Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/01/today_i_briefed.html

by edwintorok • 13 years ago

537 140 13 years ago

The Intelligence committees and the FISA Court need to be overhauled, to start with. Clearly there's not enough/proper oversight of the agency.

I don't know how they do it now, but the Intelligence committees should also brief the rest of Congress at least twice a year, and I think they should be allowed by explicit laws to declassify anything they want in that briefing. No approval from the White House or anyone else needed. They are, after all, the ones that are supposedly in charge with oversight of the intelligence community.

So next time someone like Ron Wyden knows the agency is lying to the public, he should be able to tell the rest of the Congress in the briefing, all by himself (he shouldn't need approval from the rest of the committee), and it should be defined in laws that he's allowed to do that, just so there's no confusion, and no fear of repercussion.

rprospero• 13 years ago

The thing is that they already have the framework to do this. A senator is immune from prosecution for anything state on the floor of the senate. If Wyden is on the senate floor, he could read off the nuclear launch codes and there's not a damn thing that the executive can do about it. Furthermore, the senate has closed sessions. They had one just a couple of years ago for the START treaty. A senator could take the floor, tell the rest of the senate about any classified material they like, and the information isn't released to the public unless the Senate votes to remove the injunction of secrecy, so the information remains secure. Even if the injunction is removed, the senator is still protected by some fairly strict constitutional privilege.

This seems to be a solved problem.

etanazir• 13 years ago

Is the senate floor secure from advanced eavesdropping? Can't you bounce a laser off of the marble and listen in?

higherpurpose2• 13 years ago

I know about that, but I'm not sure that they are sure they could do something like that and get away with it. Couldn't they be accused of treason or something, and have their immunity revoked?

That's why I'm saying that it should be explicitly mentioned in the law that a Senator can do this in Congress, during that Senate briefing. It shouldn't be some vague power that states Senators can do a lot of stuff without fear of repercussion.

valarauca1• 13 years ago

Actually I'd bet good money if a senator basically starting reading the details of NSA drag net plan on the senate floor they'd be prosecuted by some court for aiding terrorism, or not being American enough.

chippy3• 13 years ago

What's a "SCIF"?

Edits: my guess: (Secure Communications Internal Facility)

jaryd• 13 years ago

Sensitive Comparmented Information Facility: In United States security and intelligence parlance, a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF; pronounced "skiff") is an enclosed area within a building that is used to process Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) types of classified information.

https://duckduckgo.com/Sensitive_Compartmented_Information_F...

chippy3• 13 years ago

thank you!

SEJeff• 13 years ago

Depending on the level, they often have TEMPEST shielding aka faraday cages to prevent leakage of electromagnetic signals from computers and whatnot. (google Van Eck Phreaking for some ideas on why heh)

Helianthus• 13 years ago

It's good to know that we do have some legislators on (essentially) our side, even if their hands are, presently, tied.

chippy3• 13 years ago

This is incredibly important. It means that there is hope, that the government is not some evil conspiracy, that there are people in power, people like ourselves.

The film Enemy of the State, and conspiracy theories mean that normal people think it is the status quo that our lives are under 100% surveillance and that they are powerless. In a way its been argued that this is quite comforting. Imagine a world where no-one knows what they are doing versus imagining a world where there is a conspiracy, an evil plan. What this type of public culture makes and what the worst conspiracy theories do is make politics seem hopeless, encourages apathy and reduces trust in politicians. At the same time it makes it easier for the real abusers of power to get away with it.

The recent phone tapping cases in the US being a point in case. Everyone thought it was going on all the time anyhow, so when it was revealed no one was suprised, and so the consequences were slight.

To know that those in power do actually think, and do listen, and do believe in the political process is very very vital.

ihsw• 13 years ago

I'd recommend you watch the NSA congressional hearings starting from June. The first one is notable in that there is quite clearly some discontent.

Here is a start: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/CybersecurityThreats

dsuth• 13 years ago

It would be wrong to suggest that they're 'on our side', whatever that means, just because they met with Schneier. This could be a publicity stunt, a fact-hunting exercise (What exactly do you know, Mr. Schneier?), or just a genuine personal interest in checking other sources of information against the NSA line.

