Dianne Feinstein Admits That Her 'NSA Reform' Bill Is About Protecting Existing Surveillance Programs

from the oops dept

See, there's a problem when you lie: you always forget how to keep your story straight. You may remember, for example, that Senator Dianne Feinstein, at the end of October, released a bill that pretended to be about reforming the NSA and its surveillance programs. The bill was spun in a way that was designed to make people think it was creating real reforms, with a fact sheet claiming that it "prohibited" certain actions around bulk data collection, but which actually codified them in the law, by including massive loopholes. It was an incredibly cynical move by Feinstein and her staff, pretending that their bill to actually give the NSA even greater power and to legalize its abuses, was about scaling back the NSA. But that's the spin they put on it -- which almost no one bought.

But, it seems that even Feinstein has forgotten that her bill is supposed to pretend that it's about reining in the NSA. On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee met with the White House's task force, to discuss its recommendations for surveillance reform (which don't go far enough, but go way beyond what Feinstein wants). In discussing what happened in the meeting, Feinstein basically lets slip that she disagrees with the reforms suggested, and that support for her bill means that others are against reform as well:

Those recommendations were criticized by supporters of the NSA’s programs, including Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who has said that taking the information out of the government’s hands could put the country at risk. Feinstein has spoken out against proposed reforms that would require as much, and has sponsored her own committee bill that would preserve the agency’s methods.

“Our bill passed by 11-4, so you know there’s substantial support for the programs,” she said.

In other words, "my bill is for people who already support these programs." Exactly the opposite of what her marketing and public statements about the bill have been. Oops. Next time, she should try to not misrepresent her own bill, and maybe she can keep her story straight.

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, nsa, reform, surveillance

CIA Still Trying To Block Release Of Senate's $40 Million 'Devastating' Report About CIA's Torture Program

from the it's-going-to-come-out-eventually dept

Back in October, we wrote about how the Senate Intelligence committee was sitting on an apparently devastating report about the CIA's torture program. The report apparently cost an astounding $40 million to put together (I still have trouble understanding how this is even possible...), but the CIA was fighting against ever having it released, arguing that it was inaccurate and painted them in an unfairly bad light. The report is so devastating that even Senator Dianne Feinstein, long seen as the intelligence community's leading apologist, has been at the forefront of arguing for its release.

Foreign Policy magazine is now reporting that, even as the CIA continues to fight against it, some sort of deal has been reached to release at least part of the report.

On Thursday night, Feinstein said the CIA and the Obama administration have agreed that portions of her committee's exhaustive, 6,000-page report should be shared with the public. News of the agreement follows an intense struggle between the CIA and lawmakers that will likely shape how history views one of the most controversial periods in the post-9/11 era, when the CIA used tactics that President Obama and others have condemned as torture in an attempt to elicit information about terrorism.

At a hearing concerning the nomination of Caroline Krass to become the next general counsel for the CIA, Senator Mark Udall demanded that the document be made public, and threatened to block the nomination until the document was released. Senator Feinstein also quizzed Krass about getting access to related documents, concerning the CIA's legal rationale for its torture program and drone strikes -- only to have Krass refuse to commit to providing those documents. According to the Reuters report Krass told the committee she "did not believe members of the Senate panel had the right to see" those documents.

While so much of the focus concerning the intelligence community has been on the NSA these past few months, there is a growing amount of evidence that the CIA is also completely out of control, and views itself as being beyond basic Congressional oversight. It is a reminder that reforms for fixing the intelligence community cannot and should not focus merely on correcting this program or that program, but on a true and comprehensive overhaul of the entire system.

And it should start with releasing this 6,300 page report that American taxpayers paid $40 million to produce.

