WASHINGTON – University of Chicago First Amendment scholar Geoffrey Stone was not expecting unanimity among the group of five experts called together by President Barack Obama to review the National Security Agency’s collection of vast amounts of phone records and other digital information of millions of Americans.
The five-member group was comprised of Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism chief for the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations who criticized Bush’s attitude toward counterterrorism pre-9/11; Michael Morell, who was acting CIA director in 2011 and again in 2012-13 for Obama; Cass Sunstein, who was head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in Obama’s first term; Peter Swire, a professor at the George Institute of Technology who specializes in privacy law and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress; and Stone.
Stone said the fact that the group could present recommendations fully supported by all members gave extra weight to their report. They review group recommended that that phone companies or a private third party maintain the data needed by the NSA rather than the NSA itself and that access be allowed only by a court order.
The president rejected the recommendation that the FBI be required by law to obtain judicial approval before using a national security letter to obtain Americans’ records.
In a video interview with Medill National Security Zone, Stone detailed key points from the recommendations.
