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Church Committee Members Say New Group Needed To Watch NSA 143

Posted by timothy from the and-a-committee-to-oversee-the-committee dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "In a letter sent to President Obama and members of Congress, former members and staff of the Church Committee on Intelligence said that the revelations of the NSA activities have caused 'a crisis of public confidence' and encouraged the formation of a new committee to undertake 'significant and public reexamination of intelligence community practices.' In the letter sent Monday to Obama and Congress, several former advisers to and members of the Church committee, including the former chief counsel, said that the current situation involving the NSA bears striking resemblances to the one in 1975 and that the scope of what the NSA is doing today is orders of magnitude larger than what was happening nearly 40 years ago.

'The need for another thorough, independent, and public congressional investigation of intelligence activity practices that affect the rights of Americans is apparent. There is a crisis of public confidence. Misleading statements by agency officials to Congress, the courts, and the public have undermined public trust in the intelligence community and in the capacity for the branches of government to provide meaningful oversight,' the letter says."
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Church Committee Members Say New Group Needed To Watch NSA More

Church Committee Members Say New Group Needed To Watch NSA

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @12:55PM (#46517081)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I was thinking of those that would perverse a system for their own personal wet dreams. These same personalities would scream innocence when publically confronted with their actions; while rest of us try to keep from purging our prior meal. So ya, lies.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:39PM (#46517609)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

        by sexconker ( 1179573 )

        Not just lies, perjury. Those lies were told under oath.

        If we had a functioning justice system in this country, those perps would be in jail awaiting trial right now.

        -jcr

        If we had a functioning justice system, they would have been rounded up, tried for treason, and executed as traitors. They are levying war against the entire populace and are aiding our enemies with spy-back agreements. The banksters, the clowns at BP, the Enron dicks, etc. all knowingly, willingly, and intentionally fucked shit up on such a grand scale that I would consider them to be waging war on Americans as well, thus making them traitors and earning them the death penalty.

        But the law doesn't apply t

        • Not just lies, perjury. Those lies were told under oath.

          If we had a functioning justice system in this country, those perps would be in jail awaiting trial right now.

          -jcr

          If we had a functioning justice system, they would have been rounded up, tried for treason, and executed as traitors. They are levying war against the entire populace and are aiding our enemies with spy-back agreements. The banksters, the clowns at BP, the Enron dicks, etc. all knowingly, willingly, and intentionally fucked shit up on such a grand scale that I would consider them to be waging war on Americans as well, thus making them traitors and earning them the death penalty.

          But the law doesn't apply to the rich and powerful in this nation.

          Laws don't apply to the intelligence community when psychos roam this planet.

    • The problem, therefore, being one of branding rather than action?

      Hint- the fact that they lied doesn't matter to me. The fact that they're reading this post, in building my dossier, does.

  • really? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DaWhilly ( 2555136 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @12:58PM (#46517129)
    We have a group that monitors the NSA. The NSA lied to them.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's turtles all the way down.

      There is no sense in having yet another layer of watcher if it isn't possible to verify their work.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:41PM (#46517637)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • They would just go to work for the highest bidder. They need to be deprogrammed first before being set free.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Don't forget the existing data: all the hardware should be shredded, and datacenters should be bulldozed "until a no stone stands atop another stone". In short, the NSA is like Beta: it should get the Carthage treatment.

    • Re:really? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @03:31PM (#46518765)

      "We have a group that monitors the NSA. The NSA lied to them."

      BS. Do you really think the chair of the Intelligence Committe, Dianne Feinstein, didn't have a pretty good idea of what was going on? She was one of the people pushing for it.

      The fact that this uproar is only happening now, when she found out that *SHE* was being spied on, would be hilarious if it weren't such a goddamned tragedy and parody of justice.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zlives ( 2009072 )

        she should probaly loose her reelection just on this bit... if the NSA doesn't coerce her opponent to forget and move along.
        wonder what she had to hide that NSA knew and CIA doesn't.

