Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden will block the nomination of a new director for the National Security Agency until the agency publicly discloses whether it is purchasing, storing and using electronic data on everyday Americans.
Wyden has asked the agency to disclose this information since 2021, but he’s intensifying pressure in the lead up to a vote on nominating Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh to lead the NSA, as well as a key vote from Congress this week on whether to extend or reform a major foreign surveillance law set to expire at the end of the year.
Wyden said the NSA owes it to Americans to be transparent about whether it is buying and collecting data on citizens who live in the U.S. or abroad, especially browsing histories and location data. Such data collection would amount to a warrantless search, he said, denying Americans their right to privacy and protection from unreasonable search and seizure by the government.
“I want the NSA to say publicly: ‘Here’s what we’re doing,’ so the American people know before we have a big vote on this,” he told the Capital Chronicle.
Josh Parsons, a public affairs officer for the NSA, deflected a request for a comment.
“We have nothing for you on this,” he said in an email, referring the Capital Chronicle to the National Security Council and the Department of Defense. Public affairs officials at the Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment or interview by Monday evening.
Wyden, a Democrat and Oregon’s senior U.S. senator, is the longest serving member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and said he has reason to be concerned that the NSA is collecting massive amounts of data on ordinary Americans.
Wyden said he first received an unclassified memo in January 2021 from the federal Defense Intelligence Agency that revealed it was purchasing, storing and using Americans’ location data. That agency is housed in the U.S. Department of Defense, as is the NSA. Wyden asked the Department of Defense which of its other agencies were buying and using Americans’ personal data. The department responded but designated the information as “controlled unclassified,” meaning Wyden could not share it publicly.
Wyden said the “controlled unclassified” designation has no basis in law, and that the federal agencies continue to use the guise of national security as a way to conduct mass surveillance and data collection on ordinary Americans. He has continued to push for public disclosure.
“I’m all in on going after foreign threats and bad guys overseas,” he told the Capital Chronicle in an interview, “but I’m just not going to accept that you’re going to go out and do surveillance on all these law-abiding Americans in the process.”
Utah Data Center
Wyden has teamed up with Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, to lead debate in Congress about concerns over NSA surveillance. Utah is home to the NSA’s largest electronic data storage center, the Utah Data Center. The purpose of the data storage facility is classified, but it was built as part of a national cybersecurity initiative in 2014 and is capable of storing massive amounts of email, phone records, text messages and other data. A career NSA employee turned whistleblower, William Binney, has raised the possibility in national and international media that the agency is using the center to store data on Americans, but officials have in the past denied that. The Capital Chronicle asked Wyden whether his concerns over data collection by the NSA were related to the Utah Data Center.
“I can’t get into a particular data center,” he told the Capital Chronicle. “You’re asking a good question. I can’t do it in line with the rules.”
Wyden said he will continue to press the NSA to disclose what, if anything, is being collected from Americans’ electronic devices. The absence of such information, he said, is a violation of Americans’ Fourth Amendment right to protection from unreasonable search and seizure by the government.
“Oregonians shouldn’t have to fear Big Brother with every keystroke,” he said.
A big vote
Congress is currently debating whether to reform or extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire at the end of the year. The 45-year-old act regulates physical and electronic surveillance by the government in the name of national security. Section 702, added in 2008, allows the government to collect and analyze the digital communications of non-U.S. citizens outside the United States.
But Wyden and a bipartisan coalition of 21 senators and representatives have said the law is being misapplied, and that it’s allowed U.S. authorities without a warrant to search through foreign surveillance data for information on Americans, using names and email addresses.
“It’s called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” Wyden said, “It’s not called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance And Domestic Spying Act.”
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews requests by the executive branch for foreign surveillance, found earlier this year that the FBI was searching for the last names of a U.S. senator and a state politician in a trove of foreign surveillance information it had collected.
“More and more law-abiding Americans are getting swept up in those searches, and I’m trying to protect them,” he said.
Both the House and Senate will vote this week on whether to change Section 702, which is set to expire Dec. 31, or extend it without changes. If the legislators vote to extend it, a surveillance court could step in and ensure it stays operational and unchanged until April of 2025, according to reporting from The New York Times.
Wyden and the bipartisan group in November introduced the Government Surveillance Reform Act which would require agencies to obtain a warrant to collect Americans’ location data, web browsing history and search records including from voice-dictation assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. It would also prohibit the government from purchasing Americans’ data from data brokers.
Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: [email protected]. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter.
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Alex Baumhardt has been a national radio producer focusing on education for American Public Media since 2017. She has reported from the Arctic to the Antarctic for national and international media, and from Minnesota and Oregon for The Washington Post. She previously worked in Iceland and Qatar and was a Fulbright scholar in Spain where she earned a master's degree in digital media. She's been a kayaking guide in Alaska, farmed on four continents and worked the night shift at several bakeries to support her reporting along the way.
