Rare News Desk
WASHINGTON (AP) — Faced with a flood of revelations about U.S. spying, President Barack Obama and key lawmakers say it’s time to look closely at surveillance programs that may have gone too far. The White House is considering ending eavesdropping on friendly foreign leaders, a senior administration official said.
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The administration is trying to tamp down damage from the months-long spying scandal — including the most recent disclosure that the National Security Agency monitored the communications of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A final decision about listening in on allies has not been made, the official said.
The White House also faces complaints at home about the NSA collecting millions of Americans’ phone records and sweeping up Internet traffic and email. The House Intelligence Committee was to examine tightening the rules on those anti-terror programs in a hearing later Tuesday.
Asked about the reports of eavesdropping on world leaders, President Barack Obama said in a television interview that the U.S. government is conducting “a complete review of how our intelligence operates outside the country.” Obama declined to discuss specifics or say when he learned about the spying operations.
“What we’ve seen over the last several years is their capacities continue to develop and expand, and that’s why I’m initiating now a review to make sure that what they’re able to do doesn’t necessarily mean what they should be doing,” he said Monday on the new TV network Fusion.
On Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner said there should be a thorough review, bearing in mind the responsibility to keep Americans safe from terrorism and the nation’s obligations to allies.
“We have to find the right balance here,” said Boehner, R-Ohio. “And clearly, we’re imbalanced.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Monday for a “total review of all intelligence programs” following the Merkel allegations. In a statement, the California Democrat said the White House had informed her that “collection on our allies will not continue.”
The administration official said that statement was not accurate, but added that some unspecified changes already had been made and more were being considered, including terminating the collection of communications from friendly heads of state.
The official was not authorized to discuss the review by name and insisted on anonymity.
Reports based on new leaks from former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden indicate that the NSA listened in on Merkel and 34 other foreign leaders.
“With respect to NSA collection of intelligence on leaders of U.S. allies — including France, Spain, Mexico and Germany — let me state unequivocally: I am totally opposed,” Feinstein said. She added that the U.S. should not be “collecting phone calls or emails of friendly presidents and prime ministers” unless in an emergency with approval of the president.
In response to the revelations, German officials said Monday that the U.S. could lose access to an important law enforcement tool used to track terrorist money flows.
Other longtime allies have also expressed their displeasure about the U.S. spying on their leaders. Spain’s prosecutor’s office said Tuesday it has opened a preliminary inquiry to determine whether a crime was committed by NSA surveillance.
Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo’s office on Tuesday confirmed a report in De Standaard that at his most sensitive meetings, the premier is asking government ministers to leave their mobile phones out of the room.
As possible leverage, German authorities cited last week’s non-binding resolution by the European Parliament to suspend a post-9/11 agreement allowing the Americans access to bank transfer data to track the flow of terrorist money. A top German official said Monday she believed the Americans were using the information to gather economic intelligence apart from terrorism and said the agreement, known as the SWIFT agreement, should be suspended.
European Union officials who are in Washington to meet with lawmakers ahead of White House talks said U.S. surveillance of their people could affect negotiations over a U.S.-Europe trade agreement. They said European privacy must be better protected.
Many officials in Germany and other European governments have made clear, however, that they don’t favor suspending the U.S.-EU trade talks which began last summer because both sides stand to gain so much through the proposed deal.
Amid tensions with European allies, the top U.S. intelligence official declassified dozens of pages of top-secret documents in an apparent bid to show the NSA was acting legally when it gathered millions of Americans’ phone records.
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said he was following the president’s direction to make public as much information as possible about how U.S. intelligence agencies spy under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The document release is part of an administration-wide effort to preserve the NSA’s ability to collect bulk data. The administration says the spying is key to tracking terror suspects. Privacy activists say is a breach of the Constitution’s ban on unreasonable search and seizure of evidence from innocent Americans.
The documents support administration testimony that the NSA worked to operate within the law and fix errors when they or their systems overreached. One of the documents shows the NSA admitting to the House Intelligence Committee that one of its automated systems picked up too much telephone metadata. The February 2009 document indicates the problem was fixed.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
