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From: stig.agermose@get2net.dk (Stig Agermose)
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 1999 00:56:39 GMT
Fwd Date: Tue, 08 Jun 1999 16:09:37 -0400
Subject: US Congress, NSA butt heads over Echelon


Source: Federal Computer Week,

http://www.fcw.com:80/pubs/fcw/1999/0531/web-nsa-6-3-99.html

Links are preceded by an asterisk.

Stig

***

JUNE 3, 1999 . . . 18:34 EDT

Congress, NSA butt heads over Echelon

BY DANIEL VERTON (*dan_verton@fcw.com)

**

Congress has squared off with the National Security Agency over
a top-secret U.S. global electronic surveillance program,
requesting top intelligence officials to report on the legal
standards used to prevent privacy abuses against U.S. citizens.

According to an amendment to the fiscal 2000 Intelligence
Authorization Act proposed last month by Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.),
the director of Central Intelligence, the director of NSA and
the attorney general must submit a report within 60 days of the
bill becoming law that outlines the legal standards being
employed to safeguard the privacy of American citizens against
Project Echelon.

Echelon is NSA's Cold War-vintage global spying system, which
consists of a worldwide network of clandestine listening posts
capable of intercepting electronic communications such as
e-mail, telephone conversations, faxes, satellite transmissions,
microwave links and fiber-optic communications traffic. However,
the European Union last year raised concerns that the system may
be regularly violating the privacy of law-abiding citizens
[*FCW, Nov. 17, 1998].

However, NSA, the supersecret spy agency known best for its
worldwide eavesdropping capabilities, for the first time in the
history of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
refused to hand over documents on the Echelon program, claiming
attorney/client privilege.

Congress is "concerned about the privacy rights of American
citizens and whether or not there are constitutional safeguards
being circumvented by the manner in which the intelligence
agencies are intercepting and/or receiving international
communications...from foreign nations that would otherwise be
prohibited by...the limitations on the collection of domestic
intelligence," Barr said. "This very straightforward
amendment...will help guarantee the privacy rights of American
citizens [and] will protect the oversight responsibilities of
the Congress which are now under assault" by the intelligence
community.

Calling NSA's argument of attorney/client privilege
"unpersuasive and dubious," committee chairman Rep. Peter J.
Goss (R-Fla.) said the ability of the intelligence community to
deny access to documents on intelligence programs could
"seriously hobble the legislative oversight process" provided
for by the Constitution and would "result in the envelopment of
the executive branch in a cloak of secrecy."


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