Dianne Feinstein spied on by CIA, Maybe she gets it Now (updated 11:40 MST)

So today's news had a story that Dianne Feinstein, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, delivered a scathing speech decrying the CIA's alleged spying upon staff members' computers during a probe of some Bush era investigations.  Strange that she was not so incensed about the overall NSA spying fiasco that collects data of every single telephone call and every single email that average citizens send and is only, supposedly, restrained by the Star Chamber er secret FISA court.  She is happy with that process because her committee thinks it has oversight.  Even with her oversight, there is insufficient daylight on the NSA spying for most people's tastes.  

At this point, only Rand Paul seems to be giving this issue some of the attention it deserves with a lawsuit against the government on 4th amendment grounds.  The practice needs further legislative restrictions as well.  I have recommended either making the FISA court subject to FOIA requests or eliminating the FISA court in favor of the Federal court system.  Neither Speaker Boehner nor any member of either the House or Senate Intelligence Committees have spoken out on this except for a Martin Heinrich (and Tom Udall) New York Times letter/editorial.  In fact the general bi-partisan view in Congress is that the system is just fine and the citizenry should be happy with the status quo.

Well, this citizen is not happy.  There needs to be more PUBLIC accountability in the process.  

Interestingly, the TV Show, The Good Wife is running a three part series that touches on the NSA surveillance.  The plot theme turns around a legal NSA wiretap on a client she represents that then leaks details to other federal agencies.  Whether this premise is accurate remains to be debated and, generally, the series is a well of liberal talk.  In this case, it focuses attention on a glaring problem with the current system.  Even debating the premise, that the NSA regularly leaks information to other federal agencies cannot be absolutely proven because the whole process is SECRET.  Sure, someone in the NSA or on the Senate Intelligence Committee can deny that this happens but with a SECRET process, no one else can check.  An update here.

An article on propublica.com (see link) claims that the NSA is allowed to share information gathered under a FISA warrant with other federal law enforcement agencies.  This makes the show's premise even more believable.  To clearly state this, law enforcement agencies can get the benefits of a wiretap with no probable cause or warrant required if the NSA hands over the data.  This in turn does violate the 4th amendment and needs to be curtailed.  Another article in the Guardian (see link) examined two leaked FISA warrant requests signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and found that yes, data on US persons could be obtained and held indefinitely and given to other federal agencies if the NSA thought there was evidence of a crime.  Note that what the NSA thinks does not constitute probable cause for non-intelligence uses and is a violation of the 4th amendment.

This is serious stuff and we should all be more engaged.  If my all-caps and bolded entries above look like I am shouting, I am.