DOJ Asks To Hang Onto Bulk Collections Longer, Citing Need To 'Preserve' Evidence It Has No Intentio

[unhappycamper]

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140227/08464126374/doj-asks-to-hang-onto-bulk-collections-longer-citing-need-to-preserve-evidence-it-has-no-intention-presenting-court.shtml

DOJ Asks To Hang Onto Bulk Collections Longer, Citing Need To 'Preserve' Evidence It Has No Intention Of Presenting In Court
from the deck-stacking-at-its-finest dept
by Tim Cushing
Thu, Feb 27th 2014 1:36pm

The DOJ is asking the courts to extend the amount of time it can hold onto bulk metadata records. The use-by date is normally five years, but the DOJ wants more time. It's stated reason for the request is to prevent spoliation of evidence that might be needed in the several lawsuits filed against the government since the exposure of the NSA's bulk collection programs.

Some things to note: the DOJ is asking for the first FISA order of 2014 to be amended to remove the 5-year expiration date, which seems to indicate that the amendment won't affect anything previously collected. The storage limit has been five years since at least 2006, so what the DOJ is asking for is for data to be held indefinitely, for an indefinite period going forward.

Obviously, this carves a rather large hole in the NSA's (already minimal) minimization procedures. The DOJ claims the retained data will be reserved for "non-analytic" purposes, but I don't really see how the it can make that assertion, considering the NSA, at this point, still collects and stores it. Searches could be limited to five years from date of search, but this presumes a lot of an agency run by people who routinely "explore the edges of the box." (Granted, historical data tends to become less useful the older it gets, but there are hardly any limits placed on the NSA's collection abilities, so it's really not a good idea to let the government start stripping these few stipulations away.)

What's absolutely disgusting about this request is the fact that the DOJ has no interest in allowing these records to be admitted as evidence. In fact, the DOJ has already withheld this information from several defendants, effectively preventing them from discovering where the government obtained the evidence being used against them. The DOJ is talking a good game about due process, etc., but its track record shows it's willing to keep this information hidden for as long as possible.