Revelations of what some decry as an Orwellian US surveillance system sent a chill through Congress Friday, with divided lawmakers set to revive debate over how to balance personal liberty with national security.
Two damning exposes within a 24-hour period have laid bare the extent to which President Barack Obama’s intelligence apparatus is scooping up enormous amounts of personal data — on telephone calls, emails, locations, website visits — on millions of Americans and foreigners.
The outrage has been loud and swift, with Democrats and Republicans demanding explanations from the administration and civil liberties groups crying foul over the Big Brother-type reach of government.
“Now we’re going to have a real debate in the Congress and in the country, and that is long overdue,” said Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, a Senate Intelligence Committee member who last year wrote Attorney General Eric Holder warning of the dangers of overly zealous data-gathering on innocent Americans.
But exactly how such a public debate will happen when the nitty-gritty is necessarily shrouded in secrecy remains up in the air.
When Wyden was asked what limitations he would like to see put in place, he retorted: “That’s thoroughly classified.”
Speaking in California, Obama himself said he welcomed a public debate on the tradeoff between national security and people’s privacy. But he warned the programs had previously been kept under wraps to avoid tipping off America’s enemies.
“I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a society,” he said in San Jose.
Three senior Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have called for oversight hearings, and Republican Senator John McCain, a national security hawk, said he would support such hearings if agencies had “blanket” orders to spy on millions of Americans.
Some lawmakers have defended the intelligence agencies’ data mining, with Senator Lindsey Graham, a frequent Obama critic, saying the government would be “crazy” not to broadly gather such information that he and the White House agree is vital to counterterrorism efforts.
“It’s a difficult balancing act for our country in the post 9/11 era and one that we continue to struggle with,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, said.
“How do you balance the privacy rights and expectations of the American public with the desire to protect the American people against attacks and plots?”
Several lawmakers in recent years have been briefed on the programs, whose outlines were green-lighted in the USA Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) approved after the terrorist attacks of 2001.
The legislation was extended and broadened by Congress in subsequent years.
What lies ahead could be a contentious debate over the laws’ future, and that may pit Democrat against Democrat and Republican against Republican.
Several Republicans, whose party is often seen as giving paramount importance to national security issues, and whose last president George W. Bush launched a warrantless wiretap program, have warned that the current broad collection of personal data is an alarming overreach by the administration.
Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, who authored the Bush-era Patriot Act in 2001, said he was “extremely troubled” by the nature of the surveillance first detailed in reports by London’s The Guardian and The Washington Post and now confirmed by the government.
“While I believe the Patriot Act appropriately balanced national security concerns and civil rights, I have always worried about potential abuses,” he said in a statement.
“Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American.”
Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, whose Democratic Party enshrines civil liberties, vociferously defended the programs as legal and necessary counterterrorism tools, but she acknowledged a congressional fight may lie ahead.
“Now if we can do it another way, we’re looking to do it another way,” she added. “We’d like to. If we can’t, we can’t.”
Privacy vs national security: spy cases rekindle debate
