White House Rejects Gov’t Report that NSA Bulk Data Grab Is Illegal and Useless

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) has released a scathing report listing off the various ways that the National Security Administration’s meta data sweeps are illegal.

“Based on the information provided to the board, including classified briefings and documentation, 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,” said the report from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

…

“Beyond such individual privacy intrusions,” wrote the majority, “permitting the government to routinely collect the calling records of the entire nation fundamentally shifts the balance of power between the state and its citizens. With its powers of compulsion and criminal prosecution, the government poses unique threats to privacy when it collects data on its own citizens.” (source)

The PCLOB site describes the board as “an independent, bipartisan agency within the executive branch established by the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act, Pub. L. 110-53, signed into law in August 2007.”

The board also rejected the notion that the NSA’s data mining program is somehow “necessary” to fix the supposed intelligence gap that occurred from a failure to detect Al Qaeda in the U.S. prior to 9/11 — something that has been claimed many times to necessitate the program in the wake of former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks that brought the pervasiveness of the U.S. government’s spying out in the open.

So even the government’s own board says the NSA’s data stealing program is essentially useless, illegal and a total threat to privacy and civil liberties that shifts too much power to the government.

Ultimately the PCLOB recommended that the NSA scrap the program altogether.

Of course, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney responded by saying the administration believes the program is totally legal. “We simply disagree with the board’s analysis on the legality of the program,” Carney said.

Carney did not make it clear which Constitution he was referring to in the way of legality, however; obviously not the United States Constitution which includes an amendment that clearly states its citizens have the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.