Filed Under: caroline kass, cia, dianne feinstein, drones, mark udall, torture

Read This If You Want To Understand Just How Far The NSA Has Gone, And The Political Mess Behind It

from the must-read dept

I cannot say enough good things about Ryan Lizza's comprehensive article about the NSA's surveillance programs and the legal mess and political fights they've created. There's nothing particularly new in the article, but it does an astoundingly good job putting everything that we've learned into context. Even as someone who's been following all of this very closely, it was still a bit of a jumbled puzzle in my mind, but Lizza's piece took all of it and laid out the entire picture. It goes through all of the details of how and why the NSA began the program, its regular and repeated (often egregious) abuses, and the questionable legal defenses to protect the program. It goes into great detail on Senator Ron Wyden's long fight against these programs and in favor of civil liberties and the Constitution. It details how and why President Obama flip-flopped from his position as Senator and kept the programs, despite multiple opportunities to dump them. Even crazier, it discusses how a proposal Obama made as Senator might have stopped these programs years ago:

Even without a full picture of the programs, two senators who were not on the Intelligence Committee became intense critics of N.S.A. domestic surveillance: Barack Obama and Joe Biden. In May, 2006, after the USA Today article appeared, Biden said it was frightening to learn that the government was collecting telephone records. “I don’t have to listen to your phone calls to know what you’re doing,” he told CBS News. “If I know every single phone call you made, I’m able to determine every single person you talked to. I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive.”

Obama’s objections to domestic surveillance stretched back even further. In 2003, as a Senate candidate, he called the Patriot Act “shoddy and dangerous.” And at the 2004 Democratic Convention, in the speech that effectively launched his eventual campaign for President, he took aim at the “library records” provision of the law. “We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states,” he declared. In 2005, when he arrived in Washington, Obama became one of Wyden’s new allies in his attempts to reform the law. The Patriot Act was up for reauthorization, and, at Wyden’s urging, the Senate was trying to scale back the “library records” section. One of the first bills that Obama co-sponsored, the Security and Freedom Enhancement Act, would have required that the government present “specific and articulable facts” if it wanted a court order for records, a much higher standard than the existing one.

Obama and several other senators, including John Kerry, now the Secretary of State, and Chuck Hagel, the current Secretary of Defense, laid out their legal case against the provision in a letter to colleagues on December 14, 2005. The government could “obtain library, medical and gun records and other sensitive personal information under Section 215 of the Patriot Act on a mere showing that those records are relevant to an authorized intelligence investigation,” they wrote. It allowed “government fishing expeditions targeting innocent Americans. We believe the government should be required to convince a judge that the records they are seeking have some connection to a suspected terrorist or spy.” The following day, on the Senate floor, Obama said that the provision “seriously jeopardizes the rights of all Americans and the ideals America stands for.”

The Bush White House fought Obama’s changes, but offered a few minor concessions. Most notably, a business that received a demand for records could challenge in court a nondisclosure agreement that accompanied the demand. That was enough to placate some Democrats, including Obama. Wyden objected that the change did nothing to address Obama’s concerns, but the reauthorization of the Patriot Act passed the Senate on March 1, 2006. Wyden, eight other Democrats, and one Independent voted against it; Obama and Biden voted for it. Bush signed the law on March 9th.

Wyden later learned that, while he and Obama were fighting to curtail Section 215, the N.S.A.’s lawyers were secretly arguing before the FISA court that the provision should allow the N.S.A. to legally collect the phone records of all Americans. The lawyers, encouraged by their success in retroactively legalizing the Internet-metadata program, believed that they could persuade the FISA court to force phone companies to regularly hand over their entire databases. At the FISA court, there are no lawyers challenging the government’s arguments; all the N.S.A. needed to do was convince a single judge. Had Obama’s language been adopted, the N.S.A.’s case would have collapsed.

It's a long but fascinating article that you owe it to yourself to read, no matter where you stand on these issues. It paints the whole picture that hasn't been clear to many, and highlights just how dysfunctional the oversight has been of the NSA. And, if you weren't already impressed enough by Senator Wyden, the article presents even more reasons to be impressed by him (and depressed that there's only one of him).

