In addition, the Board is specifically responsible for reviewing the terrorism information sharing practices of executive branch departments and agencies to determine whether they adhere to guidelines designed to protect privacy and civil liberties appropriately.

Recommended by the 9/11 Commission Report issued on July 22, 2004, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was initially established by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

1 ("Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007") aimed to reconstitute the board as an independent agency, composed of 5 Senate-confirmed members serving staggered six-year terms and passed the U.S. House of Representatives.

On September 8, 2008, President Bush made a fourth nomination, of James X. Dempsey, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, to serve a five-year term.

[5] In December 2010, President Barack Obama nominated two persons to the Board: Dempsey, and Elisebeth Collins Cook, a former Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and, at the time, a partner in a Chicago law firm.

The report found that the NSA's reliance on a 2004 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court opinion approving the bulk collection of Internet metadata does not correctly apply to the situation: "The government should not base an ongoing program affecting the rights of Americans on an interpretation of a statute that is not apparent from a natural reading of the text".

[18] The PCLOB found no evidence of bad faith or misconduct on the part of the NSA, but that the technological complexity and vast scope of surveillance programs coupled with the potential for governmental abuse of power posed an inherent risk to Americans.

[citation needed] On January 20, 2025, The Trump White House requested resignation letters from the three Democrats on the PCLOB board, leaving it with just one member: Beth Ann Williams.

Those members asked to resign include Chair Sharon Bradford Franklin and two others selected by Democratic administrations, Edward W. Felten and Travis LeBlanc.

[21] As of December 2023: Some people initially viewed the PCLOB with skepticism, since the board was convened to protect the American public against privacy intrusions by their own government.

In 2015, Ron Wyden (D-OR) in the Senate and Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI-2) in the House spearheaded, along with co-sponsors Tom Udall (D-NM) and Trey Gowdy (R-SC-4), the Strengthening Privacy, Oversight, and Transparency (SPOT) Act,[22] to, as Udall stated, strengthen the PCLOB and "significantly improve the oversight and accountability of the nation's intelligence community to protect Americans' constitutional rights.