Surveillance Sanity

BENJAMIN CIVILETTI , DICK THORNBURGH and WILLIAM WEBSTER


Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to target al Qaeda communications into and out of the country Mr. Bush concluded that this was essential for protecting the country, that using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would not permit the necessary speed and agility, and that he had the constitutional power to authorize such surveillance without court orders to defend the country.
Since the program became public in 2006, Congress has been asserting appropriate oversight. Few of those who learned the details of the program have criticized its necessity . Instead, critics argued that if the president found FISA inadequate, he should have gone to Congress and gotten the changes necessary to allow the program to proceed under court orders. That process is now underway. The administration has brought the program under FISA, and the Senate Intelligence Committee recently reported out a bill with a strong bipartisan majority of 13-2, that would make the changes to FISA needed for the program to continue. This bill is now being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Public disclosure of the NSA program also brought a flood of class-action lawsuits seeking to impose massive liability on phone companies for allegedly answering the government's call for help. The Intelligence Committee has reviewed the program and has concluded that the companies deserve targeted protection from these suits. The protection would extend only to activities undertaken after 9/11 until the beginning of 2007, authorized by the president to defend the country from further terrorist attack, and pursuant to written assurances from the government that the activities were both authorized by the president and legal.
We agree with the committee. Dragging phone companies through protracted litigation would not only be unfair, but it would deter other companies and private citizens from responding in terrorist emergencies whenever there may be uncertainty or legal risk.
The government alone cannot protect us from the threats we face today. We must have the help of all our citizens. There will be times when the lives of thousands of Americans will depend on whether corporations such as airlines or banks are willing to lend assistance . If we do not treat companies fairly when they respond to assurances from the highest levels of the government that their help is legal and essential for saving lives, then we will be radically reducing our society's capacity to defend itself.
This concern is particularly acute for our nation's telecommunications companies. America's front line of defense against terrorist attack is communications intelligence. When Americans put their loved ones on planes, send their children to school, or ride through tunnels and over bridges, they are counting on the "early warning" system of communications intelligence for their safety. Communications technology has become so complex that our country needs the voluntary cooperation of the companies. Without it, our intelligence efforts will be gravely damaged.
Whether the government has acted properly is a different question from whether a private person has acted properly in responding to the government's call for help. From its earliest days, the common law recognized that when a public official calls on a citizen to help protect the community in an emergency, the person has a duty to help and should be immune from being hauled into court unless it was clear beyond doubt that the public official was acting illegally. Because a private person cannot have all the information necessary to assess the propriety of the government's actions, he must be able to rely on official assurances about need and legality. Immunity is designed to avoid the burden of protracted litigation, because the prospect of such litigation itself is enough to deter citizens from providing critically needed assistance.
As the Intelligence Committee found, the companies clearly acted in "good faith." The situation is one in which immunity has traditionally been applied, and thus protection from this litigation is justified.
First, the circumstances clearly showed that there was a bona fide threat to "national security." We had suffered the most devastating attacks in our history , and Congress had declared the attacks "continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat" to the country. It would have been entirely reasonable for the companies to credit government representations that the nation faced grave and immediate threat and that their help was needed to protect American lives.
Second, the bill's protections only apply if assistance was given in response to the president's personal authorization, communicated in writing along with assurances of legality. That is more than is required by FISA, which contains a safe-harbor authorizing assistance based solely on a certification by the attorney general, his designee, or a host of more junior law enforcement officials that no warrant is required.
Third, the ultimate legal issue -- whether the president was acting within his constitutional powers -- is not the kind of question a private party can definitively determine. The companies were not in a position to say that the government was definitely wrong.
Prior to FISA's 1978 enactment, numerous federal courts took it for granted that the president has constitutional power to conduct warrantless surveillance to protect the nation's security. In 2002, the FISA Court of Review, while not dealing directly with the NSA program, stated that FISA could not limit the president's constitutional powers. Given this, it cannot be said that the companies acted in bad faith in relying on the government's assurances of legality.
For hundreds of years our legal system has operated under the premise that, in a public emergency, we want private citizens to respond to the government's call for help unless the citizen knows for sure that the government is acting illegally. If Congress does not act now, it would be basically saying that private citizens should only help when they are absolutely certain that all the government's actions are legal. Given the threats we face in today's world, this would be a perilous policy.
Mr. Civiletti was U.S. attorney general under President Jimmy Carter, Mr. Thornburgh was U.S. attorney general under President George H.W. Bush and Judge Webster is former director of the CIA and former director of the FBI.