President Barack Obama’s administration has adopted new guidelines that allow US counterterrorism agents to keep information acquired from other federal agencies for up to five years.
The new guidelines were adopted in part in response to intelligence lapses ahead of the 2009 Fort Hood military base shooting and the foiled underwear bomb plot to blow up a plane on Christmas Day 2009, the government said.
They will allow the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to hold onto a trove of information from other federal agencies — including on Americans not suspected of terrorism — for five years as opposed to 180 days.
The NCTC said the new guidelines will allow it to “retain certain datasets that are likely to contain significant terrorism information and are already in the lawful custody and control of other federal agencies for up to five years.” The NCTC said the new process — announced Thursday — would be under “robust oversight” and would not compromise civil liberties or privacy rights. But Michael German, of the American Civil Liberties Union, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that the purpose of such safeguards is to ensure that the “robust tools that we give the military and intelligence community to protect Americans from foreign threats aren’t directed back against Americans.”
