Obama defiant on US surveillance activities

By Geoff Dyer in Washington

Telecom network cables are pictured in Paris, on June 30, 2013. The European Union angrily demanded answers from the United States over allegations Washington had bugged its offices, the latest spying claim attributed to fugitive leaker Edward Snowden. German weekly Der Spiegel said its report, which detailed covert surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) on EU diplomatic missions, was based on confidential documents, some of which it had been able to consult via Snowden.

President Barack Obama said the US will scale back eavesdropping on  allied leaders as he ordered new safeguards on the tapping of Americans’ phone records, but he defiantly defended the security agencies in his long-awaited response to the row over US surveillance.

The US president has been under intense pressure, in particular from allies abroad, to rein in the National Security Agency following the dramatic revelations by former contractor Edward Snowden about its electronic surveillance. The latest leaks claim US spies have collected and stored over 200m text messages a day across the world.

While Mr Obama outlined a series of reforms to some programmes, his speech was seen as more of an attempt to restore confidence at home and abroad in US surveillance activities, rather than a major shake-up of the NSA. 

“The reforms I’m proposing today should give the American people greater confidence that their rights are being protected, even as our intelligence and law enforcement agencies maintain the tools they need to keep us safe,” he said in his first substantive response to the row. 

The biggest changes he announced concern the NSA programme that collects the phone call records of most Americans for five years – the subject of the first revelation by Mr Snowden and still the most controversial in the US. 

Mr Obama asked Congress and the attorney-general to look at different ways to store the phone data outside government control. He also said NSA analysts would need a court order before being able to access the database, unless the case was an emergency. 

The president acknowledged there was potential for abuse in the bulk collection programme, but insisted the basic capability was essential. US intelligence agencies have argued that NSA surveillance provides essential tools against terrorism, especially at a time when groups linked to al-Qaeda have made inroads across the Middle East and north Africa. 

The NSA’s ability to “quickly review telephone connections to assess whether a network exists is critical”, he said. The administration would also look at ways of introducing outside lawyers into the secret national security court that monitors the NSA for “novel issues of law”. 

In response to intense criticism from abroad, especially from Europe and Latin America, Mr Obama said the NSA would introduce for foreigners some of the protections that apply to Americans when their personal data are inadvertently collected by the intelligence services. “The US does not spy on ordinary people who are not a threat to our national security,” he said. 

Following a review of the way the US spies on foreign politicians, a senior administration official said Mr Obama had decided to ban the collection of surveillance on “dozens” of foreign leaders of friends and allies, unless there was a genuine national security reason. Members of staff of those leaders are not covered in the new ban.

Although the speech was partly designed to address international criticisms of the NSA, Mr Obama – who referred to “passing tensions in our foreign policy” – also said there was an element of double standards in some of the protests. 

“We know the intelligence services of other countries – including some who feign surprise over the Snowden disclosures – are accelerating programmes to listen to our conversations, intercept our emails, or compromise our systems,” he said. “There is a reason why BlackBerrys and iPhones are not allowed in the White House Situation Room.”

Mr Obama lavished praise on the intelligence agencies, including the staff at the NSA, which had “prevented multiple attacks and saved innocent lives”. 

However, his speech made no mention of the allegations the NSA has sought to subvert encryption standards in commercial software in order to make spying easier – an issue that has caused huge concern among American technology companies. 

John Podesta, one of Mr Obama’s advisers and a former White House chief of staff, is conducting a broader review of privacy issues in the era of big data, administration officials said. 

The heads of the Senate and House intelligence committees issued a joint statement praising Mr Obama’s speech. “We are pleased the president underscored the importance of using telephone metadata to rapidly identify possible terrorist plots,” said Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein and Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, who have been strong supporters of the intelligence community. 

US safeguards put spotlight on Britain’s GCHQ

President Barack Obama’s plan to bolster, albeit modestly, safeguards under US mass surveillance programmes raises the question of whether the UK, Washington’s closest intelligence partner, will follow suit.

GCHQ, Britain’s top-secret eavesdropping service, has often been at the forefront of mass-surveillance activities by the US-led “Five Eyes”, thanks in part to the UK’s privileged position as a global hub for telecoms cabling and partly because of the UK’s less rigorous legal regime. 

GCHQ’s “Tempora” programme (reportedly so-named after the Latin phrase, tempora mutantur  – times change) was alleged by the whistleblower Edward Snowden to be indiscriminately hoovering up data, including the content of telephone conversations and emails, though is said only to keep such data for three days. The programme supposedly produces larger amounts of metadata than even that extracted by the US National Security Agency.

While in the US, citizen’s rights are protected under the constitution, the UK’s approach to limiting undue intrusion by its intelligence agencies is more nebulous and often left to politicians to decide upon. 

The remit of GCHQ, the country’s well-resourced signals intelligence bureau, is established alongside those of the other security services, MI5 and SIS, under the Intelligence Services Act of 1994. 

Several other pieces of legislation affect its operations – including the Human Rights Act of 1998 and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000. The latter requires warrants to be issued by a cabinet-level secretary of state before GCHQ is permitted to perform targeted interception of communications. 

In the case of such programmes, parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee has already established that GCHQ had been authorised by the relevant cabinet minister to act. 

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014.