US public should know about government collection of phone, Internet records

[Commentary] Over the past few days, the country has had to absorb a rush of information about the techniques the government uses to collect intelligence information from everything from our phones to Facebook. The rapid-fire revelations about what’s going on in the secret world of the National Security Agency and elsewhere in the executive branch’s counterterrorism operation have been contradictory at times and confusing often. One of the only things that seems sure is that the news has rekindled a national debate about what Americans should accept in the fight against the continuing threat of international terrorism.

President Barack Obama was right when he said that Americans can’t have 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy. With that in mind, Congress passed, and this page supported, a variety of measures that empowered the executive branch to collect a lot of information — with supervision. The government should be able to intercept the communications of non-Americans outside U.S. borders to investigate possible plots. But, because the system is premised on trust, the government would have a stronger case, and the debate might be less slapdash, if it revealed more.

It is unclear to us why the existence of an extensive database of information about U.S. phone calls should have been secret, or why tech companies, some of which publish regular reports on user privacy, can’t reveal more basic information about their interactions with government, such as the number of FISA requests they get in a given period of time. Finally, whether a fair balance is being struck between security and privacy depends heavily on the procedures in place to minimize the collection and retention of Americans’ data. The public ought to hear more about how that is being accomplished.