        • "she should probaly loose her reelection just on this bit..."

          I my opinion Feinstein should have been washed out of the Senate a long time ago. Maybe this most recent bit of outrageous hypocrisy will finally be the turning point for her.

          • She's 80 years old and will be 85 when she comes up for re-election again. She can be in office only so long before here own mortality catches up with her. I suspect she will choose not to run again even if she ultimately lives to be 102, her age will give cover for her falling poll numbers.

            I'm sure the Democrats will find some other gun grabbing loon to take her place. I'm pretty sure that Californians will elect this as yet unnamed gun grabbing loon.

            • Better a gun-grabbing loon than a gun-grabbing AND privacy-grabbing loon. Evil of two lessers and all that.

              • I fail to see the distinction. Someone that wants to disarm the public is not going to be concerned about their privacy. In order to get the guns the people in power will stop anyone on a whim to search for weapons. They don't need a warrant to search your house because you might have a gun inside. The gun grabbers will put cameras on your street, they will track where you go, they will record your phone calls. These people are sick, they have a pathology that creates in them a paranoia of others that

  • Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by r_jensen11 ( 598210 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @12:58PM (#46517137)

    Who watches the watchmen?

    Yes, the NSA and the greater intelligence community clearly needs oversight, but will anyone trust someone with that much power any more than we currently trust the NSA?

    And to preach to the choir, but shouldn't the conversation shift to asking:

    • Which risks are we (as a society) willing to take
    • What does the intelligence community need to fulfill its social responsibility?

    • Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:50PM (#46517739)

      Who watches the watchmen?

      In theory, that would be the job of the free press.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        In theory, that would be the job of the free press.

        Well you guys have a free press in the US, the only problem is...it's sucking the Obama admin's nutsack. The people writing the majority of the articles are happy to roll over for any request, and they'll take anything including OFA/Media Matters talking points as gospel truth. And people on that side of the spectrum, refuse to listen to this, believing it to be "lies" or "disinformation" because they're blinded by partisanship. Or they simply believe the talking points that it's "all about race." That'

        • What you claim may make more sense if the GOP, Fox News, and the Ultra Right Wingers are not bat shit insane.

          When you keep crying "wolf, wolf, wolf" or "benghazi, benghazi, benghazi"... *ugh* how stupid do you think anyone with half a brain is?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Mashiki ( 184564 )

            When you keep crying "wolf, wolf, wolf" or "benghazi, benghazi, benghazi"... *ugh* how stupid do you think anyone with half a brain is?

            Apparently anyone with half a brain would be paying attention to the hearings on it. If you did, then you'd also know exactly how much lying and how much of a coverup the current administration is engaged in over it. My favorite so far, was that the administration knew it was a terrorist attack but blamed it on a youtube video anyway. My second favorite was that they had a confirmed through secondary sources of an impending terrorist attack, and did nothing.

            So, I guess those "right wingers who are bat sh

            • Perhaps you should have listened a bit harder, where the security agencies are asking POTUS and everyone else talking about it to specifically not call things out, because, you know, they're trying to pinpoint shit, and having your politicians scream about what it is makes their job difficult.

              So, yeah, batshit insane.

              If you want to throw around lies, why don't you address the fact that Bush and Cheney lied multiple times about WMD and took the country to war over that lies? 4 dead in Benghazi versus thousa

      • In theory, that would be the job of the free press.

        Instead, we have what has now become the defacto US Department of Propaganda.. Herman Goebbles, Hitler's propaganda minister, would have had an orgasm over the kind of power today's propaganda apparatus has...

    • Who watches the watchmen?

      Yes, the NSA and the greater intelligence community clearly needs oversight, but will anyone trust someone with that much power any more than we currently trust the NSA?

      You don't need meta-powers over the NSA to oversee the NSA, you only need the power needed to oversee the NSA. You don't even need enforcement power as long as your oversight can be reported - and accepted - by whatever agency actually regulates the NSA.

