Every time someone in the United States dials a number on his or her cellphone or sends an email, data is collected and stored by the National Security Agency, the government’s signals intelligence arm.
Thee current and future role of the NSA will be discussed on Wednesday in a panel hosted by Conor Friedersdorf, a journalist for The Atlantic who has written extensively on intelligence and security issues. The UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations organized the debate.
Last year, former NSA employee Edward Snowden leaked classified documents that revealed the extent to which certain data, called metadata, are routinely collected, sparking backlash and debate among the public, intellectuals and government officials.
Friedersdorf said the debate will focus on the secretive nature of the NSA’s surveillance and drone programs and how it poses a threat to a democratic society. Anyone at the event can contribute to the debate, including students who attend.
“The controversy surrounding the National Security Agency’s seemingly indiscriminate mass surveillance of Americans and foreigners alike is a key topic of our time because of the broader questions it raises, questions that greatly impact our time and the way we live,” said Alexandra Lieben, deputy director of the Burkle Center, in an email statement.
Critics of the surveillance programs argue that these activities infringe on the rights to privacy and the liberties of the general public, which are fundamental tenets of democracy, Friedersdorf said.
The metadata collection began as part of the government’s war on terror after the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.
By collecting phone calls and Internet communications, the NSA tried to find links to possible terrorist cells and networks by analyzing the communication activity, said Jeffrey Simon, a political science lecturer at UCLA and an expert on terrorism and violence.
Defenders of the NSA argue that surveillance is the only way to defend against unpredictable terrorist attacks, which may be orchestrated by any sympathetic individual or group.
At the core of the surveillance controversy is the conflict between national security and the civil liberties of American citizens, who are spied on supposedly for their own protection, Friedersdorf said.
All of these issues will be discussed at the debate, along with the larger questions of how personal privacy and democracy should be defined, Lieben said.
The NSA’s surveillance has also ignited discussions regarding its legality, Friedersdorf said.
Under the Fourth Amendment, the government is allowed to seize information without a warrant from third parties such as phone companies, as long as individuals gave their information to the parties voluntarily, said John Villasenor, a UCLA professor of electrical engineering and public policy who specializes on the intersection of technology, policy and law.
The amendment, however, only applies to situations in which a third party holds the information itself, a rule called the “third-party doctrine” by legal parties, Villasenor said. In other cases in which the government seeks information from an individual party directly, a warrant must be present.
Since the 1970s when the third-party doctrine became a standard, rapid changes in technology have brought challenges to the way the Forth Amendment is applied, Villasenor said. The doctrine was established before the digital era and needs to be upgraded, he added.
Metadata refers to details such as phone numbers and the duration and time of a call, and does not include the actual content of phone conversations, Friedersdorf said.
Friedersdorf, who is a vocal critic of the NSA’s current actions, said the act of collecting and storing this data for up to five years deserves to be questioned.
Since the revelations came to light, the U.S. government has taken various steps to address the backlash and seek changes in the way it conducts surveillance.
In December, a panel appointed by President Barack Obama put forth a series of 46 policy recommendations to review the government’s surveillance activities.
Some of the recommendations moved forward last Friday, when Obama presented several proposed policy changes to the way the NSA conducts intelligence. One of the changes is a proposal to move the storage of the data collected from the government to independent third parties, such as telecom companies.
Debate over the constitutionality of the surveillance activities also came to a head when two federal judges arrived at opposite judgments on two cases last month that both challenge the constitutionality of metadata collection.
On Dec. 16, U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia said the breadth of the metadata collection cannot have a justifiable reason all the time.
Another district judge, William Pauley of the Southern District of New York, ruled that the metadata program was legal, mentioning that telephone users willingly give up their information to phone companies whenever they use their phones. Thus the NSA did not violate the law, according to legal documents released from the case.
The cases will next be heard at their respective appeals courts, and then finally the Supreme Court, where the ultimate decision will be made.