The CIA Just Admitted It Spied On Senate Computers — Senator Calls For Director's Resignation

[markpkessinger]

15. Here is a comment I posted to the NY Times' article on this

[font size=3]Mark Kessinger[/font]

If any citizen had illegally hacked his or her way into a government computer, or even a computer of a corporation, that citizen could expect to be prosecuted, and quite aggressively so, by the Feds or the state (as determined by the statute under which the citizen had been charged). Will these CIA hackers be held to the same standard of legal accountability? Of course not.

Government agencies -- ALL of them, even those dealing with matters of intelligence and national security -- must remain accountable to the elected government of the people they serve. The Senate, through its Intelligence Committee, is the body charged with oversight of the CIA; therefore, the very idea that the CIA can, of its own accord and in the midst of a Senate investigation into its own conduct, determine what its overseers are permitted to see is itself anathema to any notion of representative government. While it is true that providing such unfettered access to the Senate Intelligence Committee could result in an incremental increase in the potential for an intelligence breach, the desire, or even the need, to maintain secrecy in the interest of national security must never be permitted to become so paramount that the agency becomes effectively free of oversight. An unaccountable agency is, by definition, a rogue agency.