Curbing NSA activity

DW: You've been critical of what the NSA has been doing and have authored the Freedom Act. But the Freedom Act also doesn't include rights for European citizens or other foreign nationals. Do you think that foreign nationals also deserve a right not to be monitored indiscriminately?

Frank James Sensenbrenner: Yes, unless they are involved in some type of terrorist activity. The issue with the Freedom Act, however, is that constitutionally the United States Congress cannot legislate in this area, because it is a presidential prerogative under our constitution to deal with foreign relations. How that is handled will have to be done by President Obama in the executive branch.

However, what I can say is that the Freedom Act ends bulk collection for everybody - Americans and foreigners. Bulk collection was never intended to be the case in the Patriot Act, which I authored. We are going to get back to where we started from right after September 11 in targeting the collection only to people who are foreigners who are part of a designated terrorist organization. And we ought to be watching what those people are doing.

How optimistic are you that the Freedom Act will actually become law?

I think we have a better than 50:50 chance. I think there are definitely the votes in the House [of Representatives] to pass the Freedom Act, and unless the Freedom Act is passed, the intelligence reauthorization bill will not be passed. This is a kind of under the Capitol dome thing in terms of how it is lined up in terms of procedure and how we get votes. My main job now is to get a vote on the Freedom Act, because if I do get a vote, I am certain that an overwhelming majority of both Democrats and Republicans in the House will vote for it.

Can Europeans do anything to help push that matter?

I think the message that Europeans can do to help is the point how much the NSA scandal has hurt transatlantic relations and has broken trust. It has cost American companies a lot of business in Europe. There are also some unfortunate things that have happened such as taking away the internationalization of the Internet, which would be a bad idea, and stopping the negotiations on the transatlantic trade agreement, which would also be a bad idea.

I would hope that there would not be any punitive reactions on the part of either the European Commission or on the part of national governments of member states of the EU while we in America are trying to figure out what to do with the NSA to bring it back to where it ought to be: that is, an organization that is designed to root out domestic and international terrorism.

Germany has played a pretty important role in this international debate on the NSA revelations and has reiterated just recently that it is so far not contend with the message that it received from Washington on the NSA revelations, but specifically also of the targeting of Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone. Do you think that it is realistic, that the Obama administration should send a further message or signal to Berlin?

They definitely have to do that, but I'm not the one that has much credibility as an opposition Republican Party politician. What I can say is that when I authored the Patriot Act following the September 11 attack, it was designed to be targeted not against everybody but targeted against foreigners who were involved in designated terrorist organizations. There should be no disagreement on that. These were bad folks and they don't care who they kill or where they blow their bombs up - whether it's in New York or Hamburg or Moscow.

The real problem is that in the beginning the people who have defended the NSA have been in denial in realizing that they do have a problem that needs to be fixed. We are getting to the fact that there needs to be some type of legislation and I think the president's speech was a tiny step in that direction.

Following up on that speech - Obama didn't really promise any concrete reforms. He basically ordered reviews of the processes in place. Are you satisfied with that? Do you think this will really lead to a significant reform?

I think it will lead to a significant reform simply because the American people - when they are told the consequences of NSA snooping - are as outraged as the German people are. The reason that we have not seen that is that at the time of the most serious of the revelations we had two domestic crises - one was the government shutdown, the other was the debt limit increase. So the American public was concentrated on these other two which had no effect really overseas.

The European public concentrated on what the NSA was doing, and I think as there are more and more interchanges of use, the American administration is beginning to realize that something has to happen. My bottom line at this is that it is got to be done legislatively. The only way it can be changed is by legislation and if the NSA goes too far as it has done now they will be in clear violation of the law.

What is your timeframe for this reform - for the Freedom Act - to be implemented?

I hope I get it done before the end of the year and before our election in November. What I've said is that the legislative authority, which we call Section 215 or the business records part of the Patriot Act, expires in June of 2015. I think it will be to everybody's advantage. The sooner we set some new ground rules and some limitations on the NSA, the better the chance that a law would not expire completely. We need to have a business records provision for our foreign intelligence community. I think most people agree with that. The question is how to do it and the Freedom Act, in my opinion, is the best way to do it.

The reason why we are talking about all of this is of course because of the revelations of the NSA surveillance by Edward Snowden. There is a big debate whether he is a whistleblower or a traitor - especially in the US. What is your view of that?

He is neither a hero or a whistleblower or a traitor. He is a criminal. He disclosed classified information, he broke the contract that he had with his employer that gave him access to the classified information. He ought to leave Moscow and come back and face a jury of his peers.

What he should have done is gone through channels. There would have been no breaking of security clearance had he gone to me or any other member of Congress and said what the NSA was doing and then we could have worked to fix it. Rather than having these very startling revelations that I think have hurt intelligence's gathering activity and also have very definitely hurt transatlantic relations - particularly the US-German relations. Not just government to government, but the economic interchange that the United States and Germany have been developing progressively since the end of World War II.

Republican Representative Frank James Sensenbrenner is the leading voice in US Congress pushing for reforming the NSA. He is the author of the original Patriot Act and has now authored the Freedom Act to curb NSA activities.