Grey Templar wrote:
Right, instead of passing your information off to the government they pass it on to spammers.

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.

Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations – the NSA.

In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."

Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight. "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing."

He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. "I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me."

Despite these fears, he remained hopeful his outing will not divert attention from the substance of his disclosures. "I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in." He added: "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."

He has had "a very comfortable life" that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."

'I am not afraid, because this is the choice I've made'
Three weeks ago, Snowden made final preparations that resulted in last week's series of blockbuster news stories. At the NSA office in Hawaii where he was working, he copied the last set of documents he intended to disclose.

He then advised his NSA supervisor that he needed to be away from work for "a couple of weeks" in order to receive treatment for epilepsy, a condition he learned he suffers from after a series of seizures last year.

As he packed his bags, he told his girlfriend that he had to be away for a few weeks, though he said he was vague about the reason. "That is not an uncommon occurrence for someone who has spent the last decade working in the intelligence world."

On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.

In the three weeks since he arrived, he has been ensconced in a hotel room. "I've left the room maybe a total of three times during my entire stay," he said. It is a plush hotel and, what with eating meals in his room too, he has run up big bills.

He is deeply worried about being spied on. He lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them.

Though that may sound like paranoia to some, Snowden has good reason for such fears. He worked in the US intelligence world for almost a decade. He knows that the biggest and most secretive surveillance organisation in America, the NSA, along with the most powerful government on the planet, is looking for him.

Since the disclosures began to emerge, he has watched television and monitored the internet, hearing all the threats and vows of prosecution emanating from Washington.

And he knows only too well the sophisticated technology available to them and how easy it will be for them to find him. The NSA police and other law enforcement officers have twice visited his home in Hawaii and already contacted his girlfriend, though he believes that may have been prompted by his absence from work, and not because of suspicions of any connection to the leaks.

"All my options are bad," he said. The US could begin extradition proceedings against him, a potentially problematic, lengthy and unpredictable course for Washington. Or the Chinese government might whisk him away for questioning, viewing him as a useful source of information. Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory.

"Yes, I could be rendered by the CIA. I could have people come after me. Or any of the third-party partners. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or they could pay off the Triads. Any of their agents or assets," he said.

"We have got a CIA station just up the road – the consulate here in Hong Kong – and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be."

Having watched the Obama administration prosecute whistleblowers at a historically unprecedented rate, he fully expects the US government to attempt to use all its weight to punish him. "I am not afraid," he said calmly, "because this is the choice I've made."

He predicts the government will launch an investigation and "say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out how massive and invasive the system has become".

The only time he became emotional during the many hours of interviews was when he pondered the impact his choices would have on his family, many of whom work for the US government. "The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night," he said, his eyes welling up with tears.

'You can't wait around for someone else to act'
Snowden did not always believe the US government posed a threat to his political values. He was brought up originally in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His family moved later to Maryland, near the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade.

By his own admission, he was not a stellar student. In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework.

In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".

He recounted how his beliefs about the war's purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged.

After that, he got his first job in an NSA facility, working as a security guard for one of the agency's covert facilities at the University of Maryland. From there, he went to the CIA, where he worked on IT security. His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma.

By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified documents.

That access, along with the almost three years he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the rightness of what he saw.

He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment.

"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he says. "I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."

He said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets. But, at the time, he chose not to for two reasons.

First, he said: "Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone". Secondly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary.

He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."

The primary lesson from this experience was that "you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act."

Over the next three years, he learned just how all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities were, claiming "they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them".

He described how he once viewed the internet as "the most important invention in all of human history". As an adolescent, he spent days at a time "speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own".

But he believed that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance. "I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."

Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said.

A matter of principle
As strong as those beliefs are, there still remains the question: why did he do it? Giving up his freedom and a privileged lifestyle? "There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."

For him, it is a matter of principle. "The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to," he said.

His allegiance to internet freedom is reflected in the stickers on his laptop: "I support Online Rights: Electronic Frontier Foundation," reads one. Another hails the online organisation offering anonymity, the Tor Project.

Asked by reporters to establish his authenticity to ensure he is not some fantasist, he laid bare, without hesitation, his personal details, from his social security number to his CIA ID and his expired diplomatic passport. There is no shiftiness. Ask him about anything in his personal life and he will answer.

He is quiet, smart, easy-going and self-effacing. A master on computers, he seemed happiest when talking about the technical side of surveillance, at a level of detail comprehensible probably only to fellow communication specialists. But he showed intense passion when talking about the value of privacy and how he felt it was being steadily eroded by the behaviour of the intelligence services.