Regardless of their motivation, these people are still part of the same machine that put the NSA in motion, and thus far have been ineffective in curbing even it's more obvious breaches. Action speak louder than words...

oceanstone2• 13 years ago

Currently, the Intelligence Committees have special access to top secret information. Every member of Congress should have this.

belluchan• 13 years ago

With 535 of them not including staff, they really shouldn't. And clearance isn't enough, you also have to have a need to know. We just need a system of oversight that works well.

mahyarm• 13 years ago

With the amount of NSA staffers and people who have clearance being well above that number, really?

maaku• 13 years ago

Congress is supposed to be the system of oversight.

oceanstone2• 13 years ago

they really shouldn't.

Please, elaborate.

Nelson69• 13 years ago

Actually, they absolutely should have access. Their staffs? Probably some of their staffers too.

We're talking about people we trust to spend trillions of our dollars, decide if we fight a war, and make decisions that affect the entire country and world. It's some kind of Tom Clancy dream to think that their should legitimately be a higher level of clearance than elected congress and senate.

Oversight without congress? What do you mean, just some executive appointees? Maybe a private contractor bound to secrecy? Can they just be fired if the oversight is not liked?

danielrhodes• 13 years ago

They do have access. Staff must have security clearance, of course. Elected representatives are entitled, by virtue of their office, to classified information. Although there are obvious concerns with keeping information secret here, the alternative would subvert the democratic process.

Having said that, I'm not sure what bureaucratic obstacles the executive branch has put in place to obtaining classified information.

AnimalMuppet2• 13 years ago

Imagine that the NSA was only doing legitimate, useful, necessary, highly secret things (humor me here).

Can they brief Congress on what they're doing? All 535 publicity-seeking chatterboxes? No way. That's the same as issuing a press release.

So not telling Congress everything is (in principle) necessary. But who are these representatives Schneier briefed? Are they on the Intelligence Committee? If so, and they still can't get straight answers out of the NSA, that's a big deal. (And maybe the rest of Congress is saying that they don't think that the Intelligence Committee has done an adequate job of oversight.)

fit2rule10• 13 years ago

The corruption of government starts with its secrets. A truly free people don't keep secrets. Somewhere in this grey mass is a line, and that line gets crossed and crossed, over and over again.

What secret is worth keeping if its keeping results in oppression, tyranny, inhumanity? Why should those who are given the right to murder, get away with murder - just because it is 'unsafe' to prosecute the murders?

The reason, always given, is "[some secret reason]". Well, the saying goes, keep the secret .. or else! Or else .. 'bad things happen'. Yet .. Those who work tirelessly to keep secrets, are themselves the bad things .. happening.

What the NSA 'should be' is a National Communications Agency, wherein all harmful human activity they observe are communicated - to all and sundry! Openly! Publicly! Without any barrier to delivering full awareness - for all!

It is only when a secret is kept that lines are drawn between two life-forms who would otherwise, ordinarily, be cooperating/communicating to increase their combined potential. Profiting from this - always - is another, third life-form, whose control over the others' secrets will give him two slaves.

The answer to your question: Congress, if it were doing its job, would have already read Snowdens' statements into the public record, and there wouldn't be any debate about the criminal proceedings that would then follow: all the tyrants would be frog-marched directly to jail.

It may yet .. still .. happen. Let us wait and see.

ForHackernews• 13 years ago

A truly free people don't keep secrets.
What the NSA 'should be' is a National Communications Agency, wherein all harmful human activity they observe are communicated - to all and sundry! Openly! Publicly! Without any barrier to delivering full awareness - for all!

This is ridiculous hyperbole. There are all kinds of legitimate secrets: trade secrets, private sexual kinks, personal financial or medical records, embarrassing taste in pop songs.

I don't understand how you can be angry about privacy violations on the one hand, and arguing for our society being some kind of secretless panopticon on the other.

KingMob• 13 years ago

Can they brief Congress on what they're doing? All 535 publicity-seeking chatterboxes? No way. That's the same as issuing a press release.

Absolutely not. Keeping your (nominal) overseers appraised of your activities is not the same thing at all as informing the whole world in front of cameras. Your implicit argument is that Congress couldn't be trusted with the secrets the NSA would reveal. But this is countered by opinting out that the NSA can't be trusted with the secrets it has.