On Twitter last week, after the Snowden leaks showing that, yes, as Wyden had been hinting all along, the NSA has been collecting location data on tons and tons of people, there was a great tweet by Kade Ellis, saying:

New rule: when Ron Wyden asks "NSA, do you do this spying?" HE ALREADY KNOWS THE ANSWER AND THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS YES

Unfortunately, as the article details, Wyden very rarely is even allowed to ask these questions, and the intelligence community stonewalls at every opportunity. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who should be managing oversight of the intelligence community appears to believe her job is rather to defend and support the intelligence community.

Still, the most disappointing aspects of the article really focus on how President Obama and his advisors, many of whom had spoken out against the Patriot Act and various aspects of the program now in place, suddenly changed positions once they were in power, and it was their power to abuse. The repeated stories of intelligence industry insiders coming up with the flimsiest of reasons why these programs must continue are plenty troubling. However, the fact that no one in the government seems to think that the American public can even be trusted with their basic reasoning and interpretations of the laws of the land is just ridiculous.

Either way, as stated, you owe it to yourself to find some time to read the whole thing -- but prepare to be outraged.

Filed Under: barack obama, dianne feinstein, eric holder, james clapper, joe biden, nsa, ron wyden, ryan lizza, surveillance

Feinstein And Rogers Try To Scare Americans With Ooga Booga Terrorism Threats

from the halloween-was-a-month-ago dept

It appears that the heads of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, Senator Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Mike Rogers, are recognizing that their strategy for keeping their co-dependent relationship with the NSA going is failing and that the American public and an increasingly large segment of Congress no longer believes their bogus claims. Perhaps that's because every time they open their mouths, it takes all of about an hour before many of their claims are completely debunked, if not outright mocked for obviously being bogus. So their latest strategy? To basically yell "Ooga Booga Terrorists!" as loud as they can to try to scare people based on absolutely nothing.

Feinstein and Rogers did a little dance on Sunday political TV shows insisting that "the terrorism threat is increasing" and we're all going to die if we stop trying to make sure the NSA actually, you know, respects the Constitution. Asked if we were "safer" now than a year or two years ago, Feinstein kicked off the FUD:

“I don’t think so,” Feinstein replied. “I think terror is up worldwide, the statistics indicate that. The fatalities are way up. The numbers are way up. There are new bombs, very big bombs. Trucks being reinforced for those bombs. There are bombs that go through magnetometers. The bomb maker is still alive. There are more groups than ever. And there is huge malevolence out there.”

And Rogers quickly followed:

“I absolutely agree that we’re not safer today for the same very reasons,” he said. “So the pressure on our intelligence services to get it right to prevent an attack are enormous. And it’s getting more difficult.”

Of course, Feinstein's claim that "terror is up worldwide" is -- as is so often the case with her (and Rogers') claims about terrorism -- sorta true, but highly misleading. Yes, recent stats show an uptick in terrorist attacks and fatalities in 2012 -- but you can also see that it's highly variable. Earlier in the year, before the 2012 numbers came out, people were commenting on the fact that terror attacks and fatalities around the globe had been on the decline since 2007. Terrorism is highly variable and dependent on a few big successful attacks. Furthermore, if we look at attacks on the US, we find that there have basically been next to none in the US since 2001. You could make the case that 16 people have died in US "terrorist" attacks since 2001 (including the 13 soldiers killed by Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood), but you have to have a very broad definition of terrorism to do so.

Nearly all of the "terrorist" attacks in that original report that Feinstein is obviously relying on, appear to take place in areas that are considered war zones: Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. And, um, I hate to bring this part up, but part of the reason why those are war zones is because, you know, the US invaded both places. This isn't to say that there aren't terrorists out there who would like to attack the US. There clearly are. But it seems highly misleading to make the claims that both Feinstein and Rogers are making here, as the "data" they're talking about don't show any heightened risk in the US at all.

