Washington : The U.S. government’s ability to review and analyze five years’ worth of telephone records for the married couple blamed in the deadly shootings in California lapsed just four days before the attack, when the National Security Agency’s controversial mass surveillance program was formally shut down, reports AP.
Under a court order, those calling records at the NSA are now off-limits to agents running the FBI terrorism investigation, even with a warrant.
Instead, under the new USA Freedom Act, authorities were able to obtain about two years’ worth of calling records directly from the phone companies of the couple blamed in the attack. The period covered the entire time that the wife, Tashfeen Malik, lived in the United States, although her husband, Syed Farook, had been here much longer. She moved from Pakistan to the U.S. in July 2014 and married Farook the following month.
FBI Director James Comey declined to say yesterday whether the NSA program’s shutdown affected the government’s investigation in California. “I won’t answer, because we don’t talk about the investigative techniques we use,” Comey said. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the FBI was looking through records for the couple. “This includes things like their foreign travel, their contacts with other individuals, their use of social media,” he said.
