DNI wants industry’s ideas on storing telephone metadata with non-governmental third-parties

James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, wants to know how industry can help the U.S. Government continue its telephone metadata collection program without the government holding the metadata.

His office issued a Request for Information (RFI) on February 5 which asks for suggestions on how the government could continue to have access to the telephone data under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, but not hold that data in government facilities.

“Responses to this RFI will be reviewed and may help shape the framework for the future telephone metadata program to include the potential for non-government maintenance of that data,” says the notice, which was issued by DNI’s acquisition, technology and facilities office in Washington, DC.

On January 17, President Obama announced several actions the federal government would take to review and revise the existing telephone metadata program.

As part of that review, the president directed the development of “options for a new approach that can match the capabilities and fill the gaps that the Section 215 program was designed to address without the government holding the data,” says the DNI’s notice.

Interested parties are asked to supply by February 12 a maximum of two pages that describe the existing capability that they feel can assist with such an effort.

The recommended approaches should explain how the government could be granted access to a large quantity of data held by a third-party that can:

• Achieve near real-time access to data from original source;
• Achieve correlation of data with varying provider data formats;
• Achieve simultaneous or near-simultaneous real-time access to data across multiple provider stored data sets;
• Provide secure storage of and access to U.S. telephone metadata records for a sufficient period of time;
• Meet rigorous security and auditability standards to ensure that no queries take place without appropriate authorization and no data is provided to the Government unless in response to an authorized query while maintaining 99.9% availability.

The DNI notice makes clear that its RFI is not soliciting information about research efforts. Nor is it soliciting bids from sources seeking to serve as third-party data storage providers. “Any such submissions will be disregarded,” the notice adds.

Further information is available from Dr. David Honey, of DNI, at davidh2@dni.gov.