Center Issues Rebuttal of Review Group’s Ill-Advised Recommendations on Intelligence Reform

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Ben Lerner, [email protected]; (202) 719-2409

Center for Security Policy Issues Rebuttal of Review Group’s Ill-Advised Recommendations on Intelligence Reform

(Washington, D.C.): The Center for Security Policy has released its report commenting on the recommendations put forward by the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies in the wake of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s unauthorized disclosure of vital intelligence programs.  The Center’s report, A Critique of the Recommendations by the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communication Technologies, concludes that most of the Review Group’s recommendations for adjustments to NSA intelligence-gathering protocols would be highly detrimental to national security, and offers its own alternative recommendations on striking the appropriate balance between national security and civil liberties in a 21^st Century threat environment.

The report – authored by CSP Senior Fellows and former Central Intelligence Agency officers Fred Fleitz and Clare M. Lopez – in part consists of the following observations/recommendations:

• The Review Group’s recommendations on the NSA metadata program would eviscerate an important counterterrorism program and create real privacy concerns.  The President should instead work with the Senate and House Intelligence Committees on new legislation to bolster these capabilities.
• The Review Group’s notion of extending U.S. privacy rights to non-U.S. persons outside the United States and barring intelligence agencies from collection against foreign persons based on their religious or political beliefs should be categorically rejected on national security grounds.
• The Review Group’s recommendation to add additional layers of bureaucracy to the intelligence collection process would greatly slow down that process and create new security concerns.
• The Review Group’s recommendations to add additional privacy officials to the intelligence-gathering process are a solution in search of a problem, and would overlap the existing Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
• While making the NSA Director a Senate-confirmed post is long overdue and will help restore public confidence, the Review Group’s other recommendations for NSA organizational reform are unnecessary steps that would interfere with NSA effectiveness.
• The Review Group’s recommendations barring US intelligence agencies from cracking internet encryption methods or penetrating computer software would greatly undermine critical intelligence collection.  Terrorist communications and software must be maintained as legitimate targets for the NSA.
• The pursuit of international norms or agreements to prohibit cyberwarfare or industrial espionage is unrealistic and will be disregarded by adversary nations which will take advantage of such self-imposed restraint.
• Most of the Review Group’s proposals on security clearance reform are supportable in principle, but require further study by an intelligence clearance task force.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy, commented: “It is highly unfortunate that in response to Edward Snowden’s actions, this Review Group – convened by President Obama – is advocating measures that will fundamentally interfere with vital US intelligence operations, as the Center’s Fred Fleitz and Clare Lopez make alarmingly clear in their report.  The threats our nation continues to face demand an empowered and agile intelligence capability with appropriate oversight by Congress, and it is our hope that President Obama’s response to his Review Group’s report will reflect an understanding of that need, rather than a capitulation to those whose real agenda is to weaken America’s capacity for self-defense.”

The full Center for Security Policy report is available here: /wp-content/uploads/2014/01/NSA_report.pdf

Report and Recommendations of The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies is available here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-12-12_rg_final_report.pdf

Full coverage in the Washington Free Beacon: https://freebeacon.com/altering-nsa-surveillance-programs-would-interfere-with-vital-intelligence-operations/

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