Do you support Senator Leahy's Patriot Act/FISA reform bill?

[BlueStreak]

9. It doesn't go nearly far enough.

I don't see any terrible ideas in there at first glance, but it doesn't address some of the most fundamental issues. Namely:

1) We need an effective whistle-blower system such that employees don't have to be on a worldwide manhunt just to get out the facts of criminal and unconstitutional practices within our Security Industrial Complex. Foxes guarding the hen house will never work.

2) Our document classification system is a sham. That whole thing needs to have a great deal more scrutiny.

3) It is just wrong to have 4 million Americans with security clearance and nearly a million with TOP secret clearance. That is a direct result of #2. We all acknowledge there are some things that really do have to be secret for the good of the nation. But the number of people who need to know about those things should be measures in the low thousands, not the millions. And it should never be possible for a low-level employee to get to the kind of stuff that Snowden was able to access.

4) We need to get private contractors out of this system, or at least make sure they are subject to all the FOIA and other regulations that would be in effect if they were government agencies. It should never be to the advantage of the Security Industrial Complex to privatize in order to hide things or avoid scrutiny that would come upon government agencies.

So at best, I would say that Leahy's effort is a welcome first step to open the conversation, but much more should be in whatever is passed into law.