Questions and Challenges for Director of National Intelligence Gabbard

​The Senate confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard as DNI puts the former Congresswoman from Hawaii in the cockpit of the U.S. intelligence community. Director Gabbard will have to perceive and define evolving threats in the most hostile global environment in almost a lifetime. She will also have no lack of challenges in coordinating the mission of 18 federal agencies and refining their conclusions as actionable intelligence for the president.
 
PPSA, along with our civil liberties colleagues, hope that as Director Gabbard plunges into the myriad challenges of her new job, she will also stand true to her heritage as a champion of the U.S. Constitution. As a Congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard stood fast to the conviction that we can have both national security and respect for the Bill of Rights. We urge Director Gabbard in her new role to demonstrate the viability of this principle. We call on her:
 

• To close the backdoor search loophole by enforcing a warrant requirement whenever the FBI singles out American citizens for a query of their personal data, collected pursuant to Section 702.

 

• To also require warrants when the government inspects Americans’ personal, digital data purchased by federal agencies from third-party data brokers.

 

• To release the full number of queries of Section 702 databases made by the FBI and other agencies to inspect the personal communications of U.S. persons, so we can understand how this authority is being used.

 

• To extend the promise made by the previous administration to restrict the authorities of the electronic communications service providers to a technical fix (widely believed to apply to cloud computing), rather than use this authority in its most expansive form, forcing practically any kind of American business to spy on their customers.

 

• To deepen Director Gabbard’s predecessor’s effort, the Policy Framework for Commercially Available Information, to guide federal intelligence agencies into developing procedures and strong guidelines in the uses of purchased data.

 
In each of these efforts, we hope Director Gabbard will demonstrate that we can protect Americans from threats from abroad while also protecting them from the prospect of an emerging surveillance state.
 
“In the military, I learned that ‘leadership’ means raising your hand and volunteering for the tough, important assignments,” Gabbard said. We are fortunate that Gabbard has volunteered for this particularly tough assignment. We urge her to find ways to extend her legacy as a defender of the American homeland and as a defender of our freedoms at home.

DONATE & HELP US PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS