WASHINGTON.-The Obama administration on Thursday defended its collection
of the telephone records of millions of Americans as part of U.S.
counterterrorism efforts, re-igniting a fierce debate over privacy even
as it called the program critical to warding off an attack.
The admission came after
Britain's Guardian newspaper published on Wednesday a secret court order
authorizing the collection of phone records generated by millions of
Verizon Communications customers.
Privacy
advocates blasted the order as unconstitutional government surveillance
and called for a review of the program amid renewed concerns about
intelligence-gathering efforts launched after the September 11, 2001,
attacks on the United States.
The revelation also put a spotlight on the handling of intelligence and privacy issues by President Barack Obama's
administration, which already is under fire for searching the telephone
records of Associated Press journalists and the emails and phone
records of a Fox News Channel reporter as part of its inquiries into
leaked government information.
"The
United States should not be accumulating phone records on tens of
millions of innocent Americans. That is not what democracy is about.
That is not what freedom is about," said Senator Bernie Sanders, an
independent from Vermont.
The White
House said strict controls were in place to ensure the program did not
violate civil liberties, and emphasized that the collection of data did
not include listening to the calls.
"The
intelligence community is conducting court-authorized intelligence
activities pursuant to public statute with the knowledge and oversight
of Congress," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.
Republican
Mike Rogers of Michigan, chairman of the House of Representatives
Intelligence Committee, said the program did not abuse civil liberties
and told reporters it had been used to stop a "significant" terrorist
attack within the United States, but did not give details.
"It's
called protecting America," added Senator Dianne Feinstein, a
California Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Leading
members of Congress said the program had been going on for seven years.
The White House and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said lawmakers
were fully briefed.
A senior
administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the
published court order pertained only to data such as a telephone number
or the length of a call, not the subscribers' identities or listening to
the actual calls.
The order
requires Verizon to turn over to the National Security Agency "metadata"
such as a list of numbers that called other U.S. or international
numbers as well as other information on the time and location of calls.
The NSA is the main U.S. intelligence-gathering agency tasked with
monitoring electronic communications.
"Information
of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool
in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as
it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or
suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be
engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the
United States," the senior administration official said.
