WASHINGTON — A government review panel warned Thursday the National Security Agency’s daily collection of Americans’ phone records is illegal and recommended President Barack Obama abandon the program and destroy the hundreds of millions of phone records it already collected.
WASHINGTON — A government review panel warned Thursday the National Security Agency’s daily collection of Americans’ phone records is illegal and recommended President Barack Obama abandon the program and destroy the hundreds of millions of phone records it already collected.
The recommendations by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board go further than Obama is willing to accept and increase pressure on Congress to make changes.
The panel’s 234-page report included dissents from two of the board’s five members — former Bush administration national security lawyers who recommended the government continue collecting the phone records. The board described key parts of its report to Obama earlier this month before he announced his plans last week to change surveillance activities.
In addition to concluding the daily collection of phone records was illegal, the board also determined the practice was ineffective.
“We have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation,” it said, and added, “We are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack.”
It said the NSA should instead seek individual records relevant to terror cases.
