June 06, 2013 08:22 AM UTC

Revealed: What Mark Udall Was Warning You About

• 11 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Today's statement from Sen. Mark Udall:

"The government's collection of millions of Americans' phone records is the type of surveillance I have long said would shock the public if they knew about it. We must strike the right balance between keeping Americans safe and protecting constitutional rights. As the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee acknowledged this morning, members of the committee have been briefed on this program. As a member of this committee, I have long been concerned that there are 'secret' interpretations of the law that the American people deserve to know about. This is why I have fought to amend the PATRIOT Act — and raised public concerns at every juncture.

"There are many ways to protect our nation, and one of the most important ways is to ensure the integrity of our constitutional liberties and that we have a transparent government that is accountable to the people it serves.

"The American people need to know how the president interprets his authorities under the PATRIOT Act, and I expect the president to uphold his commitment to transparency in the State of the Union address and his recent national-security speech. Once the American people understand how this law has been interpreted, I am certain they will join me in pushing to immediately change it."

—–

ABC News reports:

The Obama administration has been quietly collecting millions of telephone records from U.S. Verizon customers under a top-secret court order first obtained in late April, according to British newspaper The Guardian.

A copy of the classified order, posted Wednesday on the paper's website, reveals that Verizon has been required to provide to the National Security Agency on an "ongoing, daily basis" information on all phone calls made through its systems.

The order was granted April 25 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees secret government requests for private information that might help identify suspected terrorists or foreign nationals in the United States. It expires July 19.

The order, which was obtained 10 days after the Boston Marathon bombings, did not identify intended targets or the rationale for casting such a wide net.

More explanation from Talking Points Memo:

The information is classed as “metadata”, or transactional information, rather than communications, and so does not require individual warrants to access. The document also specifies that such “metadata” is not limited to the aforementioned items. A 2005 court ruling judged that cell site location data – the nearest cell tower a phone was connected to – was also transactional data, and so could potentially fall under the scope of the order.

While the order itself does not include either the contents of messages or the personal information of the subscriber of any particular cell number, its collection would allow the NSA to build easily a comprehensive picture of who any individual contacted, how and when, and possibly from where, retrospectively.

It appears that this order was made based on legal interpretations of the PATRIOT Act that have been in place in one form or another since the administration of George W. Bush–but it's important to recognize that President Barack Obama, after having campaigned to end (or at least reform) these questionable intrusions into the privacy of American citizens in the name of "national security," has continued and in some cases expanded them.

And as our title suggests, there is an important Colorado connection to this story. 

The court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, about the scope of the Obama administration’s surveillance activities.

For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on “secret legal interpretations” to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be “stunned” to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.

Because those activities are classified, the senators, both members of the Senate intelligence committee, have been prevented from specifying which domestic surveillance programs they find so alarming. But the information they have been able to disclose in their public warnings perfectly tracks both the specific law cited by the April 25 court order as well as the vast scope of record-gathering it authorized.

We took note of Sen. Mark Udall's warnings about this program well over a year ago. Udall has consistently been at the forefront on surveillance issues, and very much on the side of protecting the privacy rights of American citizens. He has been hampered in his ability to sound the alarm about the problems with the program because everything about it, including the legal opinions justifying it and the orders permitting it, are classified. Politico:

“While I cannot corroborate the details of this particular report, this sort of wide-scale surveillance should concern all of us and is the kind of government overreach I’ve said Americans would find shocking,” Udall told POLITICO. “As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, it’s why I will keep fighting for transparency and appropriate checks on the surveillance of Americans.”

FOX 31's Eli Stokols reports speculation in Washington that Udall's office may have even helped leak this report to the British newspaper that broke the story. Whatever the truth of that may be, and obviously we have no way of knowing either way, it's clear that Sen. Udall is part of a quiet, but very important struggle to balance national security with the privacy rights constitutionally guaranteed to every American citizen.

And regardless of who is in the Oval Office, Udall remains on the side most citizens will greatly prefer.