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Church Committee Members Say New Group Needed To Watch NSA
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."
'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."
You mean "lies" - FTFY.
We have a group that monitors the NSA. The NSA lied to them.
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:
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee
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.
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...
The committee was chaired by a Congress-critter named Church. Nothing whatever to do with religion.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
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.
...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...
-Styopa
Oh, not that kind of Church?
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.
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.
227-3517
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.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
“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/...
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Who else on /. (besides me) remembers the Church Committee hearings? Tricky Dicky? The Saturday Night Massacre?
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Laws apply to everybody regardless of who's roaming the planet.
Otherwise the psychos end up running things.
THIS!!!
There is never greater need for the rule of law than when society is at war or otherwise under attack.
In fact, artificial creation of "emergencies" is a classic ploy of governments to grab more power over the people.
And who is all this spying for? Could it be ... perhaps ... SATAN?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The psychos do run things, because laws are not applied to leadership. That is an accurate summary of the current state of governance for most countries of the world.
Do I get whooshed now?