Don’t renew the program of bulk collection of...

Don’t renew the program of bulk collection of telephony metadata, said 27 privacy advocates, civil liberties groups and accountability organizations in a letter sent Tuesday to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder (http://bit.ly/1r1GHCL). “The Section 215 Bulk Telephony Metadata Program is unconstitutional and violates the plain text of Section 215 and the purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ('FISA').” The current order for Section 215 collection expires Friday, said the letter. “The program is not effective. It should end.” Shortly after Obama ordered limitations and enhanced oversight of the government’s surveillance programs, including Section 215 (CD Jan 21 p1), the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board called for an end to the program altogether (CD Jan 24 p5). The program “has been misused,” the letter said. Such misuse includes analysts’ conducting “manual searches in violation of court orders” and the NSA’s disseminating “call records without proper minimization and retained records beyond the applicable retention rules,” said the groups. They included the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy & Technology, Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Government Accountability Project, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Project on Government Oversight.