CBS: Obama Administration Defends Phone Tracking in a Submission to a Federal Court
It [Obama Administration] said storing a large volume of information is necessary to ensure that a much smaller subset of terrorist-related phone records are preserved, since phone companies store data for a limited period. The letter added that aggregating the data is necessary as well to identify records that involve different telecommunications networks.
The U.S. government has defended its use of a phone-tracking program that collects the telephone records of millions of Americans in a letter to a federal judge, saying it is a program monitored by all three branches of government that is necessary to learn the contacts of known or suspected terrorists and thwart terrorism.
The letter sent Thursday by assistant U.S. attorneys in Manhattan [Obama Appointees] said the “highly sensitive and, in many respects, still classified intelligence-collection program” required the collection and storage of a large volume of information about unrelated communications to fight terrorism.
It said that under the program, the FBI obtains authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [Kangaroo Court with Chief Justice Roberts pulling the strings] to collect data from certain telecommunications service providers.
“The program has contributed to the disruption of multiple potential terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad,” according to the letter.
Democtratic Senators Wyden and Udall disagree about how well it works. Wyden is on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.