Nsa negative

Amount of Surveillance is Limited

(__) Domestic communications are a tiny fraction of data collected by the NSA.

Etzioni, Professor of International Relations at the George Washington University, 2014
(Amitai, Intelligence and National Security (2014): NSA: National Security vs. Individual Rights, Intelligence and National Security, DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2013.867221)

Critics contend that these standards and procedures are far from rigorous and do not satisfactorily ensure that targeted persons are not American citizens or residents.127 Numbers are difficult to come by, as the intelligence community maintains that it is ‘not reasonably possible to identify the number of people located in the United States whose communications may have been reviewed under the authority’ of the FISA Amendments Act that authorizes PRISM.128 John D. Bates, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, has noted that, given the scale of the NSA’s data collection, ‘the court cannot know for certain the exact number’ of wholly domestic communications collected under the act.129

Critics cite an NSA internal audit dated May 2012, which found 2776 incidents in the preceding 12months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of protected communications. Most of these incidents were unintended, many involved failures of due diligence or violations of operating procedures. However, ‘the most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3000 Americans and greencard holders.’

Other reports show that (1) these violations make up just a tiny fraction of 250 million communications that are collected by the NSA each year;130 (2) practically all were inadvertent, mostly technical mistakes e.g., syntax errors when making database queries 131 or the programming error that interchanged the Washington DC area code 202 with the international dialing code for Egypt which is 20; 132 (3) measures were taken to reduce error rate; 133 (4) wilful violations of privacy led to termination of the offending employees;134 and (5) the NSA was responsive to internal audits and deferred to court guidance – which shows that oversight works.135

Amount of Surveillance is Limited

(__) The program under Section 702 does not collect a large amount of data.

Dempsey, Member of the President’s Civil Liberties Oversight Board, 2014
(James X, , 7-10-2014, "Take it from a civil liberties watchdog: not everything is bulk surveillance," Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/10/nsa-privacy-civil-liberties-oversight-board)

Our report on the so-called "702 program" provides probably the most complete accounting of any national security surveillance program published by any country in the world. In my personal view, many details about the program could have been made public before Edward Snowden's leaks without hindering the intelligence agencies in doing their job. Indeed, they should have been. There are huge benefits, in terms of democratic legitimacy, to the public knowing what its government is doing. We found that the 702 program does not scan internet communications for keywords. It targets specific individuals using specific identifiers such as email addresses and phone numbers. We saw a demonstration of the government's targeting process. We reviewed sample targeting decisions. We considered how data is filtered before it enters the government's coffers. In sum, what we found is not a bulk collection program.

(__)Collection under Section 702 is miniscule.

Dickerson, Harvard Law student and former editor Harvard National Security Journal, 2015
(Julie, 2-17-2015, "Harvard National Security Journal – Meaningful Transparency: The Missing Numbers the NSA and FISC Should Reveal," Harvard National Security Journal, http://harvardnsj.org/2015/02/meaningful-transparency-the-missing-numbers-the-nsa-and-fisc-should-reveal/

Under § 702 of the USA-PATRIOT Act, the NSA uses information from U.S. electronic communication service providers to target non-Americans outside the United States for documented foreign intelligence purposes. The NSA collects more than 250 million internet communications under this power each year. While a large absolute number, it is unclear what percent of total internet communications these § 702 communications constitute. The NSA has revealed that the internet carries 1,826 Petabytes of information per day, the NSA touches 1.6% of that data in its foreign intelligence mission, and the NSA only selects 0.025% of that data for review. The net result is that NSA analysts look at a mere 0.00004% of the world’s traffic. These percentages of total data traffic, though indicative that the percent of § 702 communications collected is likely miniscule, do not map perfectly onto percentages of total communications.

NSA will Circumvent Restrictions

(__) NSA Surveillance is much more than a single program, the aff is just playing a game of “Whack-A-Mole.” Surveillance will just pop up with another name.

Howell & Zeisberg, Professor of American Politics at the University of Chicago & Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, 2015
(William & Sydney; 7-1-2015, "Executive Secrecy," Boston Review, http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/howell-zeisberg-executive-secrecy

Consider too the development of new computing systems underwriting the surveillance state. Like most legal scholars, Kitrosser focuses her attention on the kinds of information the federal government can collect and the purposes to which this information can be put. But she does not adequately grapple with the sheer size and breadth of the new capacities that underlie the collection and analysis of information. As Arnold reports, the Department of Defense is working on a “global information grid” with the power to store and process “possibly yottabytes” of data—that is, 1024 bytes, or 100,000 gigabytes, which amounts to 500 quintillion pages of text.

An apparatus of this scale presents a dazzling array of opportunities for mischief. It is as if the government has created an unimaginably large game of Whack-a-Mole: while checking may be an effective way to suppress one troubling program, the existence of this grid will create constant opportunities for new information gathering regimes. For example, although President Barack Obama openly supported the recent restrictions on the NSA implemented by the 2015 Freedom Act, other legislation provides opportunities for him and his successors to continue collecting such data. Through FISA legislation (the legal basis for PRISM and other surveillance and data programs) and Executive Order 12333 (which provides authority for NSA foreign surveillance, and may encompass domestic communications data that travel outside the U.S), presidents will be able to continue programs of mass surveillance despite the Freedom Act—a fact lamented by stalwart critics such as Rand Paul.

