Meanwhile, the truly independent board set up to watch over spying programs is ignored [View all]

[Catherina]

President Barack Obama walks down the West Wing Colonnade alongside James Clapper on June 5, 2010

The NSA
Obama Puts Spies in Charge of Investigating Spies

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The Review Group on Intelligence Communications and Technologies (RGOICAT?) will be headed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, aka the official who currently oversees the spying in question. And it’s not yet clear whether the board will have any real government outsiders on it, or if they’ll all be insiders. In a memo yesterday, Clapper said he’ll be assembling the panel.

Also, per the president’s memo, the panel’s first priority appears to be making sure that federal programs guarantee the country’s national security (which, presumably they already do), rather than ensuring the NSA isn’t abusing its power. Obama wrote:

“The Review Group will assess whether, in light of advancements in communications technologies, the U.S. employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust.”

Under Clapper’s direction, the board is supposed to issue its first set of findings within 60 days—to the president. Meanwhile, the truly independent privacy and civil liberties board the U.S. has already set up to keep watch over spying programs continues to be ignored.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-13/obama-puts-spies-in-charge-of-investigating-spies#r=hpt-ls

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A Privacy Board Was Supposed to Protect Americans From NSA Spies

By Chris Strohm
June 27, 2013

In the weeks since former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden exposed government spying into millions of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails, the Obama administration has reassured the public that there are restraints on U.S. espionage. One check against Washington’s vast counterterrorism efforts is supposed to be the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. In a June 17 interview with Charlie Rose, the president said, “I’ll be meeting with them, and what I want to do is to set up and structure a national conversation” about privacy.

The board is staffed with five presidential appointees who get top secret security clearances and, in theory, the power to shape both legislation and regulations to assure that espionage undertaken in the name of the Patriot Act or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act doesn’t trample on the public’s privacy rights. That’s how the 9/11 Commission, which proposed the board in 2004, envisioned it would work.

Hamstrung by Congress and ignored by two presidents, the board has been powerless. After neglecting it during his first term, Obama met with board members for the first time on June 21. They never weighed in on the NSA’s Prism program, and had they tried, it’s questionable whether the board would have gotten very far. Its recommendations aren’t binding; the White House, spy agencies, and lawmakers aren’t required to take its advice. And its mandate is virtually impossible to carry out: It’s supposed to tell the public if the government’s secret programs are overreaching, yet it can’t reveal any classified details.



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Because Congress had placed the board in the executive branch and made it subject to White House oversight, the Bush administration could insert itself into its business. Recalls Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton who served on the board, “We couldn’t put out a press statement without getting clearance from the White House press secretary.” In early 2007 the members began drafting their first report for Congress, a cursory rundown of who the board had met with. It offered no policy prescriptions. The administration made edits on all but five pages of the 42-page document, prompting Davis to resign in protest over what he considered political meddling.

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http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-27/a-privacy-board-was-supposed-to-protect-americans-from-nsa-spies