Ranking member of Intelligence Committee discusses national security, privacy

Congress faces an unprecedented conflict between national security and individual privacy given the post-Edward Snowden era and emergence of a new brand of global terrorism, Congressman Adam Schiff, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said at a lecture on Friday.

“It’s a really challenging time for our work on the Intelligence Committee for many reasons, not the least of which is in the wake of the Arab Spring we have greater instability than any time in the last half-century,” Schiff said.

He referenced a number of conflicts occupying the attention of the Intelligence Committee, including high casualties from the catastrophe in Syria, the ongoing war in Iraq, party clashes and terrorist profiteers in Libya, government crackdowns in Egypt and, more recently, the growing conflict in Yemen, where Saudis and Iranians have a new battlefield to clash in.

U.S. efforts to curb security challenges abroad have exacerbated domestic privacy concerns as well, Schiff said.

“[We] also have a point of unprecedented conflict between the pressures to protect the country and the pressures to maintain our privacy,” he said. “I can tell you that no matter what we do this year — and we’re going to take up [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] reform, I hope, this year — this problem is not going away. This problem is only going to become more and more challenging.”

While the debate over security and privacy is nothing new, it is unfolding in an unfamiliar context, Schiff said, explaining that the amount of public confusion following the revelations of former NSA contractorEdward Snowden requires a more honest examination of Fourth Amendment protections. Congressional action responding to domestic surveillance must balance these two legitimate national interests, he said.

According to Schiff, higher scrutiny and tighter standards for the way in which surveillance programs are conducted arekey to safeguarding Americans’ privacy.

“I think all of the surveillance programs ought to meet at least three fundamental standards — they need to be constitutional, they need to be effective and they need to be structured in way that minimizes any unnecessary intrusion on our privacy,” Schiff said.

He said he believes that the NSA’s program of collecting telephone metadata fails to meet the third standard, but that there is an alternative approach.

“There’s no reason why the telephone companies can’t hold on to their own data as they do anyway because they’re required to by the [Federal Communications Commission],” he said. “We could go to those companies after court process … and say, ‘This is a number we’re concerned about — do you have this number connected to other numbers in your database?’ That is much more protective of the privacy interests of the public, and I think we can the answers in a timely enough way,” he said, noting that he has been advocating for such reform for years.

Schiff said that the debate over telephone metadata points to the larger problem of the encrypted model. Phone service providers only represent one of many players. Other tech companies within the private sector are unwilling to decrypt their own information for fear that accessibility would open up vulnerabilities to malicious hackers.

Schiff offered a different position.

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“The question is, is it a manageable risk? And does the risk that that poses outweigh the need that legitimate law enforcement has to investigate an ongoing crime?” he said. “I suspect that the answer may be that we have to figure out how to maximally mitigate that risk so that they have minimal exposure to hackers who would improperly gain that information. But the cost of going completely dark may be simply too great.”

Schiff also discussed the future of cyber warfare. North Korea’s January cyber attack worried him especially as a representative of California’s 28th congressional district, which includes Hollywood, Burbank, West Hollywood and Glendale.

“I found my two worlds colliding recently when Sony Pictures was attacked by North Korea because here you have the entertainment industry, which I represent, being attacked by a rogue nation using a cyber technology,” he said.

Elaborating during the Q&A session, Schiff noted that some had questioned whether the government should respond on behalf of a private company that failed to protect itself.

“From my own point of view, I view that [cyber attack] as an attack on our country, particularly so when the clear motivation was … to inhibit the rights of Americans to express themselves,” he said. “I think that is an attack on our values, on our property and on our country.”

The event took place in the Whig Hall Senate Chamber Friday at noon, and was co-sponsored by the American Whig-Cliosophic Society and the Princeton College Democrats.