SEN. WYDEN: Beware the business-as-usual brigade's efforts to sabotage new NSA oversight

[Coyotl]

Beware the business-as-usual brigade's efforts to sabotage new NSA oversight
Now is the time for Americans to demand safeguards to liberty, for the enemies of surveillance reform are out to thwart us

Ron Wyden - 9 October 2013 - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/09/beware-sabotage-nsa-oversight

A good way to measure the credibility of scholars and thinkers in Washington is by watching to see whether they stay true to their views regardless of the impact that their views have on partisan politics. That's why Cato scholars like Jim Harper and Julian Sanchez are go-to leaders on the issues of security and liberty. Big thanks for inviting me today.

This conference could not be more timely. The Senate intelligence committee will soon be marking up a new surveillance bill, and the House and Senate judiciary committees are working on legislation, as well. Two weeks ago, a bipartisan group of senators – myself included – kicked off this debate by introducing the first comprehensive surveillance reform bill to follow the June disclosures. Our legislation would end the bulk collection of Americans' records, close the backdoor searches loophole that allows Americans' communications to be reviewed without a warrant, make the Fisa court operate more like a court worthy of the United States, and expand the ability of our citizens to have their grievances heard in federal courts.

I know these issues will be discussed here today, so I'll start with my bottom line: the goal of our bipartisan bill is to set the bar for measuring meaningful intelligence reform. We wanted to put this marker down early because we know in the months ahead we will be up against a "business-as-usual brigade" – made up of influential members of the government's intelligence leadership, their allies in thinktanks and academia, retired government officials, and sympathetic legislators. Their game plan? Try mightily to fog up the surveillance debate and convince the Congress and the public that the real problem here is not overly intrusive, constitutionally flawed domestic surveillance, but sensationalistic media reporting. Their end game is ensuring that any surveillance reforms are only skin-deep.

Some of the "business as usual" arguments have something of an Alice in Wonderland flavor. .....

[BelgianMadCow]

1. If these bipartisan groups, that DID get more insight than us

into the inner workings of the surveillance apparatus, are proceeding as they are "after the june revelations", that's once again proof of how important they were.