His manner was calm and relaxed but he has been understandably twitchy since he went into hiding, waiting for the knock on the hotel door. A fire alarm goes off. "That has not happened before," he said, betraying anxiety wondering if was real, a test or a CIA ploy to get him out onto the street.

Strewn about the side of his bed are his suitcase, a plate with the remains of room-service breakfast, and a copy of Angler, the biography of former vice-president Dick Cheney.

Ever since last week's news stories began to appear in the Guardian, Snowden has vigilantly watched TV and read the internet to see the effects of his choices. He seemed satisfied that the debate he longed to provoke was finally taking place.

He lay, propped up against pillows, watching CNN's Wolf Blitzer ask a discussion panel about government intrusion if they had any idea who the leaker was. From 8,000 miles away, the leaker looked on impassively, not even indulging in a wry smile.

Snowden said that he admires both Ellsberg and Manning, but argues that there is one important distinction between himself and the army private, whose trial coincidentally began the week Snowden's leaks began to make news.

"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."

He purposely chose, he said, to give the documents to journalists whose judgment he trusted about what should be public and what should remain concealed.

As for his future, he is vague. He hoped the publicity the leaks have generated will offer him some protection, making it "harder for them to get dirty".

He views his best hope as the possibility of asylum, with Iceland – with its reputation of a champion of internet freedom – at the top of his list. He knows that may prove a wish unfulfilled.

But after the intense political controversy he has already created with just the first week's haul of stories, "I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets."

 Ouze wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
So, what are Americans going to do about this? Not a lot if the polls conducted by Al-Jazeera news are anything to go by. I was watching AJ news earlier, and according to their polls, most Americans they asked couldn't care less

Well, apathy is the only reasonable response in the face of total powerlessness. It doesn't matter how you vote; they're all going to do it, and worse - because they know the next administration will give them a free pass so they can continue more of the same.


If there is anything I've learned over the last 10 years, it's that the American public is generally totally powerless to deal with the abuses foisted upon it by the politicians they elect.

 whitedragon wrote:
Leaker does not fear the consequences of going public....yet hides in a hotel in Hong Kong. Conveniently China does not have an extradition treaty in place with the United States.

 daedalus wrote:

Why do you think he doesn't fear the consequences?

I seldom fear getting sunburned while indoors.

 Seaward wrote:
He said as much in an interview, stating he had "carefully chosen" items to leak that were only legitimately in the public interest or some such nonsense, as if that absolves him of the multiple federal felonies committed.

In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden's whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an "executive coup" against the US constitution.

Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.

The government claims it has a court warrant under Fisa – but that unconstitutionally sweeping warrant is from a secret court, shielded from effective oversight, almost totally deferential to executive requests. As Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst, put it: "It is a kangaroo court with a rubber stamp."

For the president then to say that there is judicial oversight is nonsense – as is the alleged oversight function of the intelligence committees in Congress. Not for the first time – as with issues of torture, kidnapping, detention, assassination by drones and death squads –they have shown themselves to be thoroughly co-opted by the agencies they supposedly monitor. They are also black holes for information that the public needs to know.

The fact that congressional leaders were "briefed" on this and went along with it, without any open debate, hearings, staff analysis, or any real chance for effective dissent, only shows how broken the system of checks and balances is in this country.

Obviously, the United States is not now a police state. But given the extent of this invasion of people's privacy, we do have the full electronic and legislative infrastructure of such a state. If, for instance, there was now a war that led to a large-scale anti-war movement – like the one we had against the war in Vietnam – or, more likely, if we suffered one more attack on the scale of 9/11, I fear for our democracy. These powers are extremely dangerous.

There are legitimate reasons for secrecy, and specifically for secrecy about communications intelligence. That's why Bradley Mannning and I – both of whom had access to such intelligence with clearances higher than top-secret – chose not to disclose any information with that classification. And it is why Edward Snowden has committed himself to withhold publication of most of what he might have revealed.

But what is not legitimate is to use a secrecy system to hide programs that are blatantly unconstitutional in their breadth and potential abuse. Neither the president nor Congress as a whole may by themselves revoke the fourth amendment – and that's why what Snowden has revealed so far was secret from the American people.

In 1975, Senator Frank Church spoke of the National Security Agency in these terms:


"I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

The dangerous prospect of which he warned was that America's intelligence gathering capability – which is today beyond any comparison with what existed in his pre-digital era – "at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left."

