NSA set for November cut-off for bulk US phone data usage

Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked details about that program in 2013, which spawned an global debate concerning the American surveillance apparatus and its capabilities that had previously been kept hidden from the public and subsequent scrutiny.

When Congress passed a law in June ending the NSA’s bulk collection of American calling records after a six-month transition, officials said they weren’t sure whether they would continue to make use of the records that had already been collected, which generally go back five years.

The assertion stated that in the course of the one hundred eighty-day transition interval required underneath the USA Freedom Act, “analytic entry to that historic metadata… will stop on November 29, 2015”.

“The telephony metadata” will be “preserved exclusively because of preservation obligations in pending civil litigation”, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced.

Last month, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court revived the program after it briefly lapsed amid a standoff on Capitol Hill involving the renewal of lapsed spying provisions of the Patriot Act. “Technical personnel” will be allowed to access the records “solely for data integrity purposes to verify the records produced” for an additional three months after access to analysts has been banned.

Below is a statement by the ODNI on the retention of Section 215 telephoney metadata.

In a nutshell, the NSA formally cedes its access to the phone metadata database on November 29 but the database will remain in existence long after that due to surrounding circumstances.

The law has given the NSA six months to wind down an existing program that swept up nearly all records from phone companies and stored the information – including phone numbers called by individuals and the duration of conversations – on government servers.

“Separately, NSA remains under a continuing legal obligation to preserve its bulk 215 telephony metadata collection until civil litigation regarding the program is resolved, or the relevant courts relieve NSA of such obligations”, the statement from the ODNI says. Though it did not specify which cases, the statement appears to refer to cases brought forward by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that have claimed the bulk surveillance program was unconstitutional and not statutorily authorized.