Scott Shackford
Reason Magazine
3/11/2014
Sen. Dianne Feinstein – generally a lover and defender of our growing surveillance state – took to the Senate floor this morning to confirm and clarify a story that came out last week: The CIA snooped on a computer network Congress was using to investigate CIA abuses.
At the heart of this conflict between the executive and legislative branches is a report Congressional staffers have put together said to be extremely critical of the brutal interrogation methods (torture) used by the CIA under the Bush administration. The massive 6,300-page inquiry is classified, but many are pressuring the Department of Justice and White House for its release.
On the Senate floor, Feinstein said that she had not been responding to previous media reports, but felt that she had to come forward now due to inaccurate information being pushed out. To bulletpoint her 50-minute speech…
The article continues at Reason.com
Related: Senators, CIA clash over allegations agency spied on staffers (video)
…News reports last week first revealed the allegations against the CIA. In response, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., said the alleged spying, if true, “would be an extremely serious matter” and could “violate federal law.” …
CAJ note: Well, that’s one way to get Congress to pay attention to 4th Amendment violations. Spying on the peasants is fine, evidently; spying on our overlords, not so much.
Update: Edward Snowden: NSA Too Busy Spying on Americans To Catch Terrorists
In testimony published last week by the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs, NSA snooping whistleblower Edward Snowden told lawmakers that mass spying has proven to be an especially ineffective means of deterring wrongdoing. NSA claims to have prevented multiple terrorist attacks evaporate upon actual scrutiny. Worse, he says, the NSA is so busy probing the general public’s gaming habits and personal communications that it has no time or resources to devote to anything useful—like stopping terrorists…
