NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly launched a stinging rebuke to
the federal government’s secret phone and Internet monitoring campaign — and
suggested leaker Edward Snowden was right about privacy “abuse.”
“I don’t think it ever should have been made secret,” Kelly
said today, breaking ranks with US law-enforcement officials.
His blast came days after the Obama administration and
Attorney General Eric Holder outraged New York officials by endorsing a federal
monitor for the NYPD.
Kelly appeared to firmly reject Holder’s claim that disclosure
of the monitoring campaign seriously damaged efforts to fight terrorism.
“I think the American
public can accept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the
phone it’s going to be recorded and it goes to the government,” Kelly said. “I
think the public can understand that. I see no reason why that program was
placed in the secret category.”
“Secondly, I think if you listen to Snowden, he indicates
that there’s some sort of malfeasance, people . . . sitting around and watching
the data. So I think the question is: What sort of oversight is there inside
the [National Security Agency] NSA to prevent that abuse, if it’s taking
place?”
Kelly has been on the receiving side of this kind of
criticism.
The NYPD secretly spied on Muslim organizations, infiltrated
Muslim student group and videotaped mosque-goers in New Jersey for years, it
was revealed in 2012. The NYPD said its actions were lawful and necessary to
keep the city safe.
After the vast federal phone-Internet monitoring program was
revealed, President Obama said he had struck the right balance between ensuring
security and protecting privacy.
But yesterday, Kelly indicated Obama was wrong.
“I think we can raise people’s comfort level if in fact
information comes out as to that we have these controls and these protections
inside the NSA,” he said.
Allies of Kelly viewed his criticism as payback for Holder’s
decision to recommend — at the 11th hour of a controversial court case — that a
federal monitor oversee the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program.
“Everything that Ray Kelly does has a purpose,” said City
Council Public Safety Chairman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens). “If Eric Holder
wants to lecture Police Commissioner Kelly on how to fight crime in New York,
then one of the world’s foremost experts on public safety [Kelly] can lecture
Holder on how to fight terrorism.”
Holder and other law-enforcement officials have trashed
Snowden and his claim about out-of-control government snooping.
Kelly said of the leaker:
“He tried to give the impression, it seems to me, that these
system administrators had carte blanche to do what they wanted to do,” he said.
“I think it’s a problem if that’s in fact what’s happening.”
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