Spy Agencies Under Heaviest Scrutiny Since Abuse Scandal of the ’70s
By SCOTT SHANE, NYT
American intelligence agencies, which experienced a boom in financing and public support in the decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, have entered a period of broad public scrutiny and skepticism with few precedents since the exposure of spying secrets and abuses led to the historic investigation by the Senate’s Church Committee nearly four decades ago.
On three fronts — interrogation, drone strikes and now electronic surveillance — critics inside and outside Congress have challenged the intelligence establishment, accusing officials of overreaching, misleading the public and covering up abuse and mistakes. With alarm over the threat of terrorism in slow decline despite the Boston Marathon attack in April, Americans of both parties appear to be no longer willing to give national security automatic priority over privacy and civil liberties.
On Thursday, leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees began talks aimed at reaching a consensus on adding privacy protections to National Security Agency programs after a measure to curtail the agency’s collection of phone call data received strong bipartisan support on Wednesday. The amendment failed, 217 to 205, but the impassioned public debate on a program hidden for years showed the profound impact of the disclosures of Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who is now a fugitive from American criminal charges in Russia.
“We fight on,” Representative Justin Amash, the Michigan Republican who proposed the amendment to end the phone log collection, said on Twitter.
(More here.)
American intelligence agencies, which experienced a boom in financing and public support in the decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, have entered a period of broad public scrutiny and skepticism with few precedents since the exposure of spying secrets and abuses led to the historic investigation by the Senate’s Church Committee nearly four decades ago.
On three fronts — interrogation, drone strikes and now electronic surveillance — critics inside and outside Congress have challenged the intelligence establishment, accusing officials of overreaching, misleading the public and covering up abuse and mistakes. With alarm over the threat of terrorism in slow decline despite the Boston Marathon attack in April, Americans of both parties appear to be no longer willing to give national security automatic priority over privacy and civil liberties.
On Thursday, leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees began talks aimed at reaching a consensus on adding privacy protections to National Security Agency programs after a measure to curtail the agency’s collection of phone call data received strong bipartisan support on Wednesday. The amendment failed, 217 to 205, but the impassioned public debate on a program hidden for years showed the profound impact of the disclosures of Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who is now a fugitive from American criminal charges in Russia.
“We fight on,” Representative Justin Amash, the Michigan Republican who proposed the amendment to end the phone log collection, said on Twitter.
(More here.)
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