Moreover, Kitrosser’s framework may call in vain upon legislators and judges to exert independence and oversight they would just as soon disavow. The FISA Court’s record of granting 99 percent or more of the warrants that the government requests—including, according to a Snowden leak, permitting the NSA to compel a Verizon company to turn over daily information on every phone call made, foreign or domestic—demonstrates that courts may be only too willing to cooperate with the executive.

NSA will Circumvent Restrictions

(__) Limits on NSA surveillance fail, they will simply seek other ways to collect the data, which may be more intrusive.

Pozen, Associate Professor, Columbia Law School, 2015

(David,. Privacy-Privacy Tradeoffs (June 28, 2015). University of Chicago Law Review, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=

Restated in more general and prescriptive terms, the suggested tradeoff is that tighter limits on what sorts of data the NSA can electronically collect or mine at the front end might lead to looser—and more privacy-invasive—investigatory practices at the back end. Beyond the automated “sifting” function identified by Posner, a variety of mechanisms could conceivably produce such a result. In the absence of bulk metadata collection under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, for instance, the NSA might seek to identify suspected foreign terrorists’ American associates in a less surgical manner, through ever-widening wiretaps instead of link analysis and contact chaining. 71

Tighter limits on what may be acquired under any particular authority, such as Section 215, could push NSA officers to submit broader warrant applications to the FISC 72 or to make greater use of other legal authorities, as by expanding the targeting of non-U.S. persons under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on the hope or expectation that this would yield more “incidental” collection of U.S. persons’ communications.73 Barriers to domestic acquisition could likewise lead to more aggressive “privacy shopping,” whereby the NSA relies on foreign partners to obtain data it cannot lawfully or efficiently obtain on its own.74

In short, it is not implausible to think that collection limits could backfire; or that the more (meta)data the NSA has at its disposal, the less it will need officers to review intercepted communications. Big Data analytics can take over, to some extent, from old-fashioned listening and reading. And if one deems the latter to be an especially or uniquely significant privacy problem, one can arrive at the unsettling paradox of preferring that the NSA “collect it all”75 on privacy grounds.

(__)The NSA will simply come up with new legal authorities and technology to continue surveillance.

Waldman, contributor Washington Post, 2015,
(Paul., 6-3-2015, "A reality check on the future of government spying," Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/03/a-reality-check-on-the-future-of-government-spying/

And let’s not forget that the NSA and other government agencies are certain — not possible, not likely, but certain — to come up with new ways to spy on Americans as new technologies become available. Just as the NSA did with the bulk phone data collection, they’ll probably take a look at earlier laws and decide that there’s a legal basis for whatever new kind of surveillance they want to begin — and that it’s best if the public didn’t know about it. Indeed, just this week an investigation by the Associated Press revealed that the FBI is using aircraft with advanced cameras to conduct investigations without warrants. That’s a relatively mundane use of technology, but there will always be new tools and capabilities coming down the pike, and the impulse will always be to put them into operation, then figure out afterward if it’s legally justifiable. The story of the bulk telephone data collection tells us that the only thing likely to restrain the expansion of government surveillance is public exposure. If you’re hoping that politicians who care about privacy will do it on their own, you’re likely to be disappointed.

NSA will Circumvent Restrictions

(__) Empirically, Presidents have done anything to avoid restrictions on their authority.

Howell & Zeisberg, Professor of American Politics at the University of Chicago & Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, 2015
(William & Sydney, 7-1-2015, "Executive Secrecy," Boston Review, http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/howell-zeisberg-executive-secrecy)

But presidents, Arnold reminds us, had no desire to toil in the light of day for all to see. If Congress longed for an information revolution, presidents responded with policy retrenchment. Rather than bend to Congress’s wishes, subsequent presidents—Democrats and Republicans alike—went to extraordinary lengths to conceal their activities, defy the clear intent of statutory law, suppress scientific information—in short, to circumvent, hedge, and deny at nearly every turn. “A complete history of the era,” Arnold says, “reveals episode after episode of evasive maneuvers, rule bending, clever rhetorical gambits, and outright defiance.”

In their effort to work around the legal architecture of the sunshine era, presidents have not merely lurked in the shadows. Arnold catalogs a multitude of cases in which presidents, long before September 11, 2001, developed formal procedures with the express intent of evading the watchful eyes of Congress and the courts. Presidents have repeatedly asserted the authority to classify information that, by all rights, ought to be the subject of public deliberation. Through national security directives and Office of Legal Counsel memos, they have propagated secret laws that are not subject to the checks that Madison and his intellectual descendants considered so vital.

(__) Circumvention of laws banning surveillance is empirically proven.

Ackerman, national security editor for the Guardian US, 2015,
(Spencer,. 6-1-2015, "Fears NSA will seek to undermine surveillance reform," Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/01/nsa-surveillance-patriot-act-congress-secret-law)

Yet in recent memory, the US government permitted the NSA to circumvent the Fisa court entirely. Not a single Fisa court judge was aware of Stellar Wind, the NSA’s post-9/11 constellation of bulk surveillance programs, from 2001 to 2004. Energetic legal tactics followed to fit the programs under existing legal authorities after internal controversy or outright exposure. When the continuation of a bulk domestic internet metadata collection program risked the mass resignation of Justice Department officials in 2004, an internal NSA draft history records that attorneys found a different legal rationale that “essentially gave NSA the same authority to collect bulk internet metadata that it had”. After a New York Times story in 2005 revealed the existence of the bulk domestic phone records program, attorneys for the US Justice Department and NSA argued, with the blessing of the Fisa court, that Section 215 of the Patriot Act authorized it all along – precisely the contention that the second circuit court of appeals rejected in May.