AnimalMuppet2• 13 years ago

Congress (all of it) should be briefed on the overview. The details (some of which are, rightly, classified)? No way. That's pretty much the established way of dealing with classified information - all of Congress does not get to know the details.

...the NSA can't be trusted with the secrets it has.

Very true.

dragonwriter2• 13 years ago

So not telling Congress everything is (in principle) necessary.

No, its not. At least, not in any principle grounded in the Constitution and the rule of law.

bosma• 13 years ago

Do you disagree that secrets during war are necessary?

mapt• 13 years ago

If Congress demands it? Yes, they can brief Congress on what they're doing. They were created by Congress and the career positions continue to exist at the pleasure of the Congress.

Further, there are procedures that exist to do so. Sealed sessions have been and are used for sensitive subjects to avoid inadvertent disclosures.

"All 535 publicity-seeking chatterboxes" are what we have. Their existence, their ability to speak freely without fear of prosecution, their diversity of opinions & constituencies, and their power to change things, function as a crucial check on the power of the executive branch. As representatives of the people it IS THEIR JOB to ensure that large secret programs that the public would never approve of, or which violate their oath to abide by the Constitution, are either reformed adequately or leaked, neutralized in some way, cancelled, or never funded in the first place. If they fail to do that for long enough because they've decided they're not able to, or because they don't want to know, then this all falls apart and becomes tyrannical the first time we get a President that wants power.

Notably, it ceases to be an option for Congress if the objectionable business is objectionable because it's a spy program that been turning Congressmen into blackmailed sycophants. That is hardly out of the scope of the technical power we have granted the NSA.

If they have created these programs and they've started to take on a life of their own, to the point that Congressional oversight and regulation is not adequate to control their activities (and yes, it appears that is what happened), then we have one option: Kill the tumor with radiation and a clean scalpel before it metastasizes further. Defund, publicize, interrogate, leak the objectionable programs, and end them. Maybe catch some loyal civil servants who were just following orders in the crossfire; But that's how it goes - they became an enemy, foreign or domestic, of the people and their Constitution. Too bad.

Sure, we might lose some tissue, but it's a damn sight better than letting a malignant cancer of our democratic system run wild.

prof_hobart• 13 years ago

I'll play along with the hypotheticals and assume that the NSA don't lie when questioned by Congress. In that scenario, the NSA can give reasonably straight answers that don't compromise national security.

"Are you spying on suspected terrorists?" - "Of course we are. That's our job."

"Who are you spying on, and how?" - "We can't reveal that. It's National Security."

"Are you spying on people that you have no reasonable suspicion of being terrorists?" - "No."

"Fine".

The problem comes when you have lie about that last one when asked by Congress.

rdl5• 13 years ago

It makes sense that you need TS/SSBI and the correct SAP read-in to be inside a given SCIF belonging to a SAP; otherwise one might leave a recording device or otherwise damage the integrity of the SCIF. Plus, the SCIF would need to be cleared of all sensitive materials before you entered.

Clearing a SCIF, letting someone inside, then recertifying it would probably be the correct choice; It could be done, of course, but it's not cheap. (You can also potentially keep the person under observation the whole time, but given the purported Chuck Norris powers of Bruce Schneier, that seems insufficient.)

fit2rule10• 13 years ago

It makes sense that you need TS/SSBI and the correct SAP read-in to be inside a given SCIF belonging to a SAP; otherwise one might leave a recording device or otherwise damage the integrity of the SCIF. Plus, the SCIF would need to be cleared of all sensitive materials before you entered.

Infruriating Hog-wash! This security theatre is baloney, and it is the Great Wall, itself .. erected precisely to allow the Security Classes to control their mignons.

SCIF's? Why are they even necessary in the first place, in a society that prides itself on Freedom Dogma?

This is not democracy - this is tyranny!

If a private citizen cannot have a safe conversation with people who represent them, then you do not have representation but total interference. The American Super-Security State has definitely usurped the basic principles of democracy from its true owners.

rdl5• 13 years ago

I think you missed the part where he had the conversation anyway, in a regular room.