      That's how checks and balances work. The President cannot control Congress (who cannot even control themselves, but that's another story). The President cannot control the Judiciary. Likewise, neither of those branches can control the President. But their po

    • Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @03:39PM (#46518847)

      "And to preach to the choir, but shouldn't the conversation shift to asking:

      Which risks are we (as a society) willing to take

      What does the intelligence community need to fulfill its social responsibility?"

      NO. We already have answers to these questions.

      The Constitution clearly shows us the safeguards to use: strictly limited government is the only solid answer to the first question, and government's actions outside the Constitution have only been further proving the validity of that. (Though why we should need even more proof than history had already given us might actually be a valid question.)

      As for what the intelligence committee "needs": that is also pretty damned clear. The first thing they need is to ensure the government stops spying on all American citizens who aren't prior suspects of espionage... with probable-cause EVIDENCE of the latter.

      The second thing they need is to make sure the government stops doing stupid spy shit to our allies and pissing them off.

      After that, we will see.

    • Anyone who paid to go to a cinema, rented a DVD or downloaded the movie?

    • The answer to too much government is more government to watch it.

      • 100% correct.

        Continue this pattern as far as possible. Eventually everybody is government and everybody is everybody else's checks and balances. An interesting pathway to the same effects as just abolishing the whole damn thing!

  • people paying attention lost confidence in the federal government and intelligence community forty plus years ago. that trust has never been regained, Snowden just gave a wakeup call for younger people.

    The intelligence and police of our federal government are out of the control of We the People

    • The intelligence and police of our federal government are out of the control of We the People

      Same is true for government, which mostly only answers to We the Corporations these days.

      • You added nothing except a weak attempt to act like government is only a problem due to corporations.

        Corporations get more and more involved with the government due to the increasing regulations that governments put on them.

        Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to separate them now. But the fault for the intertwining lies directly with the government.

        • no, government always has been in pockets of large corporations. in western world, started hundreds of years ago with banking cartel

  • Less rubberstamping committees, more restritictions on the government.

    Carter started extraconstitutional spying on suspected foreign agents (tapping phones) and had FISA courts oversee the implementation, and those courts I think went ahead with all but 4 out of 17,000+ requests in one of the past years.

    Oversight is always than complete government restriction.

    • Oversight is always than complete government restriction.

      I whole-heartedly.

      • I actually have a less-than symbol in there somewhere but slashdot deleted that. I forgot the nuances of this specific site.

  • WTF has a Church Committee got to do with this anyway? There is supposed to be 'Separation of Church and State" as part of the constitution.
    (And which Church are we talking about anyway? Catholic? Lutheran (ELCA) Southern Baptist? Methodist etc

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by spafbi ( 324017 )
      Ahem... from wikipedia: "The Church Committee was the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-ID) in 1975." ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]

      • Ahem... from wikipedia: "The Church Committee was the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-ID) in 1975."

        < Dana Carvey Mode ON>

        Well, isn't that special.

        < Dana Carvey Mode OFF>

    • Ugh you stole my thunder, I was going to pretend to be an ignoramus who didn't know Church was a surname. But your delivery was lackluster, it could've been done so much better.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by spafbi ( 324017 )
        You, sir, are correct. My reply, while informative, was indeed lacking in oomph. Perhaps next time.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TheCarp ( 96830 )

        You know, the world, and slashdot is big enough for multiple ingorami. You can still do it, it is totally not too late. Or, you could have doubled down and expanded upon GP. like you didn't get the joke. So many possibilities here. The only upside is you still can since few people really read all the comments anyway.

        • Duh, once an idea is explained, everyone who has any sort of similar idea has to stand behind that exact version. That's why all environmentalists have to join Greenpeace, and all gun owners have to be republicans.

          That's just how ideas work. You can't have your own, that wouldn't make any sense at all. Then the world would be all complicated, and you couldn't just sort people into easy categories.

