Security agencies say they don't invade privacy

Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden denied Wednesday that they invade the privacy of U.S. citizens or provide intelligence about foreign companies to U.S. businesses.

In a public hearing called by House Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss, R-Fla., to address increasing concern in the press-particularly in Europe-about Echelon and other NSA-supported surveillance systems, the chiefs of the two top spy agencies said they operated under strict legal constraints. They spelled out the legal rules governing the interception of intelligence via electronic signals, or the communications that take place via phone, fax, telex or e-mail.

"We do not collect against U.S. persons unless they are agents of a foreign power," Tenet testified. "We do not target their conversations for collection in the United States" unless a warrant has been obtained pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. "And we do not target their conversations for collections overseas unless" personally approved by the attorney general," he said.

But Tenet conceded that this type of intelligence does provide the government with "information about the intentions of foreign business, some operated by governments, to violate U.S. laws or sanctions or to deny U.S. businesses a level playing field." Such information is provided to the Treasury, State or Commerce Department, but he stressed that "the intelligence community is just not in the business of conducting industrial espionage, and is not working on behalf of U.S. companies to provide them unfair advantage."

Hayden added that the agency does conduct collections for "economic intelligence purposes."

On the subject of U.S. citizens, Hayden said, "from time to time, representation about a person ends up as communication to or from the NSA." Such information cannot be shared with other agencies without approval from the attorney general, he said, and that has only happened 18 times in the past 16 months, he said.

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., who is not a member of the committee, also was called as a witness. "We still have more questions than answers regarding the substance of allegations about such NSA activities as Project Echelon, and such matters as the intelligence community's interest in domestic wiretapping activities undertaken pursuant to such statues as CALEA," Barr said, referring to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.