Trump Is Trying To Fire Most of the White House's Civil Liberties Watchdog

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board should be Trump's ally in a battle against the deep state. So why is he undermining it?

President Donald Trump is reportedly seeking to ax most of the members of an internal watchdog agency that flags potential privacy violations by federal surveillance programs—including the government's warrantless electronic communication spying scheme.

Three members of the five-person Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board received letters this week telling them to resign or prepare to be fired by Thursday, The New York Times reports. Democratic presidents appointed the three individuals targeted for termination, and their departure would mean the board does not have a sufficient quorum to operate.

The lone Republican-appointed member of the board has not been asked to resign, the Times notes. The fifth seat on the board is currently vacant.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) was created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks but was hobbled by a lack of a quorum and other procedural issues during much of the Bush administration and into the early years of the Obama administration. Despite that, the board produced in 2014 the first comprehensive review of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program—a report that confirmed much of what Edward Snowden revealed to the public a year earlier.

Since then, the board has continued to advocate for greater transparency and accountability in federal spying programs. The PCLOB can also review proposed anti-terrorism legislation, regulations, and policies, and it advises the White House about potential civil liberties violations.

The board has a full-time president and four part-time members who serve staggered six-year terms. All members are appointed by the president and are subject to Senate confirmation. That means Trump likely has the power to dismiss members at will, even if their terms are not complete.

Even so, civil liberties advocates both inside and outside the government said the sudden dismissal of three members of the PCLOB was a worrying sign.

"This is an effort to shoot the watchdog," Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, which advocates for privacy online, said in a statement to Reason. "President Trump's attempt to expel members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is a brazen effort to destroy an independent watchdog that has protected Americans and exposed surveillance abuse under Democratic and Republican administrations alike."

Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.), a longstanding critic of the federal surveillance state, told the Times that Trump was "purging" the board and "kneecapping one of the only independent watchdogs over government surveillance who could alert Congress and the public about surveillance abuses by his administration."

It remains unclear whether the Trump administration plans to appoint new members to fill what might soon be four vacancies on the PCLOB, or leave the positions open and effectively shut the entity down. The latter option would certainly be a bad look for a president who has campaigned on a promise to combat the so-called "deep state" and curtail the government's spying efforts. The PCLOB ought to be an ally in accomplishing those goals.

Of course, Trump did sign a bill reauthorizing the government's Section 702 warrantless electronic surveillance program in 2018, so his commitment to surveillance reform is not a firm one.

"I sincerely hope that President Trump will live up to his commitments to rein in surveillance abuses," wrote Ashley Gorski, a senior attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, in a post on X. "Purging the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board—an independent, bipartisan watchdog agency—is not the way."