          What are you smoking, anyways?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by TheCarp ( 96830 )

            Lol that reminds me of one of my favorite memes (as much as I hate that "meme" has come to mean "picture with words on it that people pass around") said "That awkward moment when you piss off both a liberal and conservative by arguing in favor of gun rights for married gay couples to protect their home and marijuana plants".

            Yah.... that awkward moment is known as my life....I fully support that.... and no that doesn't answer your question. The answer to that is nothing at all. Or at least... that is the ans

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JustOK ( 667959 )
      They only meet for an hour on Sundays.

  • Nice that they're trying.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rigel47 ( 2991727 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:05PM (#46517239)
    But I can't help but feel that the very nature of our Government has morphed. Institutions like the NSA aren't bothered by public perception -- they have grown into their own. They are beholden only to their own agenda and will do whatever it takes (lying to congress, fabricating effectiveness) to maintain and expand their power. Obama will do some hand-wringing on TV but in the end nothing will change.

    • But I can't help but feel that the very nature of our Government has morphed. Institutions like the NSA aren't bothered by public perception -- they have grown into their own. They are beholden only to their own agenda and will do whatever it takes (lying to congress, fabricating effectiveness) to maintain and expand their power. Obama will do some hand-wringing on TV but in the end nothing will change.

      To be fair, public perception shouldn't count. Public action, on the other hand...

      And if the American public doesn't take some serious action, they'll have only themselves to blame when people laugh at their assertions of being the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SEE ( 7681 )

      Oh? Has the NSA defied a direct Presidential order?

      If and when Obama, head of the Executive Branch, tells the NSA to stop collecting, and they keep collecting anyway, then we can start talking about how the NSA is only beholden to its own agenda.

      In the meantime, there's no reason at all to believe the buck does not stop with the President. This is not "NSA spying" any more than that the war in Iraq was the "Department of Defense's war".

  • Beyond oversight? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tchdab1 ( 164848 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:10PM (#46517301) Homepage

    Seems like the NSA and CIA might be by nature beyond oversight. Their job includes assuming that the worst scenarios are possible, which then justifies any action to thwart them, including lying to their overseers in order to keep doing illegal things they think is necessary to prevent those worst possible scenarios. It's bureaucratic paranoia resulting in functional schizophrenia that makes sense within the hive mind but not within the greater public mind that employs them to keep us safe.

    • There is a real problem with trying any kind of openness or oversight in covert operations. The public is clueless in many areas and probably must remain so as a matter of public safety. Try this as a thought experiment. Have our president pass a security act that requires all members of the public, the government or the military who have any knowledge of the death of JFK to come forward immediately under severe penalty of law. Then watch how many agencies, businesses and individuals fig

    • Seems like the NSA and CIA might be by nature beyond oversight. Their job includes assuming that the worst scenarios are possible, which then justifies any action to thwart them, including lying to their overseers in order to keep doing illegal things they think is necessary to prevent those worst possible scenarios. It's bureaucratic paranoia resulting in functional schizophrenia that makes sense within the hive mind but not within the greater public mind that employs them to keep us safe.

      I tend to doubt that. First, because we do have enough latitude under the law for investigation, infiltration, and other counter-measures. The issue at hand is that the limits of the law have been exceeded by the wrong people at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons. If you want monitoring of domestic communications, that's the FBI's job, for example. If you must spy on every trivial communication of every citizen, you need to provide probable cause as to why that should be essential.

      Secondly, because th

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SEE ( 7681 )

      No.

      It's not like Obama has issued an order for the NSA to stop domestically collecting metadata right now. If he did that and the NSA kept collecting, then there would be an issue about whether the NSA was "by nature beyond oversight".

      Rather, what we have here is the NSA doing what the President has told them they can do. Pretending the NSA is a rogue agency is simply letting the person in charge - the President - off the hook.

  • Because what the US Government needs... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:11PM (#46517311) Journal

    ...is another committee, I'm sure of it.

    Maybe a committe, and a staff...of course you have to have a competent staff. And they're going to be overworked, so a whole fleet of nubile, er, naive, er, talented interns.

