Published time: September 23, 2013 17:13
AFP Photo/Tim Sloan
President Barack Obama said in August that an independent panel will review the United States’ surveillance capabilities in the wake of damaging NSA leaks. One month later, though, that group’s game plan is being called into question.
A steady stream of disclosures credited to former intelligence
contractor Edward Snowden have revealed since June previously
unreported details about the National Security Agency and the
vast surveillance apparatus operated by the US government.
Reports of those leaks in the media have made lawmakers on both
sides of the aisle question the nation’s intelligence gathering
operations in the months since, and politicians and the public
alike have asked for reform as a result of Snowden’s disclosures.
Among the most significant results — seemingly, at least — came
in early August when Pres. Obama said he was tasking an “independent group
to step back and review our capabilities — particularly our
surveillance technologies.”
The agency would consider for the White House ways the
administration can “maintain the trust of the people,”
“make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how
these surveillance technologies are used” and “ask how
surveillance impacts our foreign policy, particularly in an age
when more and more information is becoming public,” the
president said.
However, Stephen Braun wrote for the Associated Press over the
weekend that the review board established after that Aug. 9
address is raising almost as many questions as the NSA operations
they were put together to investigate.
“But with just weeks remaining before its first deadline to
report back to the White House, the review panel has effectively
been operating as an arm of the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA and all other US
spy efforts,” Braun wrote.
This, of course, after the president went on the record to
establish a so-called independent review board, only to in turn
place DNI James Clapper at its forefront.
Following initial reports that Clapper would guide the panel —
aptly named the Director of National Intelligence Review Group on
Intelligence and Communications Technologies — the White House
was quick to condemn those write-ups as incorrect.
“The panel will not report to the DNI. As the DNI’s statement
yesterday made clear, the review group will brief its interim
findings to the president within 60 days of its establishment,
and provide a final report with recommendations no later than
December 15 2013,” national security council
spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told the Guardian last month.
“As we announced on Friday, the review group will be made up
of independent, outside experts. The DNI’s role is one of
facilitation, and the group is not under the direction of or led
by the DNI,” Hayden said.
According to Braun though, the group isn’t exactly all that
independent. From the AP:
“The panel’s advisers work in offices on loan from the DNI.
Interview requests and press statements from the review panel are
carefully coordinated through the DNI’s press office. James
Clapper, the intelligence director, exempted the panel from U.S.
rules that require federal committees to conduct their business
and their meetings in ways the public can observe. Its final
report, when it’s issued, will be submitted for White House
approval before the public can read it.”
And as for those independent experts? Braun identified four of
its five members as previous staffers in Democratic
administrations, including a former Central Intelligence Agency
Director and an ex-regulatory czar who served within the Obama
White House. Another member, the University of Chicago’s Geoffrey
Stone, wrote an op-ed in Huffington Post earlier this year
defending the NSAs practices exposed by Snowden and the
credibility of court established under the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act to oversee those operations.
“It is important to note, though, that without the existence
of a FISA court to which Executive Branch officials are
answerable, there is little doubt that the NSA and the FBI would
be authorizing all sorts of investigations that would not meet
the standards now imposed by the FISA court,” Stone wrote.
“In that sense, the existence of the FISA court plays a
critical role.”
Before that, Braun wrote, Stone was an informal adviser to
Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
“No one can look at this group and say it’s completely
independent,” Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open
Technology Institute, told Braun.
Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian writer who first reported on the
Snowden leaks, said on Monday that the panel was “a total
farce.” And when Tech Dirt’s Mike Masnick wrote about Obama’s
Aug. 9 presser, he said, “All in all this seems like a PR
scramble by the an administration that realizes it’s on the
losing side of the public debate.” Weighing in on the latest
news from the AP, Masnick updated his opinion of the panel on
Monday to describe it now as “a propaganda committee
effectively overseen by James Clapper to talk up how awesome the
surveillance state has become.”
The review group’s interim findings will be sent to the president
in early October. After the White House reviews them, a final
report with recommendations is due to the administration no later
than ten days before Christmas.
Copyright: RT