Last week, while Justin Bieber’s DUI distracted most of us, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board finally concluded that the NSA’s PRISM program is illegal.
In case you don’t remember, this is the widespread program authorizing the bulk collection of U.S. citizens’ phone and online records.
The board said the Patriot Act “does not provide an adequate basis to support this program.”
Students should stand by and support the conclusions of the PCLOB’s report because it is the first action taken by an oversight board against the NSA and the Obama administration since the government violated everyone’s privacy and civil rights.
The PRISM program puts Google and Facebook to shame in regard to the level of intrusion and privacy violation committed daily, and it makes George Orwell’s 1984 seem like a story about a utopian society.
Congress created the PCLOB in 2004 at the request of the 9/11 Commission to provide oversight of the post-9/11 surveillance and address the concerns for possible violations of privacy and civil liberties.
Then it took nine years and the Edward Snowden leak to get them to do anything relevant.
The board’s conclusion contradicts Obama’s Justice Department and more than a dozen surveillance court judges.
Although historic, the decision wasn’t unanimous. Of the five-member panel, two dissenters — formerly part of the Justice Department under George W. Bush — argued that if the program was altered, the NSA phone collection should continue.
The Board’s NSA review is the latest chapter in the debate of balancing civil liberties and security. Before the PCLOB released its review, two federal judges had already made contradictory rulings on the legality of the NSA’s PRISM.
The next step is a potential Supreme Court case, and I hope the Supreme Court doesn’t screw the American people like they did with Miranda Rights, Citizens United, and Maryland v. King.
The PCLOB review went further than Obama’s appointed review board, which suggested the NSA’s data collection bulk be moved from government hands to private hands, allowing third parties to collect data.
The Obama-appointed review board basically called for loopholes instead of reforms.
On top of calling the surveillance program illegal, the PCLOB said the program did not fulfill its intended use — helping with counter-terrorism efforts.
Twelve terrorism cases are often cited for justification of the PRISM program by the Intelligence Industrial Complex, but all were debunked.
The PCLOB concluded all of those cases involved either the lack of intelligence sharing between institutions or the corroboration of information already obtained. Therefore the NSA PRISM program has not provided a significant defense against terrorism that hasn’t already existed.
At this moment in our country’s history, Barack Obama is the worst civil liberties president since Abraham Lincoln. He reauthorized the Patriot Act in 2011, passed the NDAA — allowing the military to indefinitely detain Americans — in 2012 and has been seemingly indifferent to the massive NSA PRISM program, which violates the privacy of everyone who uses the phone or the Internet.
Republicans and Democrats have too much bipartisanship in regard to surveillance trumping civil liberties and privacy. When the presidency, House, Senate and Supreme Court were controlled by Republicans in 2001, they passed the Patriot Act. Eight years later, when Democrats controlled the presidency and Senate, Congress still didn’t repeal it.
So far, the Patriot Act has been reauthorized twice with both parties, and it will again be up for reauthorization in 2015. We as students should make the sanctioning of the Patriot Act a primary issue for the 2014 election and vote against candidates who vote away our rights rather than protect them.
Joshua Hajiakbarifini is a 24-year-old political science and economics senior from Baton Rouge.