14 DAY TRIAL // Millions of people are demanding that the United States government put a stop to mass surveillance and particularly the collection of phone call metadata, but the White House has done nothing to this extend thus far, even after seven months since the first NSA disclosures hit the media.
Furthermore, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court took its role as a rubberstamp serious again and renewed the spy agency’s right to collect telephony metadata.
The FISA court reauthorized NSA’s phone metadata collection, as it has done many times in the past. The judges are required to do so every few months and they have already done it twice since the Snowden scandal began.
“It is the administration's view, consistent with the recent holdings of the United States District Courts for the Southern District of New York and Southern District of California, as well as the findings of 15 judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on 36 separate occasions over the past seven years, that the telephony metadata collection program is lawful,” reads a message from the Director of National Intelligence.
The announcement also mentions that the Obama administration is currently evaluating the recommendation of the review group put in charge with looking over NSA’s spying programs. In the lengthy report the panel delivered to the Obama administration, the five members advise the interruption of the metadata collection program.
One member of the panel stated that when they started out they were looking for proof that this particular spying tool the NSA uses has been key to the fight against terrorism. However, they didn’t manage to find any evidence to support what the intelligence chiefs have been saying over the past months.
The recent FISA court order is currently being reviewed and could be declassified soon, the announcement said.