President Barack Obama announced on Monday that a new group will review how federal intelligence agencies are monitoring people’s electronic and voice communications.
Obama directs Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to establish a Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies in a memo signed Monday.
“The Review Group will assess whether, in light of advancements in communications technologies, the United States employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust,” Obama says in the memo.
He calls for Clapper to brief him on the group’s interim findings within 60 days of its establishment. A final report and recommendation are due to the White House no later than Dec. 15.
The panel’s establishment comes in the wake of the scandal involving Edward Snowden, the U.S. citizen and former Booz Allen Hamilton [BAH] contractor who leaked classified details of National Security Agency programs. The Snowden affair has had an impact on national-security matters. Obama canceled a summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, which had been planned for September after Russia granted Snowden asylum (Defense Daily, Aug. 9).
Obama’s Monday memo defends the United States’ intelligence gathering, saying such actions protect national interests and helps the United States “defend itself, its citizens, and its partners and allies from threats to our security.”
“The United States cooperates closely with many countries on intelligence matters and these intelligence relationships have helped to ensure our common security,” Obama wrote.
He adds that technological advances have brought to the intelligence community both “great opportunities and significant risks.” That is “opportunity in the form of enhanced technical capabilities that can more precisely and readily identify threats to our security, and risks in the form of insider and cyber threats,” he wrote.
Obama reminded reporters last Friday that he called for a “thorough review” of U.S. surveillance operations before Snowden leaked the NSA information to the press.
“Unfortunately, rather than an orderly and lawful process to debate these issues and come up with appropriate reforms, repeated leaks of classified information have initiated the debate in a very passionate, but not always fully informed way,” the president maintained at a White House press conference.