Senators Calling Out NSA on Two Fronts

Tapping the News — Civil Liberties June 25

New Proposal to Place Checks on NSA

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) partnered with lawmakers to introduced legislation mandating more oversight and transparency on Federal surveillance programs. However, this policy is not crafted to address the NSA policies exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.Sen. Patrick Leahy emphasized the proposal would require “the government to show relevance to an authorized investigation and a link to one of three categories of a foreign agent, power, or group.” and would demand the government “to provide a statement of the facts and circumstances” to the court to justify the surveillance. This would place basic checks on a system of government overreach. [FInd More at http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/nsa-spy-legislation/]

NSA continues to mislead the public according to Senators Wyden and Udall

Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall assert that a few of the NSA’s statements are inaccurate and misleading in a new defense of the agencies actions. The public officials claim, “We were disappointed to see that this fact sheet contains an inaccurate statement about how the section 702 authority has been interpreted by the US government,” they write. “In our judgment this inaccuracy is significant, as it portrays protections for Americans’ privacy as being significantly stronger than they actually are.” [Find Additional Insight at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/2-senators-say-the-nsa-is-still-feeding-us-false-information/277187/]