The procedures for handling classified information, especially SCI and ECI, are there to protect from foreign intelligence services. i.e. people doing exactly the shit NSA is accused/documented of doing to foreign governments.

strathmeyer• 13 years ago

I'm not sure if you understand. Bruce knows the top secret information because he read it in the leaks. The government officials can lose their security clearance for admitting to discussing top secret things with him.

snowwrestler• 13 years ago

Not members of Congress.

rdl5• 13 years ago

They are clearly in the direct performance of their lawful duties. It is like a counterintelligence professional talking to a suspect and learning what he knows. Plus, Congress is called out in the Constitution as special, due to situations like this.

gaadd33• 13 years ago

How many sitting congressmen have ever lost their security clearance? It seems like the decision reached in Gravel v. United States totally contradicts what you say.

phaus6• 13 years ago

You don't need all of that to be escorted on a single occasion. It really wouldn't be difficult at all to sanitize a conference room. People aren't likely leaving piles of classified documents on the table between meetings and if they are they need to have their own clearances suspended.

rdl5• 13 years ago

I'm explicitly allowing for Schneier being a "special" person, and not escortable into a secured space, as he is a technical expert and in close and continuing contact with some people with lots of very hated stuff, specifically in loving leaking classified info. A normal person would be a lot more escortable. It is mostly up to your facility security officer and organizational policies; I don't know how the legislative branch handles any of this.

clubhi• 13 years ago

The obvious answer to me seems to have multiple disjoint intelligence committees.

bargl• 13 years ago

On his blog Schneier comments that this meeting was kept small on purpose. I wanted to see who was present at this meeting so I looked up some of their information. Not hard to find, but here you go. I plan on emailing each of them and thanking them for consulting someone the tech industry considers a Security SME.

Rep. Logfren (Democratic) http://lofgren.house.gov/biography/ Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoe_Lofgren

Rep. Sensenbrenner (Republican) http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/biography/ Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Sensenbrenner

Rep. Scott (Democratic) http://www.bobbyscott.house.gov/biography/ Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Scott_%28U.S._politician%...

Rep. Goodlate (Republican) http://goodlatte.house.gov/pages/about-bob Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Goodlatte

Rep Thompson (Democratic) http://mikethompson.house.gov/biography/ Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Thompson_(California_polit...

Rep. Amash (Republican) http://amash.house.gov/about-me/full-biography Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Amash

Edit: Cleaned up one of the links and got rid of a repetitive sentence.

rhizome2• 13 years ago

I hope the Senate follows suit.

Wohlf• 13 years ago

Thank you for providing this info, I'll be doing the same. I'm glad to see my district representative was in attendance.

dllthomas3• 13 years ago

s/gf/fg/

logn• 13 years ago

(If you use Facebook) I recommend following Rep. Amash as he explains every one of his votes in a status update. It's a great way to stay informed, and he actually approaches his decisions with sensible reasoning you'll enjoy (regardless of your political leanings).

smackfu• 13 years ago

https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash

asperous• 13 years ago

Wow that's really amazing. I really like this approach because it's transparent and really feels like he's representing his Michiganites.

So often when I email my reps about their decisions I get canned response that don't answer the question, but Justin really does explain it.

tvladeck• 13 years ago

Thanks so much for sharing that. I'm pretty liberal, but it was awesome to read his explanations. Concise and considered.

thret• 13 years ago

I'm not American, but I follow Amash. Voluntary transparency in a politician is a wonderful thing.

ddp• 13 years ago

I emailed all of them I could. Unfortunately, Sensenbrenner, Thompson, and Amash refuse to accept email from outside their districts.

AceJohnny2• 13 years ago

I had to look it up. SME: Subject Matter Expert

greatsuccess• 13 years ago

Personally the fact that your spam links to the legislators wikipedia pages is top on HN shows that 1) you have nothing to say on the subject, 2) you are a spammer, and 3) that you are probably a complete idiot who could give a shit about the topic and 4) that HN is a complete fucking waste of time with people like you posting in the comments.

efdee• 13 years ago

Unlike your comment which was a true beacon of light in the darkness that is HN.

cjfont2• 13 years ago

And we have yet to hear what you, oh great one, have to say on the subject yourself.

donohoe• 13 years ago

Webcache version:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...

aantix• 13 years ago

Of course I'm not going to give details on the meeting, except to say that it was candid and interesting.

