The Obama administration is releasing new rules that will greatly extend the period of time the intelligence community is allowed to retain information on Americans with no connection to terrorism. The new guidelines give the National Counterterrorism Center the authority to keep information about Americans unrelated to terrorism that is already stored in other government databases for up to five years. Until now, the National Counterterrorism Center had to destroy immediately information about Americans who had no clear ties to terrorism. An administration official says the intelligence community's inability to prevent the 2009 Christmas Day attempt to blow up an airliner is among reasons for the change. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence says there will be policies to protect privacy and civil liberties. The guidelines, approved by Attorney General Eric Holder, represent the latest step taken by the US government to try to improve its ability to guard against terrorism amid an ongoing debate over whether efforts to bolster American security are coming at a cost of individual rights and privacy. The guidelines state that certain data “may be retained and continually assessed for a period of up to five years” by the US National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to determine whether the data relates to a terrorism threat. The Washington Post posted a copy of the guidelines at http://www.washingtonpost.com/r/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/03/22/National-Security/Graphics/NCTC%20GuidelinesonTerror.pdf Previously, the National Counterterrorism Center was required to destroy information about US citizens or residents within 180 days unless a connection to terrorism was found. The guidelines showed that Matthew Olsen, the head of the NCTC, and James Clapper, director of US National Intelligence, signed off on the new steps on Wednesday and Holder did so on Thursday. “These guidelines permit NCTC to access and acquire United States person information for the purpose of determining whether the information is reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information and thus may be permanently retained, used, and disseminated,” the guidelines state. Robert Litt, the general counsel in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the counterterrorism agency, said the old guidelines were “very limiting.”
