Why Are The Congressional Intelligence Committees So Quiet On The NSA Malware Leaks?
from the speak-up,-feinstein,-we-can't-hear-you dept
Last week, we wrote about the leak of various NSA hacking tools, that showed it had zero-day exploits for a bunch of hardware, including some from Cisco. This has raised some concerns about how long the NSA sat on these vulnerabilities without telling companies -- along with reaffirming what many people already suspected: that the supposed "Vulnerabilities Equities Program" (VEP), in which the NSA is supposed to disclose the vulnerabilities it finds to the companies to patch, is a complete joke.But Marcy Wheeler has another important point about all of this. When the Snowden documents originally leaked three plus years ago, the various top members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees -- the so-called Gang of Four -- were quick to speak out (and condemn) the leak. But, oddly, this time they're staying pretty quiet.
If the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were really about "oversight" of the NSA, then shouldn't they have jumped on this immediately? Shouldn't they be looking into how the NSA manages the VEP? Shouldn't they be looking into how these tools got out? Why are they just staying silent or giving meaningless statements like Schiff's?Within hours of the first Snowden leak, Dianne Feinstein and Mike Rogers had issued statements about the phone dragnet. As far as I’ve seen, Adam Schiff is the only Gang of Four member who has weighed in on this
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, also spoke with Mary Louise. He said he couldn’t comment on the accuracy of any reports about the leak.
But he said, “If these allegations were true, I’d be very concerned about the impact on the intelligence community. I’d also obviously want to know who the responsible parties were. … If this were a Russian actor — and again, this is multiple ‘ifs’ here — we’d have to ask what is causing this escalation.”
Say, Congressman Schiff. Aren’t you the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and couldn’t you hold some hearings to get to the bottom of this?
Meanwhile, both Feinstein (who is the only Gang of Four member not campaigning for reelection right now) and Richard Burr have been weighing in on recent events, but not the Shadow Brokers release.
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Filed Under: 0days, adam schiff, devin nunes, dianne feinstein, house intelligence committee, leak, malware, nsa, richard burr, senate intelligence committee, vep, vulnerabilities
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Re: Because They are Corrupt !
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Re: Re: Because They are Corrupt !
Don't you mean 'the other five congressmen'?
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After all, if there's a known leaker, then you've got your man to condemn. If it's campaign year and the victim is the NSA because your committee hasn't been doing its job, why would you want to draw attention to this?
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Re:
They're being quiet about it because REDACTED
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Re: Re:
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When you are part of the 'program'...
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Rule #1 of the H&S Intelligence Committees: 'If you can't say anything pro-NSA, don't say anything at all'
Why stay silent? It's because they have absolutely no interest in providing any sort of oversight or acting as a check on the NSA's actions, and since commenting on this there's really no way to make the NSA come out looking good(which is all they care about), they instead choose to say nothing at all.
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Re: Rule #1 of the H&S Intelligence Committees: 'If you can't say anything pro-NSA, don't say anything at all'
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Re: Rule #1 of the H&S Intelligence Committees: 'If you can't say anything pro-NSA, don't say anything at all'
If they admit it was the NSA, they can cause some pretty enormous damage to international relations.
If they deny it's the NSA, and they're telling the truth, then there's a truly scary adversary out there.
If they deny it's the NSA, and they're lying, then in 3 days, $DATADUMP++ will prove them liars.
from their perspective, it's a no-win situation. they best "option" they have is likely to stay quiet. Because then their words can't come back to haunt them.
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Re: Re: Rule #1 of the H&S Intelligence Committees: 'If you can't say anything pro-NSA, don't say anything at all'
Please say it ain't so. I mean we have only been throwing how much money at them since 9/11.
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Negate Security and Anonymity
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SCHIFF VS SCHIFF
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Please!... no emails!
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Techdirtians/ Techdirtites!... let me make a suggestion!... call upon Richard Schiff (but!... speaking, as Tobias Zachary Ziegler!) to offer up to Techdirt, what the West Wing's Communications Director would say, re this most recent "security dilemma" that's been posed by the NSA! I believe that not only would Techdirtians/ Techdirtites be interested in Richard's response, but-- yea!-- the CURRENT WEST WING, and, the MILLIONS of Tobias Zachary Ziegler supporters!
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