Presidential Candidates Should Declare Their Stance on "Costly Failure of the NSA’s Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance Program," Says…

National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden said Tuesday that 2020 White House candidates should publicly declare their stance on the U.S. government's "unconstitutional mass surveillance program."

Snowden made the comments following a New York Times report showing the agency's sprawling photo data collection effort was hugely expensive and largely useless.

BIG: Presidential hopefuls should be asked their position on the costly failure of the NSA's unconstitutional mass surveillance program, part of which is up for renewal on March 15th. Today's report reveals a long history of abuse & no meaningful success.https://t.co/P8s4T1WdY1

Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 25, 2020

Charlie Savage's reporting on the program under the USA Freedom Act of 2015, which is set to expire March 15, showed the suspended call records program "cost $100 million from 2015 to 2019" and produced "a single significant investigation." The Times report cited a declassified, partly censored version of a report from the congressionally-created Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

The NSA shut down the programinitially exposed by Snowden in 2013 and then modified in 2015last year.

As the Times reported,

With a judge's permission, the agency could query the system to swiftly obtain the records not only of a suspect, but of everyone with whom that suspect had been in contact.

The exponential math meant that the agency was still gathering a huge number of call and text records about Americans, however. In 2018, the agency obtained 14 court orders, but gathered 434 million call detail records involving 19 million phone numbers.

The reporting elicited swift reaction from privacy advocates.

"This notorious NSA spying programwhich vacuumed up Americans' phone records by the billioncame at huge cost in terms of both dollars and privacy, but generated only two unique leads," said Patrick Toomey, staff attorney at the ACLU's National Security Project.

"Imagine what could have been done with $100 million," quipped Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth, "other than massively invade our privacy, the US National Security Agency's bulk collection of the phone numbers we called produced only one 'significant' investigation."

Shutting down costly, intrusive, and ineffective surveillance programs makes sense. Would make even more sense not to launch them in the first place. https://t.co/jQ4noe0k1M

Jameel Jaffer (@JameelJaffer) February 25, 2020

At the cost of $100 million and phone logs from every American, the NSA's phone metadata program led to just two new intelligence reports from 2015 to 2019. Yes, *two.*

This kind of surveillance needlessly threatens all journalists and their sources. https://t.co/Z8BQ6ve3oR

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Freedom of the Press (@FreedomofPress) February 26, 2020

"Yes, it's great that NSA finally acknowledges the Section 215 call records program was a massive waste of time and money," said Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center. "But, there would be no pressure on them to fix it if not for Snowden. And the pointless invasions of American's privacy is staggering."

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the bottom line is clear: "It's time to end it."

New declassified information says what we suspected all along: the NSA's Call Detail Records program is invasive, expensive, and produces almost no actual intelligence.

It's time to end it. https://t.co/1joSdcnpQl

EFF (@EFF) February 26, 2020

House Democrats are weighing doing just that.

As The Hill reported Wednesday,

House Democrats on the Intelligence and Judiciary committees unveiled legislation this week that would repeal the NSA's authority to run the program. That bill is scheduled to get a vote in the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

As for Snowden's call to the presidential candidates, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) appears to be the only Democratic contender who's come out in opposition to the program, Sarah Lazare reported at In These Times Monday.

Lazare to referred to Sanders's tweet from Feb. 11 in which he said: "I voted against the Patriot Act in 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2015. I strongly oppose its reauthorization next month. I believe that in a democratic and constitutional form of government, we cannot sacrifice the civil liberties that make us a free country."

The leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) in November gave a three-month extension to three surveillance provisions, Lazare noted.

"By coming out now against the mass surveillance powers," she wrote, "Sanders appears to besignaling to the CPC that it should find its backbone on this issue. And those who stay silent are implicitly encouraging the opposite."

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Presidential Candidates Should Declare Their Stance on "Costly Failure of the NSA's Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance Program," Says...