Looking For More Snooping Power

New Powers to Snoop Sought
Domestic access for CIA, Army
By Tom Brune
WASHINGTON BUREAU

May 3, 2003

Washington - The Bush administration is secretly trying to expand the investigative powers of the CIA and military, allowing them to demand personal and business records of people in this country, government officials confirmed yesterday.

If enacted, the new powers would broaden the scope under which the CIA and Defense Department could legally gather sensitive records from businesses and other organizations in the pursuit of foreign intelligence and Terrorism investigations, civil liberties advocates and experts said yesterday.

Government intelligence and law enforcement officials sought to downplay the significance of the administration's proposal yesterday, saying it probably was going nowhere.

Civil libertarians and privacy advocates called the proposal an "outrage" and complained it represents "a radical change in U.S. law" that should be openly debated as an important policy matter and not discussed only behind closed doors.

The provision containing the proposal was quietly attached to the intelligence authorization bill being considered in confidential sessions of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, officials said.

Democrats on the committee on Thursday discovered the provision, objected to it and after debate won its removal, according to officials and advocates. But the provision still could be re-introduced in the Senate committee, on the Senate floor or in the House before Congress finally approves the intelligence authorization, officials and advocates said.

Senators on the committee refused to comment.

The exact language of the proposal remains secret, but those familiar with it said it would grant authority to the CIA and the military to use administrative subpoenas known as "national security letters," which require no court approval or any public reporting and now are almost exclusively used by the FBI.

The letters, authorized by law in the 1980s, require Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and other organizations that maintain records to disclose information such as phone records, financial records and e-mail logs.

Under provisions of the Patriot Act passed in 2001, the CIA and military intelligence can gain access from the FBI to information collected through national security letters.

Under the new proposal, the CIA and military would not have to rely on the FBI. The CIA could demand records for individuals if they were relevant to not only investigations of counterterrorism and counterintelligence, but also for any foreign intelligence, including international organized crime and drug trafficking. The proposal would limit the military's use of the letters to counterterrorism.

Defense Department public affairs officials said they were not familiar with the issue.

A government intelligence official, however, downplayed the significance of the proposal, saying it grew out of a CIA response to congressional questions on what authorities would make the agency more efficient in its counterterrorism efforts. "It was an effort to streamline things and make it a little faster," the official said, saying that the CIA could get records itself rather than wait for the FBI.

Privacy and civil liberties advocates said they were concerned about the proposal's redefinition of the CIA's role, which by its charter is not to have domestic investigative, law enforcement or subpoena power.

They noted the Patriot Act blurred the lines between the FBI's authority in domestic investigations and the CIA's role in international probes.

Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies said the proposal would erase that line and in effect create two new domestic spying agencies.

James Dempsey of the privacy advocacy group Center for Democracy and Technology said, "It is an outrage that an institutional failure and a [CIA-FBI] turf war is being translated into an erosion of civil liberties."

Tim Edgar, the American Civil Liberties Union legislative director, called the proposal "dangerous and un-American."
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