Two Good Guys to applaud amid the putrid data-mining mess: Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall

[brentspeak]

Reasons to still believe in the Democratic party.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/06/06/nsa_collecting_verizon_phone_records_two_senators_have_protested_patriot.html

Two Senators Have Been Harping on the Obama Administration's Phone Data Collection Policy for Years

By Emma Roller
Posted Thursday, June 6, 2013, at 1:44 PM

Glenn Greenwald's scoop that the National Security Agency has been collecting phone data from Verizon customers has some people getting in touch with their civil libertarian side anew, but Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has been after the NSA on this issue since well before the Obama administration, and his colleague Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., has joined him in fighting to uncover the Obama administration's phone record policy.* Here's a roundup of Wyden and Udall's presaging efforts.



Floor speech on Patriot Act provisions (May 26, 2011):

Wyden: I believe there are two Patriot Acts in America: The first is the text of the law itself, and the second is the government's secret interpretation of what they believe the law means ... the American people will also be extremely surprised when they learn how the Patriot Act is secretly being interpreted, and I believe one consequence will be an erosion of public confidence that makes it more difficult for our critically important national intelligence agencies to function effectively. ...

Udall: I believe it's critical that the administration make public its interpretation of the Patriot Act so that members of Congress and the public are not kept in the dark.

snip

So after four years of trying to persuade the administration publicly, Wyden and Udall finally got what they wanted from Greenwald's anonymous source—someone unfazed by trading in secrecy.