    And they'll need offices, maybe a new office building, somewhere downtown so they can exercise 'oversight' as closely as possible. A parking garage, certainly, plus probably a cafeteria. Probably a monorail from the airport is worth considering too...

  • Oh, not that kind of Church?

  • And do what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:18PM (#46517389)

    Sure, an oversight committee would be a good idea. But are they going to be able to actually do their job? High-ranking officials in the NSA have already demonstrated they are willing to outright lie to congress, so why would they be any more honest here?

    We'll just end up with a committee that isn't allowed to know about the things they should be monitoring, wouldn't be told if they were allowed to know, and can't actually do anything about any abuses they do find beyond politely reminding the NSA that their actions are probably illegal.

    • so why would they be any more honest here?

      The only way to make them more honest is if Congress actually decided to throw the people who lied to them into jail.

      We'll just end up with a committee that isn't allowed to know about the things they should be monitoring, wouldn't be told if they were allowed to know, and can't actually do anything about any abuses they do find beyond politely reminding the NSA that their actions are probably illegal.

      Wait, isn't that what we have now?

      Something with a little more te

      • so why would they be any more honest here?

        The only way to make them more honest is if Congress actually decided to throw the people who lied to them into jail.

        We'll just end up with a committee that isn't allowed to know about the things they should be monitoring, wouldn't be told if they were allowed to know, and can't actually do anything about any abuses they do find beyond politely reminding the NSA that their actions are probably illegal.

        Wait, isn't that what we have now?

        Something with a little more teeth needs to be in charge of this. Of course, then they themselves would just become the next step in the chain of lying bastards anyway.

        They only lie to congress because no one in Congress is in a position to understand how the NSA protects us. Please explain to everyone how our civil liberties have been actually violated? You want privacy? Unplug your computer. Otherwise you must accept how this world works and if it's not the NSA then another agency, foreign or domestic will be doing the intelligence work. At least this isn't China where writing your above post would get a knock on your door.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          They only lie to congress because no one in Congress is in a position to understand how the NSA protects us.

          So, by that logic I should be able to steal your money because you seem to waste it on stuff? How can we trust an entity which lies to us and tells us it's for our own good? Are you prepared to give blanket trust to these people? If you are, you're an idiot.

          Please explain to everyone how our civil liberties have been actually violated?

          My right of free association because I may tangentially know som

  • Reform (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:23PM (#46517441)

    No amount of "reform" is going to fix this. Adding more lawyers and more bureaucracy will not fix this. It's all cop-outs and the NSA will keep doing what it's doing under whatever name it's given as part whatever cop-out reform you can imagine.

    You might get there with constitutional amendments, but personally I'm arguing for a breakup; the problem is the millions highly paid bureaucrats ensconced in Washington doing the bidding of their hundred foot tall political Masters of the Universe in league with corporate statists trying to rectifiy the world to fit their business models. We don't actually need these people to live well and honorably, folks.

    We really don't.

  • Until the US congress actually withholds funding from an agency that violates US law, all federal agencies are exempt from the law.

    • They need to do more than withhold funding, they need to to put the people violating the law in jail, charge them with treason, and otherwise make their lives miserable.

      But somehow this is being treated like something they can do and not have any real consequences. Start putting the people in charge in Federal prison, and make them responsible for what their agencies do, and then you might start to see changes.

      Right now it sounds like you can lie to Congress and break the law all you want, and nobody does

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        They need to do more than withhold funding, they need to to put the people violating the law in jail, charge them with treason, and otherwise make their lives miserable.

        Jail and torture and mass execution of those involved is trivial to a bureaucracy - but cut their funding and the whole public sector world will take notice, and flee.

        • Jail and torture and mass execution of those involved is trivial to a bureaucracy

          Not when they suddenly find themselves on the receiving end it isn't.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            You can jail leaders, but you can't jail systematic abuse of leadership. There's always a new asshole waiting to step up. It's not the sort of evil that can be fixed by throwing a ring into a volcano.