Either way, this whole thing -- having both appear together, both making vague "we're all going to die" statements without any details to back it up combined with an exceptionally misleading use of statistics -- suggests that this is the typical FUD. It's Feinstein and Rogers shouting "terror" in a crowded theater, because they know that they've already lost public opinion on this, and are quickly losing Congress as well.

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, fud, mike rogers, nsa, surveillance, terrorists

Senate Intelligence Committee Rejects A Bunch Of Attempts To Amend Dianne Feinstein's Fake NSA Reform Bill

from the but-of-course dept

The Senate Intelligence Committee apparently just voted on Dianne Feinstein's fake NSA reform bill, which actually legalizes all of the illegal spying and adds a few new ways for the government to spy on everyone. Some of the members of the committee tried to add some amendments which would have made the bill do at least a few minor useful things, but it sounds like all of those were rejected. Incredibly, even though the NSA has been indicating pretty strongly that it's fine if the data it collects can only be held for three years, rather than the five it currently uses, an amendment limiting such data collection to three years was rejected. Even Dianne Feinstein supported that amendment, but increasingly disappointing Senator Angus King (like so many politicians, he seemed promising... until he got into office) voted with the Republicans on the Committee who all wanted to keep the surveillance backups for five years. As for other amendments, here's how Politico summarized them:

Another 7-8 casualty in the intel panel mark-up was a provision to ban the bulk collection of cell-site information that can show where a caller is physically located at the time of making or receiving a call. The NSA has acknowledged running experiments to handle such data, but says it isn’t collecting it now. Most panel Democrats supported the geolocation data ban, and most Republicans opposed it, but some crossed the lines. Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), whose state is home to the NSA, voted against the ban. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) voted for it.

The third proposed reform to fall 7-8 was an amendment by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to require that any Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court decision finding a violation of the Constitution be made public. Again, most Democrats supported the proposal, while most Republicans opposed it. This time, Feinstein and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) bucked their Democratic colleagues. Collins joined with six Democrats in favor of the transparency mandate.

The overall bill passed out of committee 11-4, with Senators Wyden, Udall, Heinrich and Coburn voting against it. As the Politico article notes, Coburn voting against it is a bit of a surprise, since he's been seen as an NSA supporter. In fact, the article suggests he voted against it because he thinks it puts too many restrictions on the NSA, which is crazy since it puts fewer restrictions than they have today. Specifically, Coburn doesn't want any limits on how long the NSA can keep your data, which is downright nutty.

Filed Under: amendments, dianne feinstein, fisa, fisa improvements act, mark udall, nsa, ron wyden, surveillance, tom coburn

Dianne Feinstein Receives Three Times More Cash From Intelligence Contractors Than Patrick Leahy

from the funny-how-that-works dept

While there are many bills that have been introduced in Congress in response to the revelations about the NSA (thank you, Ed Snowden), there really are only two that matter right now in terms of actually having a chance of moving forward. One is good, one is terrible. There is the USA FREEDOM Act, introduced in the Senate by Senator Patrick Leahy, which actually tries to rein in many of the abuses. It's not perfect, but it's a very good bill. Then there's the fake reform bill, introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein, officially dubbed the FISA Improvements Act, but which is really designed to legalize the NSA's abuses and open the door to making it even worse.

It's no secret that Feinstein is the abused spouse of the NSA, always defending her man, no matter how many times it lies and cheats on her, so I doubt it's much of a surprise to find that those who stand to benefit from a strong NSA have been contributing boatloads to Senator Feinstein.

The good folks over at MapLight, thought it might be interesting to see how Feinstein's contributions from intelligence contractors compared to those received by USA FREEDOM Act sponsor Pat Leahy. The answer will not surprise you. Feinstein received three times as much money as Leahy since 2007 (basically a single Senatorial term).