Why wouldn't he?

gizmo6864• 13 years ago

A group of congresspeople agree to have a candid conversation with you behind closed doors, and you publicize the details of what was said. Good luck getting another conversation with anyone.

RyJones3• 13 years ago

it also weakens the congresspeople's position the next time they talk to the NSA if the NSA knows the limits of what they know.

vaadu• 13 years ago

There is no oversight except on paper.

You can't have oversight unless you have expertise in the area you oversee.

You can't have oversight unless the overseers can impose immediate consequences upon the overseen.

Without these you are nothing but a spectator.

syntern2• 13 years ago

Might be related to the topic:

One aspect of the Dilbert-universe the pointy-haired boss who has no expertise, yet he imposes immediate consequences upon the overseen. In contrast, if we are calling for management that does (understand) code, we are calling for management that have expertise.

This begs the question: who would be able to oversee the agencies with expertise, ever?

antsar• 13 years ago

Sn^H^Ha former employee/contractor?

shmerl• 13 years ago

This could be almost hilarious if it wasn't so sad. The Congress has to be briefed by someone with access to leaked documents to get an idea what a government agency is doing, because the later "is not forthcoming".....

Zelphyr• 13 years ago

"...Congress has such a difficult time getting information out of the NSA that they have to ask me."

THIS PEOPLE! THIS is why the Snowden revelations are such a big deal! We have a rogue branch government with arguably little to no oversight!

phaus6• 13 years ago

They might not know what the NSA is up to, but they sure as hell created the mechanisms that led to that predicament.

sp332• 13 years ago

Congress required the NSA to clear some things with a court. The NSA lied to the court; that's not Congress's fault.

pirateking• 13 years ago

It's just like the La-li-lu-le-lo[1].

By the 21st century, the Patriots had achieved immense political power, effectively controlling America as a totalitarian regime. The organization would select who would serve as the President of the United States and would stage Presidential elections in order to please the American public, as well as tricking them into believing that as voters they had control over the government, that the nation was still being led according to the Constitution, and also utilized cut-outs when contacting the President with instructions.

[1] http://metalgear.wikia.com/wiki/The_Patriots

throwaway-42659• 13 years ago

Oversight. We keep demanding this thing. But how exactly does oversight of actions that must be performed in secret even work? Who oversees the overseers?

Let's think about the end game. Suppose the Klayman lawsuit [1] goes all the way to the Supreme Court, and they too find the NSA's metadata collection is a 4th Amendment violation. The NSA is ordered to shut this and similar programs down. They comply. They say "we've complied." But how do we know? How do we know they didn't just spin up new collection programs, out of sight even from the overseers, or perhaps even with the tacit approval of the overseers? How would we find out?

Whistleblowers like Snowden. That's the only protection I see for us here. If the government promises they've complied, but in fact they haven't, they've just doubled down on the damage another revelation to the contrary would create. And doubled the moral imperative that a principled person would feel to leak it.

Oversight = Whistleblowers.

[1] http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/national-security-agen...

tokenadult• 13 years ago

Schneier links to a Wikipedia article about Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs) and explains that he wanted to speak to the members of Congress in such a facility, but could not do so because he is denied access to such facilities as someone without the appropriate security clearances. And that puzzled me, and prompted me to read the Wikipedia article after reading Schneier's blog post submitted here, because I had been told years ago, when I definitely did not have the appropriate level of clearance for a SCIF (as I have never had and probably never will have) that I did have access to a special hearing room for one of the congressional intelligence oversight committees. I was inside the room at the time, with foreign visitors. (I was there as the interpreter for the foreign visitors.) I saw the hearing room back in the 1980s, as I recall, as part of a people-to-people program funded by the United States government that brought over people from other countries to look at how society works in the United States. The look inside the secure room was part of learning about how intelligence agencies in the United States are overseen by Congress. It was represented to us that when the room in the Capitol was closed up, it was impervious to any then-known form of surveillance. So now what Schneier says has me puzzled about whether or not there is any level of secure room between what he calls a "regular room" and a room that a United States citizen can only enter with a very high level of security clearance. It seems to me that there ought to be some kind of in-between room like that, precisely for meetings like the one Schneier just had. That would be better for effective congressional oversight, I think.

phaus6• 13 years ago

There are standard processes in pretty much every government organization for escorting uncleared personnel into a SCIF. The fact that they chose not to in this case might indicate that they aren't taking this seriously.

