- By
- SIOBHAN GORMAN
- ,
- CAROL E. LEE
- and
- JANET HOOK
- CONNECT
In a news conference on Friday, President Barack Obama announced plans to take measures to increase transparency on government surveillance programs. He also said the government is "not interested in spying on ordinary people."
WASHINGTON—In a striking policy shift, President Barack Obama on Friday announced plans to overhaul a secret national security court and pledged to take other measures to disclose more information about secret National Security Agency programs.
The new proposals, which Mr. Obama announced at a news conference, will likely ratchet up a national debate over the balance between the controversial spy programs and Americans' privacy.
He acknowledged that the documents revealed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden had initiated debate on surveillance and privacy issues.
The most significant proposal would restructure the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to provide for an advocate for privacy concerns. Mr. Obama is also seeking unspecified changes to the Patriot Act to increase oversight and place more constraints on the provision that permits government seizure of business records.
The moves, a concession to civil libertarians and critics of government secrecy, come as Mr. Obama was facing intensifying political pressure from his own party and the unauthorized disclosure of another round of classified information about the NSA programs.
The proposals broadly sought to build public confidence in NSA spy efforts, administration officials said, following weeks of criticism of the administration for its use of the extensive surveillance measures revealed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
The two main programs Mr. Snowden revealed that have sparked outrage among lawmakers and civil libertarians are the vast collection on Americans' phone records and a set of court-ordered partnerships with Silicon Valley companies to provide account information for foreign-intelligence investigations.
"Given the history of abuse by governments, it's right to ask questions about surveillance," Mr. Obama said. "It's not enough for me to have confidence in these programs, the American people must have confidence as well."
Given the scale of the phone-data program, he said, he understood concerns about the potential for abuse.
Mr. Obama also sought to tamp town concerns overseas about the government's extensive spying apparatus. "America is not interested in spying on ordinary people," he said.
Mr. Obama's announcement marks a significant about-face on the issue. Just this past June the president defended the program. "I think on balance, we have established a process and a procedure that the American people should feel comfortable about," Mr. Obama said at the time.
The biggest change seeks to restructure the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to provide a privacy advocate. The current court relies on the government making an application to the court and the court deciding whether to approve it.
The court has come under criticism for not only being secret but lacking any formal adversarial process to challenge government-surveillance programs. Critics note that the court received 1,789 applications to conduct electronic surveillance in 2012. The government withdrew one of those applications, and the court didn't reject any of the requests in whole or in part.
Defenders of the process say it includes exchanges between the government and the judges, saying the judges do push back and require changes to programs before they sign off on them.
While the Obama administration had defended the current court structure, administration officials said Friday that new measures were needed to restore public confidence in the court.
Mr. Obama is also seeking unspecified overhauls to the Patriot Act to increase oversight and place more constraints on the provision that permits government seizure of business records. This provision is the basis for the controversial program that collects the phone records of the vast majority of Americans.
In a move to make public more information about how some NSA surveillance programs work, both the Justice Department and NSA are slated to issue new documents to explain the legal underpinnings of surveillance efforts and provide an "operating manual" to put NSA programs in context, senior administration officials said.
NSA will also create a privacy officer post.
Mr. Obama also ordered the Director of National Intelligence to lead an outside review of U.S. surveillance efforts with an interim report due in two months and a final report due at the end of the year. Mr. Obama said the group would focus on how to ensure programs aren't abused and how such programs impact foreign policy.
An early indication of the difficulty ahead came when the spokesman for House Majority Leader John Boehner criticized Mr. Obama for inadequately defending the programs before the president had finished speaking.
"Transparency is important, but we expect the White House to insist that no reform will compromise the operational integrity of the program. That must be the president's red line, and he must enforce it," said his spokesman Brendan Buck. "Our priority should continue to be saving American lives, not saving face."
Mr. Obama's two biggest proposals will require legislation in a Congress that has struggled to complete less controversial bills. In the most potent show of force, the House only narrowly defeated an amendment that called for cutting off funds for the NSA surveillance of phone records. The amendment, by Rep. Justin Amash (R., Mich.) was rejected by a vote of 217-205, with 111 Democrats joining 94 Republicans in support of the measure.
That coalition ranged from libertarian-leaning conservatives like Mr. Amash to old-line liberals such as Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.). But the amendment faced stiff opposition from the intelligence establishment, evidenced by strong lobbying from the leader of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and NSA director Keith Alexander for members to vote against it.
Other lawmakers, including some of the White House's most reliable allies, have called for major changes in its intelligence programs. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) has introduced legislation calling for creating a "special advocate'' to argue in the FISA courts on behalf of the right to keep information private.
The bill was also supported by Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D., Ill.), who said in a recent ABC News interview, "Let's have an advocate for someone standing up for civil liberties to speak up about the privacy of Americans when they make each of these decisions.''
Mr. Obama emerged on the national political scene as a critic of secret government-surveillance programs. He has changed his position on these issues several times since his campaign for U.S. Senate in 2004.
During a 2005 Senate debate over reauthorization of the Patriot Act, Mr. Obama was one of nine senators who signed a letter expressing concern about leaders potentially abusing provisions in the act. He in particular focused on Section 215, which he and the other senators said would allow "fishing expeditions targeting innocent Americans."
White House officials said the president came to Friday's conclusion after a series of discussions with lawmakers and other officials. But the president was facing stiff resistance to his position from members of his own party in Congress.
Write to Siobhan Gorman at [email protected], Carol E. Lee at [email protected] and Janet Hook at [email protected]