Dept. of Defense Intelligence Services Contractors	Contributions to Senator *Feinstein	Contributions to Senator Leahy
General Dynamics	$43,750	$13,300
Northrop Grumman	$29,800	$6,000
Lockheed Martin	$10,000	$11,000
Honeywell International	$10,000	$5,000
**L-3 Communications	$6,500	---
AECOM	$7,000	---
	$107,050	$35,300

*Not included in the chart is a $250 contribution to Senator Feinstein from Johns Hopkins University, #19 on the USASpending list 

**Totals for L-3 Communications Corporations, L-3 National Securities Solutions Inc. and L-3 Communications Holding Inc. were combined for this analysis.

Now, you could easily make the argument that these companies support the politicians most who already support them (i.e., the cause and effect are reversed). But, as Larry Lessig has pointed out time and time again, these kinds of situations are a form of soft corruption that clearly raise significant questions in the mind of the public about why politicians are supporting what they support. Is it because it's good policy -- or is it because of the money. This level of soft corruption has real consequences beyond just policy -- it destroys the trust and credibility of the government.

Filed Under: campaigns, contributions, dianne feinstein, fisa improvements act, lobbyists, nsa, nsa reform, pat leahy, usa freedom act

NSA Defenders Reject Appeal For Clemency That Ed Snowden Never Made; But Here's Why US Should Give Him Amnesty

from the get-it-figured-out dept

So, the AP and a few other news sources this weekend wrote articles talking about how US government officials, including the White House and the heads of the two Congressional intelligence committees, Senator Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Mike Rogers had all rejected Ed Snowden's "plea for clemency." Given the players, that's not too surprising, but there's one big problem. Snowden never made a plea for clemency. So the whole thing is bogus. It appears to be based on a bunch of bad reporting, starting with the AP, who said the following:

Snowden made the plea in a letter given to a German politician and released Friday. In his one-page typed letter, he asks for clemency for charges over allegedly leaking classified information about the NSA to the news media. ""Speaking the truth is not a crime," Snowden wrote.

Okay. Of course, since that letter was released, we can read the whole thing, and if you can find where he made a plea for clemency, let me know. It's not very long. And, there's nothing in there even remotely asking for clemency. Or anything like it. It's just Snowden pointing out, accurately, that "to tell the truth is not a crime," and we need more truth telling from the government.

But, of course, Feinstein and Rogers couldn't resist some grandstanding on all of this. Feinstein's response was particularly funny because she said that Snowden could have just reported the issue directly to her committee, where they would have buried it. Remember, Feinstein and the Senate intelligence committee have been arguing pretty much all along that everything that Snowden revealed is all perfectly legal -- even as the public and many officials are outraged by what happened. Anyone who thinks that Snowden reporting it would have done anything other than hindered any future job prospects for Ed Snowden hasn't been paying attention.

That said, Yochai Benkler, has a great piece over at The Guardian arguing why the US should grant Snowden amnesty, which is slightly different from clemency (which, again, he never asked for). Amusingly, Benkler uses the example of Congress in 2008 giving telcos retroactive immunity for their actions in helping the NSA as a model for how Congress can give Snowden similar amnesty, noting (correctly) that we already have a model of this in place. As for why? Well, considering how many things even our own government is claiming Snowden has revealed that show the NSA has gone too far certainly suggest that his leaks have been useful in exposing massive government wrongdoing by some, and terrible incompetence or ignorance by others.

Snowden hasn't asked for clemency, but if the US government is smart, it should grant him amnesty, and get him involved in the process of cleaning up the mess that the NSA (not Snowden) has created.

Filed Under: amnesty, clemency, dianne feinstein, ed snowden, mike rogers, yochai benkler

How Feinstein's Fake NSA Reform Bill Could Actually Make It Easier For NSA To Record Your Phone Calls

from the sneaky-sneaky dept

We already pointed out that Dianne Feinstein's fake NSA reform bill is being positioned by her as real reform, when all it really does is codify the (probably currently illegal) status quo. Even worse, Feinstein is using highly misleading language to pretend that the bill "bans" the very things that it clearly allows. It's about as dishonest a statement about a bill as you can imagine.

