Inspector General For Intelligence Community Rejects Congress' Request To Investigate The NSA
from the oversight! dept
Remember, kids, how the NSA and its defenders keep talking about how much oversight there is? One part of that is the inspector general who is supposed to make sure that the NSA isn't going rogue. Except... now that the Judiciary Committee asked the intelligence community Inspector General Charles McCullough to investigate the NSA's dragnet data collections, he's told them he just can't do it, according to a recent report at Politico.“At present, we are not resourced to conduct the requested review within the requested timeframe,” wrote McCullough, before adding he and other agency inspectors general are weighing now whether they can combine forces on a larger probe.Not surprisingly, those who asked for the help, are not pleased. Senator Pat Leahy appears particularly angry about this:
That response didn’t sit well with Leahy, who raised the letter during a scathing speech on the Senate floor Wednesday that slammed the intelligence community for a “trust deficit.” Leahy also emphasized his belief that “the American people are rightly concerned that their private information could be swept up into a massive database, and then compromised.”While it may be true that McCullough does not have significant resources to do this kind of investigation, that really just highlights the problem. There clearly is not sufficient oversight over the NSA's activities. The fact that the very person in charge of this kind of investigation, when told to do it by Congress, says he can't, should demonstrate just how little actual oversight there is. Perhaps instead of putting more money towards stopping the next Ed Snowden, the Senate should give that money to the inspector general to investigate the NSA and encourage the next Ed Snowden to come forward.
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Filed Under: charles mccullough, inspector general, nsa, nsa surveillance, oversight, pat leahy, senate judiciary committee
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So about that 'oversight'...
Where exactly is this famed 'comprehensive oversight' the administration has been trumpeting on about since this whole debacle started, because for the life of me I certainly can't see it.
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Re: So about that 'oversight'...
If other parts of government won't obey the law, congress can just not give them money. Defund the NSA? Maybe just the threat of it might cause some much needed debate among all of the master-debaters in congress.
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Re: Re: So about that 'oversight'...
So again, they only know of the NSA what the NSA wants them to know, and moreover even after the Snowden leaks have shown that the NSA has been lying to them for years, even when one of the people in charge of the NSA lies directly to their faces, they still seem unwilling to actually do anything about it, probably due to being terrified of being labeled as 'soft on terrorism', and nothing scares a politician more than the thought of losing their cushy 'job'.
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Re: So about that 'oversight'...
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Re: Re: So about that 'oversight'...
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Or perhaps they could simply shut down the NSA and save 10 billion dollars per year while also giving another billion for oversight procedures within the Govt itself. Not happening.
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Problem is that only a few in Congress even bother to pretend.
[And by the way, Mike is now to stage of calling you "kids". -- Oh, it's okay when he patronizes you, eh? -- Well, I can now reveal that I'm just one of Mike's personalities, which pops out from his inner turmoil over corporatist positions. (No, you aren't. -- YES I AM!) Ahem. -- Anyway, Mike's presently dominant personality is slowly coming round to my Populist views and other opinions; he'll soon be calling you ankle-biters...]
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Want to stop the next Edward Snowden?
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Re: Want to stop the next Edward Snowden?
However, the problem is when there is no oversight to control these people/ideas; when there is no accountability to keep them in line; when there is no responsibility to the stakeholders, but only to completing the mission...
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Re: Re: Want to stop the next Edward Snowden?
Those in charge of the NSA can't be reached. So they get Snowden, Elsberg, and the like. Repeatedly.
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Re: Re: Re: Want to stop the next Edward Snowden?
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Uh...who are you and what did you do with Mike Masnick?
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"we're sorry, plese leave your name address...."
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What he's really saying...
Translation: The programs and abuses you talking about are so vast and widespread that we couldn't possibly investigate them thoroughly and report back on all of them by the end of the year. We don't have anywhere close to $10 billion budget, huge datacenters with racks of supercomputers, and legions of government personnel and private contractors at our disposal like they do. You would be much more efficient just taking the approach of the Amash amendment and simply starting to slash their funding for this stuff.
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Surveillance
"REPORT: CIA PAYS OVER 10 MILLION A YEAR TO AT&T TO SPY ON PHONE CALLS" ... http://www.newslinx.net/nsa-news/
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No, my main concern is that we will collect and store all of this neat stuff, then our "friends" overseas, in Asia and Eastern Europe, who have been cashing in in a small way, would discover the way into the main treasure. The result of that would be catastrophic.
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Re:
Why aren't you concerned? Given that pretty much every time they've done such domestic spying in the past it has been used to abuse citizens, why do you think it might be different this time?
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What this little bit is covering up is that oversight so paraded by the NSA has gotten the short end of the budget simply because it wasn't so important to report to anyone and tell the absolute truth. Constructing facilities is more important that reporting screw ups. So you wind up after years with not having enough staff to do the job the NSA doesn't want them to do.
Congress has time and again proved this method works to stifle what they don't want to hear. Make a law saying this agency is in charge of some report and then remove the funding so it doesn't have enough to do the job and the problem is over.
Since congress and the people are asking questions, the weak spot has been revealed in this little scheme. There is not enough people to do the job as intended.
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1. The NSA isn't exactly known for being overly cooperative with people asking questions, even in government. (see. Alexander and Clapper's responses to questions before Congress).
2. The NSA is SO big and the programs are SO vast that doing a thorough investigation of all of it a month and a half is likely to be a daunting and somewhat unreasonable task for any entity to complete.
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do your job
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So our elected officials have less authority than those that aren't elected. Nice to know.
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