Politics | Wed Mar 23, 2016 12:46pm EDT

Lawmakers say NSA plan to expand sharing data ‘unconstitutional’

WASHINGTON | BY DUSTIN VOLZ

A Democratic and a Republican congressmen have asked the National Security Agency to halt a reported plan to share more raw intelligence data with other federal agencies, warning the policy shift would be “unconstitutional and dangerous,” according to a letter seen by Reuters.

U.S. Representatives Ted Lieu and Blake Farenthold, who sit on the House Oversight Committee, said in a letter dated March 21 to NSA Director Michael Rogers that the proposal would violate Fourth Amendment privacy protections because the collected data would not require a warrant before being searched for domestic law enforcement purposes.

“If media accounts are true, this radical policy shift by the NSA would be unconstitutional, and dangerous,” Lieu, a California Democrat, and Farenthold, a Texas Republican, wrote.

The New York Times reported last month that the proposal would allow the NSA to share intercepted private communications with other U.S. intelligence agencies before applying any privacy protections to the data.

Bob Litt, general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the Times the Obama administration was finalizing a 21-page draft of the new permissible procedures. The draft has not been made public.

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