NSA Reforms

The Obama administration stated in January 2014 that the National Security Agency would be getting reforms to protect citizens from the bulk collection of information. The President announced he wanted to end intelligence gathering practices that involved the government storing broad collections of phone and electronic communication data.

Recently Senator Diane Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee accused the CIA of hacking the committee’s computers in a move to silence their opposition to a practice of torture by the CIA. Senator Feinstein was of course dismayed that her personal information could have been at risk for snooping by Federal Officials completely ignoring the fact that the CIA and NSA continue this practice on the citizenry of this country on a daily he underlying issue with the Senator’s argument is, “It is ok to spy on them, but wrong to spy on us.” That is a dangerous notion indeed.

In a bipartisan move Reps. Mike Rogers  and Dutch Ruppersberger , the chairman and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee respectively , said, “the End Bulk Collection Act will ensure the federal government doesn’t retain logs about calls made within the United States. The bill would also ban bulk collection of “electronic communications records” Still allowed under this act is the ability for telephone and cellular phone companies to continue to collect the info, but the federal government would have to request the info from them. This is similar to the FISA 1978 and its secret court system for which the NSA acquired their power to spy on American citizens without their knowledge. In the end your information is still being collected and it can still be obtained by the federal and state governments, this bill is simply sugar to soothe the wounds instead of salt.

The NSA and its information and intelligence collection has come under fire since the most popular whistle blower in history, Edward Snowden, released confidential and top secret information to these programs. Though Snowden wasn’t the first to reveal the details of mass surveillance by the United States Government, that honor belongs to Russ Tice who had in December of 2005 alleged that the NSA was engaged in unlawful and unconstitutional intellegience gathering on the American people via clandestine eavesdropping programs outside the ordinances of FISA and it's secret court.

Former President Jimmy Carter has said recently that he hand writes letters to foreign and domestic leaders because of his fear of the NSA’s power. Now that is ironic since it was under Jimmy Carter that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 was drafted and signed giving the CIA and NSA the power to collect all information from all sources on anyone in the world. The monster he unleashed has grown too large and now even he doesn’t feel safe, so why would anyone else?

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is taking a bit of credit for the recent progress on this matter saying, “I don’t want to take all the credit for ending this, but I think our lawsuit had something to do with bringing the president to the table.”

Paul continues to say that he would still like to see a investigation of the abuse of power by the CIA and NSA saying, “. I favor a select committee like they had in the 1970s, the Church Committee, to look into all of these. There is a certain amount of arrogance here that needs to be checked.”

I wrote previously on the abuses and institutions of the surveillance here and here and I would direct all those interested in the actions and effects of FISA, The Patriot Act and the NSA’s use of intelligence gathering around the world to read Glenn Greenwald’s book  How Would A Patriot Act?