Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity

On February 26, 2014, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to maintain its database of telephone records that would otherwise need to be purged pursuant to its existing data-collection authority authorized by the court. DOJ requested this additional authority ostensibly to ensure that the DOJ has access to records that may be relevant to lawsuits targeting the NSA's sweeping collection of telephone metadata of both Americans and other countries' citizens alike. One plaintiff challenging the NSA's collection of telephone metadata, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), stated that the DOJ's request "is just a distraction. We don't have any objection to the government deleting these records. While they're at it, they should delete the whole database."