That has now happened. That is what Snowden has exposed, with official, secret documents. The NSA, FBI and CIA have, with the new digital technology, surveillance powers over our own citizens that the Stasi – the secret police in the former "democratic republic" of East Germany – could scarcely have dreamed of. Snowden reveals that the so-called intelligence community has become the United Stasi of America.

So we have fallen into Senator Church's abyss. The questions now are whether he was right or wrong that there is no return from it, and whether that means that effective democracy will become impossible. A week ago, I would have found it hard to argue with pessimistic answers to those conclusions.

But with Edward Snowden having put his life on the line to get this information out, quite possibly inspiring others with similar knowledge, conscience and patriotism to show comparable civil courage – in the public, in Congress, in the executive branch itself – I see the unexpected possibility of a way up and out of the abyss.

Pressure by an informed public on Congress to form a select committee to investigate the revelations by Snowden and, I hope, others to come might lead us to bring NSA and the rest of the intelligence community under real supervision and restraint and restore the protections of the bill of rights.

Snowden did what he did because he recognised the NSA's surveillance programs for what they are: dangerous, unconstitutional activity. This wholesale invasion of Americans' and foreign citizens' privacy does not contribute to our security; it puts in danger the very liberties we're trying to protect.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

I don't know how people do things in America with regard to protest, but couldn't American posters on this site organise a Dakka march on Washington or send an angry email to their congressman or woman!

 Seaward wrote:
"Heroic" doesn't really fit in this case, of course. "Traitorous" is much more apt.

This guy's going to have a whale of a time in federal prison, though. Belle of the ball.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

I don't know how people do things in America with regard to protest, but couldn't American posters on this site organise a Dakka march on Washington or send an angry email to their congressman or woman!

We could, but we wouldn't get all that much support.

 Jihadin wrote:
He's only as good and safe there till his money runs out

 Jihadin wrote:
He's only as good and safe there till his money runs out

An ex-CIA employee who leaked details of US top-secret phone and internet surveillance has disappeared from his hotel in Hong Kong.

Edward Snowden, 29, checked out from his hotel on Monday and his whereabouts are unknown, but he is believed to be still in Hong Kong.

Earlier, he said he had an "obligation to help free people from oppression".

His leaks led to revelations that the US is systematically seizing vast amounts of phone and web data.

The programme, known as Prism, is run by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence gave details of the programme last week after Mr Snowden's leaks led to a series of articles in the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers.

According to the office's statement, Prism is simply an internal computer system, and not a data-mining programme.

However, such data seizures could break the laws of other countries, and could also break US law if they accidentally capture communications of US citizens.
Transatlantic fallout

Hong Kong's broadcaster RTHK said Mr Snowden checked out of the Mira hotel in Kowloon on Monday, and Reuters news agency quoted hotel staff as saying that he had left at noon.

Ewen MacAskill, one of the Guardian journalists who broke the story, told the BBC he believed Mr Snowden was still in Hong Kong.

It is believed the US is pursuing a criminal investigation, but no extradition request has yet been filed.

The Chinese territory has an extradition treaty with the US, although analysts say any attempts to bring Mr Snowden to America may take months and could be blocked by Beijing.

A petition posted on the White House website calling for Mr Snowden's immediate pardon has gathered more than 30,000 signatures.

However, an opinion poll commissioned by the Washington Post suggests a majority of Americans think government monitoring of phone records is acceptable if the aim is to fight terrorism.

Mr Snowden's revelations have led to allegations that the UK's electronic surveillance agency, GCHQ, used the US system to spy on British citizens.

Foreign Secretary William Hague cancelled a trip to Washington to address the UK parliament on Monday and deny the claims.

The journalists involved in the story were first contacted by Mr Snowden at the start of the year.

Filmmaker Laura Poitras told Salon Magazine how Mr Snowden sent her an email saying: "I want to get your encryption key and let's get on a secure channel.

"I have some information in the intelligence community, and it won't be a waste of your time."

Ms Poitras ultimately filmed the interview with two Guardian reporters.

Mr Snowden told the journalists: "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting.

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things. I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded."

Booz Allen Hamilton confirmed in a statement Mr Snowden had been an employee for less than three months.

"If accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm," the statement said.

The first of the leaks came out on Wednesday night, when the Guardian reported a US secret court had ordered phone company Verizon to hand over to the NSA millions of records on telephone call "metadata".

The metadata include the numbers of both phones on a call, its duration, time, date and location (for mobiles, determined by which mobile signal towers relayed the call or text).

Under the Prism system, officials apply to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (Fisa) to gain access to communications.