We had noted in our original post that the talk about how the bill would prohibit the collection of "content of communications under Section 215" was a red herring. One of the NSA's go-to talking points is that there's "no surveillance" on the Section 215 collections because it's "just metadata." They keep repeating this claim over and over again that the leaked programs do not involve collecting the "content" of calls, pretending that this is what everyone's been complaining about. That statement alone is disingenuous. Most people following this know that the Section 215 collections don't involve the content of communications. What we're complaining about is the metadata collection, because that's very revealing. Separately, while the NSA may not collect contents "under this program," they absolutely do under other programs.

But, the actual language here may be even worse. It may be so misleading that the language being held up to "prohibit" the collection of actual call content is worded in a way that actually will allow for greater content collection. As Julian Sanchez notes at that link, the ban on content collection is only for "bulk data collection," which could be interpreted to mean it's okay for non-bulk collections, which most people believe 215 isn't regularly used for today.

The problem is, under canons of judicial interpretation, a narrow and explicit prohibition on getting content under bulk orders for communications records could easily be read to imply that content can be acquired via non-bulk orders, or even via bulk orders for other types of records. At present, it is not clear whether the statute allows for the acquisition of contents under 215, but there are strong arguments it does not—though, of course, I’d argue the Constitution would forbid this even if the statute didn’t. Under this law, though, a clever Justice Department lawyer could plausibly argue that a prohibition on content collection under one very specific type of 215 order would be senseless and redundant unless Congress intended for content to be accessible under 215 orders generally—and Courts generally have to interpret the law in a way that avoids making any provision redundant.

And, as Sanchez further points out, this isn't a theoretical concept. The Justice Department has already used exactly this type of argument to allow for the bulk data collection in the first place:

This is not at all a hypothetical concern. In 2006, Congress amended Section 215 to add special “protections” for educational and medical records. What Congress didn’t know is that, because those records are already protected under other federal laws, and 215 contained no language explicitly overriding those statutes, the Justice Department had determined that 215 simply could not be used to access those types of records—an interpretation that was reversed after the “protections” were added. Congress, in other words, inadvertently expanded the scope of 215 while trying to limit it—a fact that was discovered only later, when a report by the Inspector General revealed the unintended consequences of the amendment.

This is yet another example of the really evil word games the NSA and its defenders will use to increase spying, while pretending they're doing the opposite. Now would be a good time to reach out to your Senator to let them know that the Feinstein bill is absolutely unacceptable.

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, nsa, nsa surveillance, section 215

Feinstein Releases Fake NSA Reform Bill, Actually Tries To Legalize Illegal NSA Bulk Data Collection

from the don't-buy-the-lies dept

Despite Dianne Feinstein's supposed "conversion" earlier this week about the NSA being out of control with its spying, and the associated performance of NSA folks claiming that they were screwed, it's quickly become apparent that this was all pure theater to make people think that real reform might be coming. Feinstein claimed she was shocked about this and called for a full investigation... and yet, just two days later, she held a markup of her planned "reform" bill for the collection of intelligence by the NSA (and held the markup in secret -- because nothing says "let's increase transparency of the NSA" like keeping the debates and votes secret). That bill was moved out of committee today by a vote of 11 to 4, leading Feinstein to release the bill with a bunch of misleading claptrap designed to make people think it's real reform. It even confused some folks who know this stuff into thinking, after a quick first pass, that it "banned" the bulk data collection. And you might think that's the case because her description says:

• Prohibits the collection of bulk communication records under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act except under specific procedures and restrictions set forth in the bill;
• Establishes criminal penalties of up to 10 years in prison for intentional unauthorized access to data acquired under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by the United States;
• Prohibits the bulk collection of the content of communications under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act;

Reading that, you might think it actually banned the bulk data collection that's been reported on, but it does not. That "except under specific procedures and restrictions set forth in the bill" just takes the highly questionable reasoning of the FISA Court in approving the bulk data collection and makes that the "exception." In other words, it does exactly the opposite of what Feinstein claims. Rather than banning bulk data collection, it legalizes it. That third point on the "content" is just a red herring -- the same red herring that Feinstein and others have been waving about wildly for months, pretending people are upset about the collection of actual recordings, rather than the collection of metadata. She's wrong. People are upset about the collection of metadata, which this legalizes.

