Constraints created when National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden spilled U.S. secrets add new risk to the agency’s work when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and other threats are making the world more dangerous, intelligence community leaders say.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s massive data-collection programs had led to a loss of information, damaged relationships with key allies and “conscious decisions to stop collecting on some specific targets.”
“The result of this perfect storm is that we, as a nation, are taking more risk,” Clapper told intelligence and national security professionals in Washington.
“In many cases, we’ve chosen where we’re taking risk — cutting specific programs, stopping specific collections, declassifying specific documents. All of those are good choices, as long as we recognize that we, as a nation, have to manage the attendant risks that we will incur when we take these actions. And all of that is clearly part of the strategic environment we work in,” he said.
Both President Obama and Congress have moved to curb NSA activities that could help identify the threat from the Islamic State, which has gathered an “unprecedented” number of foreign fighters, including 2,500 Westerners, in Syria. A few already have been identified as having been involved in terrorist attacks.
The NSA is still able to monitor phone, email and other communications of suspected terrorists. But in January, Obama ordered that the agency receive approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before searching phone metadata and said the government would stop storing that data. Previously, the executive branch could access the information without judicial approval.
The House has passed a bill that would place new controls on how the NSA collects and uses such data — which officials say is crucial to stopping terrorist plots — and the administration supports a similar bill waiting in the Senate.
The reforms make collecting intelligence on terrorists less efficient, but, “I think the NSA still has the tools it needs to get these guys,” said Steven Bucci of the Heritage Foundation, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and a cybersecurity consultant.
Intelligence professionals and lawmakers are meeting this week in Washington with 60 parliamentarians from 24 European countries to repair the damage caused by Snowden’s accusations that the NSA was spying on foreign leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A June analysis by Der Spiegel of documents leaked by Snowden indicated that the NSA’s surveillance architecture in Germany, the largest in Europe, had been used to help identify terrorist targets for U.S. strikes.
Bucci said repairing the damage from the embarrassment caused by Snowden’s leaks is a key element to rebuilding the NSA’s ability to fight the Islamic State and other threats, because “it’s right at the time when we need every bit of intelligence we can get because the threat is a lot worse.”
