Patriot Act, Edward Snowden, and NSA Spying

The President has come out with some proposed "reforms" to NSA spying.  He wants to keep the current plan, vacuum up all telephone call meta data on everyone but have the data stored outside of the government.  Does anyone recall Target?  Private companies are less capable of safeguarding the data than the NSA.  He also is proposing to limit data mining to two "hops" instead of three.  A "hop" being defined as the number of calls removed from a foreign caller.

None of the President's proposed changes really address the crux of the problem.  Senators Pat Leahy and Jim Sensenbrenner are proposing changes to the Patriot act to limit the NSA'a ability to collect the telephone metadata in the first place.  While it is good that someone in congress is actually addressing the issue, Leahy's and Sensenbrenner's approach is all wrong.

There is nothing wrong with the government gathering up and storing all of the phone data.  What is wrong is the manner in which we allow them to access and mine the data.  That is, the NSA supposedly must only access the data after authorization from the FISA Court.  While the FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) is run by real, public Federal Judges, all of the proceedings are SECRET.  I cannot shout that loud enough.  The fact that DNI (Director of National Intelligence) James Clapper just unclassified a handful of FISC orders only amplifies the point that there was no reason to keep the stuff secret in the first place.  The redacted data had no data about who the trace was against.  If you can simply redact the data, the only reason to keep it secret is to keep the American public from learning the extent of the spying.

The problem with the FISC, and the entire NSA spying program is that it is not truly accountable to anyone.  There have been earlier admissions of unauthorized data mining by NSA analysts and Congressional oversight is a joke.  The fact that three or four senators or house members review the proceedings when they feel like it does not constitute oversight.  The fact that Federal judges must sign the orders for more detailed survaillance with no public oversight is another joke.  From what I can see, the judges sign everything.  So, where is the check and balance?

We need the process to go through the regular courts with some delay on public disclosure.  That is, we would not want the foreign caller to be privy to the fact that a search happened or is happening but American citizens, at some point, should be able to find out that their data was swept up in a foreign intelligence probe. These proceedings should be subject to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests at some point.

No one wants to tie the government's hands in surveillance.  Opening up the process to more review and FOIA requests does not do that.  Obviously there would have to be some delay in accessing the data for an active probe but average citizens should be able to access the fact that their records were under scrutiny.  

I am tired of Dianne Feinstein and John Boehner dismissing the public outcry over this when they are allowed access to the information and we are not.