Even more ridiculous, the focus (both in the marketing and the bill itself) on collection of content "under Section 215" is another red herring, since it appears that much of that collection actually happens under other programs anyway. So this doesn't change a damn thing.

Other supposed "changes" in the bill -- including limiting who can perform queries on the data, how many "hops" they can analyze and how long they can retain the data, all match with current practice and don't change a thing. Even though James Clapper and Keith Alexander more or less seemed to concede at yesterday's House hearing that they'd be okay with cutting back on the data retention from five to three years, this bill keeps it at five. There are a few other minor changes, but this bill is almost entirely as expected, simply codifying the status quo, even though Feinstein has insisted that it was legal all along. The one minor "concession" which many had expected -- having a third party at the FISA Court who could fight for civil liberties -- is watered down. Rather than an actual adversarial setup, with this person representing civil liberties, it's set up as an appointed "amicus cureia" or "friend of the court," where they basically just advise the court on the issue.

This bill is a farce, and made even more farcical by the misleading way in which Feinstein has presented it, pretending it bans bulk data collection when it actually legalizes it.

Filed Under: bulk data collection, dianne feinstein, fisa, fisa court, fisa improvements act, fisc, lies, nsa, nsa surveillance, section 215

Mike Rogers Says NSA Told Congress About Spying On Foreign Leaders; Cuts Off Rep. Who Say That's Not True

from the incredible dept

The House Intelligence Committee, led by chief NSA apologist Rep. Mike Rogers, held yet another hearing about the NSA scandal on Tuesday, with an official focus on "potential changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," but that was barely discussed at all. Instead, the panel, made up of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA boss Keith Alexander, Deputy Attorney General James Cole and number 2 guy at NSA Chris Inglis, mostly focused on defending the NSA, especially in light of the recent headlines concerning spying on foreign leaders. Rogers focused on tossing out a bunch of softball questions to the panel to get them to say that they had clearly informed the House Intelligence Committee about spying on foreign leaders. After the softballs were hit back, Rogers would add a stage-whispered "Hmm," followed by an angry attack on reporters for buying into the story that the NSA hadn't informed Congress.

Of course, given that Rogers' counterpart in the Senate, Dianne Feinstein, claims that she wasn't informed, this seems a bit strange. But it got even stranger when various other committee members, including Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Rep. Adam Schiff made it clear that they had no idea this was going, despite being on the committee.

That resulted in an incredible exchange, in which Rogers attacked others on the Committee, suggesting that they should just shut up if they're going to say they weren't informed -- hinting that some Committee members "do more work than others." Schiff, quite reasonably, appeared to take offense to this, and challenged Rogers, asking for more details as to when and how the Committee was told about spying on foreign leaders. Rogers without actually answering the question kept "warning" other members not to say something about this. Schiff broke in again (with Rogers trying to stop him from talking) to ask if the Committee was directly informed about this or if it was just a giant data dump of information that he would have had to go through carefully to find out who they were spying on. Rogers again refused to answer the question, and again hinted that those who put in the "effort" would have known about this -- and then flat out cut off Schiff and handed the floor to Rep. Michele Bachmann, who went back to tossing softballs (sample question: "Do you think Snowden is a traitor?").

In the end, Rogers weak attempt to continue to defend the NSA here made it pretty clear, once again, that the claims that he has not adequately informed others in Congress of what's going on are quite accurate.

Filed Under: adam schiff, chris inglis, dianne feinstein, house intelligence committee, james clapper, james cole, keith alexander, mike rogers, nsa, nsa surveillance