Officials are obliged to show the Fisa court that any "target" is outside of the US, and there is a "foreign intelligence purpose" for the seizure, such as terrorism or nuclear proliferation.

However, details of such targets and subsequent requests made to US technology companies are secret.

On Thursday, the Washington Post and Guardian said the NSA tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to track online communication in a programme known as Prism.

All the internet companies denied giving the US government "direct access" to their servers, and said they had never heard of the Prism programme.

But in separate statements the firms variously said they complied with lawful requests to supply information on an individual basis.

Prism was authorised under changes to US surveillance laws passed under President George W Bush, and renewed last year under Barack Obama.

Mr Obama has defended the surveillance programmes, saying that nobody was listening to calls between American citizens.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
"Heroic" doesn't really fit in this case, of course. "Traitorous" is much more apt.

This guy's going to have a whale of a time in federal prison, though. Belle of the ball.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

I don't know how people do things in America with regard to protest, but couldn't American posters on this site organise a Dakka march on Washington or send an angry email to their congressman or woman!

We could, but we wouldn't get all that much support.

I don't know why Americans have a problem with traitors - their history is full of them. The most famous traitor in American history has a capital city named after him, whilst Bobby Lee has probably got a million high schools named after him.

I think this is a clear case of hating the messenger instead of the message.

 daedalus wrote:
Given the train of reasoning behind the explanations I've received, the biggest reason why Americans seem to viciously hate traitors (or anyone who rocks the boat, like protesting) is generally the result of triggering some cognitive dissonance somewhere between what they're being shown and what the media is spoonfeeding them.

That's why they do things like trivialize the leak, claiming things such as "who didn't already know that?", or "that wasn't even anything that significant", yet still for some reason finding it severe enough to call for things like firing squads, prison rape, or public decapitations (courtesy of my boss).

 Seaward wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
Given the train of reasoning behind the explanations I've received, the biggest reason why Americans seem to viciously hate traitors (or anyone who rocks the boat, like protesting) is generally the result of triggering some cognitive dissonance somewhere between what they're being shown and what the media is spoonfeeding them.

That's why they do things like trivialize the leak, claiming things such as "who didn't already know that?", or "that wasn't even anything that significant", yet still for some reason finding it severe enough to call for things like firing squads, prison rape, or public decapitations (courtesy of my boss).

In this case, I think it's sheer amazement at one dude being so remarkably arrogant as to believe that he knows better than thousands of others - including numerous people far, far, far more well-studied than he on the specific constitutional issues - as to what should and should not be classified. We have a lot of gak secret for a lot of varying reasons, and you don't just get to turn in your decoder ring when you feel like it.

 daedalus wrote:
Maybe. I just can't find it that hard to believe that the thousands of others just toe the line, regardless of what's being required. Consider the Standford prison experiment. Granted, that's one experiment, but there's a reason why similar ones haven't (to the best of my awareness) been performed.

 Seaward wrote:

You're operating on the assumption that the program's in the wrong, which, I'm sure, is something that will be debated. I don't know. I'm a libertarian, but this one, for some reason, just doesn't bother me all that much. I'd prefer if they weren't running it, sure, but on the other hand, I'm really not worried about being one phone number - or IP address - in the midst of millions, and them having nothing more than that to go on, and still needing to obtain a warrant through the proper channels before they can do any sort of real "spying" on me. The government wants to know my call durations, but can't access the content until they take the right legal steps? Fine with me, really.

And that was sort of my larger point. The majority of Americans, if polling is to be believed, don't mind this all that much, and I've seen Fourth Amendment arguments on it that could go either way. Simply on the level of generally always believing that government shouldn't be trusted, I'd say, "Yeah, it's probably over the line," but I very much doubt there's not a well-vetted argument to the contrary out there that's already been tested thoroughly behind closed doors, and it'll be found constitutional in the end. So, we have one guy who never got further than a GED and IT certs making a decision about national security, in direct contravention to literally everyone else who knew about this. Hero? No way.

 daedalus wrote:
He wasn't making the decision based upon national security, IIRC, he was doing it based upon what he felt was right. I'm afraid any further opinion on the matter I could have is prevented from being insightful, as I'm a college dropout myself. :(

 Seaward wrote:
"Heroic" doesn't really fit in this case, of course. "Traitorous" is much more apt.

 Seaward wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
He wasn't making the decision based upon national security, IIRC, he was doing it based upon what he felt was right. I'm afraid any further opinion on the matter I could have is prevented from being insightful, as I'm a college dropout myself. :(

Whether he was basing his decision upon national security or not does not remove the fact that this massive security breach has significant potential national security downsides. That's why it was classified.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Looks like he isn't keen on staying in one place

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
"Guys, who are we as a couple of colonies to think we know better than the whole British Empire?"