ENGNR2• 13 years ago

Or they're not taking the NSA's need for secrecy very seriously

RyJones3• 13 years ago

Or that one wasn't open. Schedule tetris for Congresspeople and a SCIF might be a hard problem.

blazespin• 13 years ago

Or a) they wanted to record the conversation b) they wanted to keep the meeting off the books.

cjfont2• 13 years ago

I can confirm this is true, as I've been escorted into SCIFs before I obtained a clearance.

skiffydiffy56• 13 years ago

Or that the NSA wanted to listen in, and this was just an excuse given so that a secure room would not be used. In fact, the whole thing could have just been an elaborate way to glean what's in the Snowden documents.

ef47d35620c12• 13 years ago

The whole security clearance thing is rather over-rated. Many people are immediately disqualified during the background investigation because they missed a payment on something once, or changed jobs too often, or were arrested, yet never convicted of a crime.

So the fact that someone does not qualify for a security clearance says very little about them as a person.

phaus6• 13 years ago

There are people that have filed for bankruptcy that managed to get a TS. It would be highly unusual to be rejected for missing a single payment, provided you are current while the investigation is going on. It would also be extremely unlikely that one gets rejected for changing jobs frequently, unless one of your former employers alleged misconduct of some sort.

genericuser• 13 years ago

The security process in my experience is very much about how much of what they find you were forthcoming with and announced on the forms.

If you missed a payment there is a section of the background paperwork you fill out proving information on it. It is very likely you would be denied if you left that section blank and had a missed payment, or if you changed jobs, or addresses very often and did not list all of them with proper references so they could verify them. But you will be denied basically because you lied not because of the missed payment or address changes.

eli2• 13 years ago

Fun fact: you can actually read the transcript of rulings on clearance decisions for DoD contractors: http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/doha/industrial/2013.html

It's true that many people are denied because of their finances, but it's not as cut and dry as you might think.

You also have to wonder what some of these people were thinking. That the DoD wouldn't notice you're on probation and a drug user?

chrismcb• 13 years ago

Or they participated in the right to free speech and claimed to be communist.

gizmo6864• 13 years ago

I only have a passing knowledge of how data security is handled by the government, but I suspect that the fact that they are discussing classified material which Schneier should not have access to may make using an SCIF more bureaucratically challenging.

gizmo6864• 13 years ago

Looking at the comment section, Schneier writes:

"My guess is that because I am untrusted, I might plant a bug in the SCIF. So it's less that I'm not allowed in, and more that if I was allowed in they would have to re-SCIF the place."

timsally• 13 years ago

So now what Schneier says has me puzzled about whether or not there is any level of secure room between what he calls a "regular room" and a room that a United States citizen can only enter with a very high level of security clearance.

There are. Schneier has it wrong unfortunately (or at least, was misinformed). You can enter a room approved for classified information without a clearance, you just must be escorted by someone who does have one. I've been in such a room myself without a clearance. I imagine what you were told about a special hearing room for one of the congressional intelligence oversight committees was true then and is still true now.

There is an unfortunate amount of misinformation flying around and it really detracts from what might otherwise be a productive discussion. I hope Schneier takes a but more time to double check his assertions in his next post.

jvdh• 13 years ago

Schneier, a non-governmental security researcher, was asked by the representatives to hold a meeting with them. He suggested to hold it in a secure meeting room. They tell him that he's not allowed in there.

And you're blaming Schneier for his assertions?

peterkelly• 13 years ago

"Chief, shouldn't we use the Cone of Silence?"

redknight666• 13 years ago

LOL. I remember watching it when I was a child.

blahbl4hblahtoo• 13 years ago

I was just listening to Slate's political gabfest podcast...they talked about the NSA. It occurred to me that the media is still only talking about phone call metadata while the rest of us have been in the weeds of the rest of their activities, which are far more intrusive than metadata...

How do you get that message to people?

Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

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