            Better IMO to accept that organizations inevitably become corrupt over time, and put and end to each organization once it's gone to far. You don't have to have the government stop doing that thing, but move the funding to some different or new org.

    • Eventually it would fall on congress to not pay congress, and they've already pointed out during the shutdowns: Sorry. It is against the constitution for congress not to pay itself...

  • No the NSA needs to be dismantled (Score:3)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:33PM (#46517539) Journal

    The NSA needs to be taken apart and gotten rid of. Its almost complete overlap with CIA / FBI. There should be no NSA. We don't need a separate signals intelligence agency without a clearly defined scope.

    The stuff the NSA does around developing secure encryption standards etc (assuming it actually does any of that anymore and iust putting back doors in things ) should go the FBI as crime prevention. Everything else is foreign intelligence and should go to the CIA removing the duplication of course. It should be re-iterated the CIA is forbidden from operating withing the boarders.

    That is how you restore public confidence.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The NSA has a place. It's there as a sig-int operation and for intelligence gathering and aggregation. It is not an investigative agency. That is up to the CIA/FBI. The NSA just needs to do their job correctly. When the CIA/FBI come asking for intel from the NSA, the NSA's first response should be "Certainly. Show me the warrant and we'll have that to you shortly." The NSA has been slacking, taking shortcuts in the name of "national security". Mostly, I think they just don't give a crap. They're a three-let

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        The NSA's SIGINT role was vital during the cold war. Now it's just overreach. Foreign SIGINT belongs with the CIA, and DIA on the battlefield. There should be no domestic SIGINT: while valuable, the cost exceeds the benefit.

    • The NSA needs to be taken apart and gotten rid of. Its almost complete overlap with CIA / FBI. There should be no NSA. We don't need a separate signals intelligence agency without a clearly defined scope.

      The NSA has a clearly defined scope.

      Alas, much of what it has done in the last few years has been outside that legally defined scope.

  • Short of them being allowed to stick their manifesto in his breast pocket during a press conference, jack-shit is going to happen, all justified by permanent war and 'National Security' - the same garbage they've increasingly used to stop FOIA requests (which will probably be repealed in a few years anyway).

  • Nancy Pelosi stated that they were afaid to fix it (Score:4, Informative)

    by stox ( 131684 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:50PM (#46517741) Homepage

    “You don’t fight it without a price because they come after you and they don’t always tell the truth."

    http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/... [rollcall.com]

  • It's called The People. Stop withholding relevant information from the responsible watchdog organization, and everything will work itself out.

  • Just disband it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @02:15PM (#46518015) Homepage Journal

    That's what you do with rogue agencies.

    Back when I was in the Canadian Army, we disbanded entire units, burned their colors, demoted their officers, and punished the guilty for torturing civilians in Africa.

    Do that with the NSA. Starting at the top, with long prison sentences in gulags.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SEE ( 7681 )

      The top is the President, unless someone has evidence he gave an order to stop the spying and it was disobeyed.

  • The most widespread violations of citizen's rights in the history of this nation, practices that have badly damaged the international reputation of the nation in both public and private sectors, appointed officials who have sworn to protect and defend The Constitution patently guilty of criminal behaviro being allowed to tell Congress to, essentially, go fuck itself, and the advice is "form a committtee". Seriously?
  • At this point, governance of the NSA is a constitutional sham. There is no just rule because there is no consent of the governed.

    There appear to be 2 paths forward.

    1. 1) The path of trusted representation. If you can trust your representatives, maybe you can trust their oversight. This is the pathway that started with Frank Church and lead to Dianne Feinstein. The problem is, how do you regain trust when it has been so thoroughly abused? We now have lots of evidence that both the process and the people
  • The constitution and judiciary who will enforce it is the only group you need. They won't so the new group is just as free to break the law as the NSA. The Supreme Court and your government is already corrupt and ignores the constitution, so you're pretty much screwed.

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