2017 Intelligence Bill Would Constrain Privacy Board

The jurisdiction of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) would be restricted for the second year in a row by the Senate Intelligence Committee version of the FY2017 Intelligence Authorization Act (S.3017). Section 603 of the Act would specifically limit the scope of PCLOB’s attention to the privacy and civil liberties “of United States persons.”

Internal disagreements over the move were highlighted in the Committee report published recently to accompany the text of the bill, which was reported out of Committee on June 5. “While the PCLOB already focuses primarily on US persons, it is not mandated to do so exclusively,” wrote Sens Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) in dissenting remarks appended to the report. “Limiting the PCLOB’s mandate to only US persons could create ambiguity about the scope of the PCLOB’s mandate, raising questions in particular about how the PCLOB should proceed in the digital domain, where individuals’ US or non-US status is not always apparent. It is conceivable, for example, that under this restriction, the PCLOB could not have reviewed the NSA’s Section 702 surveillance program, which focuses on the communications of foreigners located outside of the United States, but which is also acknowledged to be incidentally collecting Americans’ communications in the process,” they wrote.