all phone records under Section 215. Not only does the paper largely agree with the Democratic appointees on PCLOB that the program is not authorized by the Section 215 statute, McNeal conducts his own assessment of the government’s application to use Section 215 for that purpose.

The application does not fare well.

Moreover, the government recognized that not all records would be relevant to an investigation, but justified relevance on what could best be described as usefulness or necessity to enable the government’s metadata analysis, stating:

The Application fully satisfies all requirements of title V of FISA. In particular, the Application seeks the production of tangible things “for” an international terrorism investigation. 50 U.S.C. § 1861(a)(1). In addition, the Application includes a statement of facts demonstrating that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the business records sought are “relevant” to an authorized investigation. Id.  § 1861(b)(2). Although the call detail records of the [redacted] contain large volumes of metadata, the vast majority of which will not be terrorist-related, the scope of the business records request presents no infirmity under title V. All of the business records to be collected here are relevant to FBI investigations into [redacted] because the NSA can effectively conduct metadata analysis only if it has the data in bulk.49

The government went even further, arguing that if the FISC found that the records were not relevant, that the FISC should read relevance out of the statute by tailoring its analysis in a way that would balance the government’s request to collect metadata in bulk against the degree of intrusion into privacy interests. Disregarding the fact that the balancing of these interests was likely already engaged in by Congress when writing section 215, the government wrote:

In addition, even if the metadata from non-terrorist communications were deemed not relevant, nothing in title V of FISA demands that a request for the production of “any tangible things” under that provision collect only information that is strictly relevant to the international terrorism investigation at hand. Were the Court to require some tailoring to fit the information that will actually be terrorist-related, the business records request detailed in the Application would meet any proper test for reasonable tailoring. Any tailoring standard must be informed by a balancing of the government interest at stake against the degree of intrusion into any protected privacy interests. Here, the Government’s interest is the most compelling imaginable: the defense of the Nation in wartime from attacks that may take thousands of lives. On the other side of the balance, the intrusion is minimal. As the Supreme Court has held, there is no constitutionally protected interest in metadata, such as numbers dialed on a telephone.50

Thus, what the government asked the court to disregard the judgment of the Congress as to the limitations and privacy interests at stake in the collection of business records. Specifically, the government asked the FISC to disregard Congress’s imposition of a statutory requirement that business records be relevant, and in disregarding that statutory requirement rely on the fact that there was no constitutionally protected privacy interest in business records. The government’s argument flipped the statute on its head, as the purpose of enhancing protections under section 215 was to supplement the constitutional baseline protections for privacy that were deemed inadequate by Congress.

McNeal is no hippie. That he largely agrees and goes beyond PCLOB’s conclusion that this decision was not authorized by the statute is significant.

But as I said, I disagree with his remedy — and also with his assessment of the single source of this dysfunction.

McNeal’s remedy is laudable. He suggests all FISC decisions should be presumptively declassified and any significant FISC decision should get automatic appellate review, done by FISCR. That’s not dissimilar to a measure in Pat Leahy’s USA Freedom Act, which I’ve written about here. With my cautions about that scheme noted, I think McNeal’s remedy may have value.

The reason it won’t be enough stems from two things.

First, the government has proven it cannot be trusted with ex parte proceedings in the FISC. That may seem harsh, but the Yahoo challenge — which is the most complete view we’ve ever had of how the court works, even with a weak adversary — really damns the government’s conduct. In addition to the seemingly false claim to FISCR about whether the government held databases of incidentally collected data, over the course of the Yahoo challenge, the government,

  • Entirely restructured the program — bringing the FBI into a central role of the process — without telling Reggie Walton about these major changes to the program the challenge he was presiding over evaluated; this would be the first of 4 known times in Walton’s 7-year tenure where he had to deal with the government withholding materially significant information from the court
  • Provided outdated versions of documents, effectively hiding metadata that would have shown EO 12333, which was a key issue being litigated, was more fluid than presented to the court
  •  Apparently did not notice either FISC or FISCR about an OLC opinion — language from which was declassified right in the middle of the challenge — authorizing the President to pixie dust EO 12333 at any time without noting that publicly
  • Apparently did not provide the underlying documents explaining another significant change they made during the course of the challenge, which would have revealed how easily Americans could be reverse targeted under a program prohibiting it; these procedures were critical to FISCR’s conclusion the program was legal

In short, the materials withheld or misrepresented over the course of the Yahoo challenge may have made the difference in FISCR’s judgment that the program was legal (even ignoring all the things withheld from Yahoo, especially regarding the revised role of FBI in the process). (Note, in his paper, McNeal rightly argues Congress and the public could have had a clear idea of what Section 702 does; I’d limit that by noting that almost no one besides me imagined they were doing back door searches before that was revealed by the Snowden leaks).

One problem with McNeal’s suggestion, then, is that the government simply can’t be trusted to engage in ex parte proceedings before the FISC or FISCR. Every major program we’ve seen authorized by the court has featured significant misrepresentations about what the program really entailed. Every one! Until we eliminate that problem, the value of these courts will be limited.

But then there is the other problem, my own assessment of the source of the problem with FISC. McNeal thinks it is that Congress wants to pawn its authority off onto the FISC.

The underlying disease is that Congress wants things to operate the way that they do; Congress wants the FISC and has incentives to maintain the status quo.

Why does Congress want the FISC? Because it allows them to push accountability off to someone else. If members ofCongress are responsible for conducting oversight of secretoperations, their reputations are on the line if the operations gotoo far toward violating civil liberties, or not far enoughtoward protecting national security. However, with the FISC conducting operations, Congress has the ability to dodge accountability by claiming they have empowered a court to conduct oversight.

I don’t, in general, disagree with this sentiment in the least. The last thing Congress wants to do is make a decision that might later be tied to an intelligence failure, a terrorist attack, a botched operation. Heck, I’d add that the last thing most members of Congress serving on the Intelligence Committees would want to do is piss off the contractors whose donations provide one of the perks of the seat.

But the dysfunction of the FISC stems, in significant part, from something else.

In his paper on the phone dragnet (which partly incorporates the Internet dragnet), David Kris suggests the original decision to bring the dragnets under the FISC (in the paper he was limited by DOJ review about what he could say of the Internet dragnet, so it is not entirely clear whether he means the Colleen Kollar-Kotelly opinion that paved the way for the flawed Malcolm Howard one McNeal critiques, or the Howard one) was erroneous. Read more →