Eight senators introduced legislation on Tuesday that would require the attorney general to declassify significant opinions made by courts operating under the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). [WATCH VIDEO]
If the bipartisan bill were adopted, the government would be required to reveal the kinds of National Security Agency surveillance activities that came to light last week.

“Americans deserve to know how much information about their private communications the government believes it’s allowed to take under the law,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who is spearheading the effort with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
The legislation has a powerful backer in Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Sens. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have also signed on as co-sponsors.
The pairing of prominent liberals such as Franken and Leahy with Lee, a Tea Party favorite, highlights how worries about the NSA programs have blurred partisan lines.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) expressed support for the FISA measure, as long as it did not endanger current or future intelligence operations.
“I think broader engagement with [lawmakers] and congressional oversight” is necessary, Ayotte said.
“I would support that, [but] only if we are not tipping off the bad guys,” Ayotte added. “That is the balance here.”
The FISA court is the main legal body responsible for authorizing intelligence operations against U.S. citizens on American soil. Currently, FISA opinions are classified.
While the legislation has bipartisan backing, it received a chilly reception from Democratic leaders in the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was less than enthusiastic about the Merkley-Wyden proposal, saying only that leadership would be “happy to take a look” at it.
“I’m happy, any legislation that people have to offer, I’ll take a look at it and ... we’ll see,” Reid said.
The Senate’s No. 2 Democrat was more blunt.
“I encourage this, though I think it is going to be ill-fated,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said.
“I just don’t see a freight train coming down the track,” in terms of getting the White House and Congress behind the Merkley-Wyden bill, Durbin said.
Even if a bill got through the House and Senate, it is unlikely that President Obama would accept it, Durbin said.
The Merkley-Wyden bill was offered in response to the classified information on the two domestic surveillance programs that were leaked by Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old government contractor.
Snowden had been working for three months as a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton when he leaked details of the NSA programs to the media.
On Tuesday, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) called Snowden a “traitor” and said the leaks had put American lives “at risk.”
But Lee said the revelations about the NSA programs that were published last week call for a “serious debate” about the intelligence community’s monitoring of American citizens.
“There’s been a pretty public example why people ought to be concerned about these laws that are really broad and give the government all kinds of power,” Lee said.
One of the programs Snowden revealed collects cellphone data from Verizon customers to track terror threats, while a second program, PRISM, pulls data from tech companies on foreign Internet users.
Obama and the heads of the Senate and House Intelligence committees have defended the programs as critical to national security and respectful of civil liberties.
But Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pushed back against that argument, claiming the White House had failed to protect Americans’ rights.
“Technology has changed the world very substantially [and] ... invaded people’s privacy,” Sanders said. “And government has not responded accordingly.”
“I do not believe the American people want to have every phone call they make ... every website they visit tracked by United States government, or the private sector,” Sanders said.
The White House said Congress had been briefed on the NSA operations, but many lawmakers say they were unaware of the programs and are demanding more information.
Senate Intelligence Committee member Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the first time she had heard of either NSA program is “when it broke in the news.”
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper defended the programs shortly after the leaks, saying a FISA court deemed the operations legal.
That said, “I think having the [FISA] court provide some carefully-worded [program] summaries might be helpful,” Collins said.
Those kinds of summaries, provided to lawmakers outside the Armed Services and Intelligence panels, could be a possible alternative to the Merkley-Wyden bill, according to Durbin.
“I think that is a good option,” he added.
But Senate Intelligence Committee chief Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) disagreed, saying the FISA opinions should remain under wraps.
When asked if she agreed with the Merkley-Wyden bill, Feinstein replied: “No, because it was all classified. It was a highly classified program, and we respect that. We have to respect that.”
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said he was also against the declassification of the FISA opinions, but agreed with Durbin’s call for summaries of FISA opinions to be made available to members of the intelligence panel.
“I do not think they should be declassified, but I do think they should be made available to the [Intelligence] committee on a very timely basis,” King said.
He declined to comment on whether that information should be provided to lawmakers outside the defense and Intelligence panels.

 Seaward wrote:

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
"Guys, who are we as a couple of colonies to think we know better than the whole British Empire?"

Traitors to the British crown, certainly. But that makes little difference when you're capable of winning and forming your own country and keeping prosecution at bay. Had the revolution failed, they all would've been hanged.

Hilarious comparison, though.