Press Releases
The Question the U.S. Attorney General Refused to Answer
Washington, DC,
April 10, 2014
Today, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-10), a veteran member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder regarding his April 8, 2014 testimony about the Administration’s bulk telephone metadata collection program and its use of National Security Letters (NSLs). “While there has been a lot of attention focused on the government’s bulk collection of telephone metadata under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, National Security Letters are often used to get at the same kind of information without involving any form of court approval. This is deeply troubling,” said Congressman Nadler. “My question for the Attorney General: ‘Do you support or oppose the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies’ recommendations on the use of NSLs and Section 215?’” Full text of the letter The Honorable Eric Holder, Attorney General Dear Attorney General: At the House Judiciary Committee hearing on April 8, I asked you about the Administration’s bulk telephone metadata collection program and its use of National Security Letters (NSLs). I was following up on my February 19, 2014 letter on this topic, to which I still have not received a response. During the hearing, I asked you about the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, which was directed to be established by President Obama. On page 89 of its December 12, 2013 report, the group recommended that “all statutes authorizing the use of National Security Letters should be amended to require the use of the same oversight, minimization, retention, and dissemination standards that currently govern the use of Section 215 orders.” You responded, “I think that we have to understand the different nature of these. NSLs are a tool to obtain really narrowly defined types of records from a narrow set of institutions. By contrast, 215 allows the government to obtain any tangible things and because 215 has a much wider breadth of materials that can be obtained, the need for judicial supervision, I think, is more obvious. NSLs … you get information that are used to build cases in the same way that you use grand jury subpoenas that frankly do not involve judicial supervision.” However, when I followed up specifically to ask if you disagreed with the Review Group’s recommendation you said, “I’ve stated my position.” These two authorities—Section 215 and the relevant NSL statute—are both used to obtain call detail records for domestic telephone calls. Our understanding of the interplay between them is critical at a time when the President of the United States has asked Congress to provide him with additional authority to collect telephone metadata. I write today to ask, once again, for clarification on your position. Do you support or oppose the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies’ recommendations on the use of NSLs and Section 215? Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. If you have any questions, please contact John Doty from Congressman Nadler’s Office at 202.225.5635 ### |