14 DAY TRIAL // When the entire NSA scandal began, the Obama administration promised to improve regulation of the NSA surveillance programs and now it appears this will become true. However, the entire process might not make everyone too happy.
According to ABC, the review panel will include Michael Morell, Richard Clarke, Cass Sustein and Peter Swire.
While the idea of having a review panel might be a good one, bad news soon came as soon as brief background checks were done on all names.
For one, they have all occupied high positions in the Obama administration, while Obama pledged to bring in “high-level outside experts” and not some of its own employees.
One of the names on the panel stands out in particular, namely Michael Morell. NSA opponents were quick to point out that he has worked at the CIA in various positions since the 1980s only to retire from the position of deputy director of the agency earlier this year.
Furthermore, he was President Bush’s intelligence briefer on September 11, 2001. It is known that many of the Internet spying programs run by the NSA have begun right after the tragic events from that day and have been instated by Bush.
The director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Amie Stepanovich, told the Washington Post that the appointments are not encouraging for privacy advocates.
She believes there’s a need for an independent evaluation of the NSA’s surveillance programs, but in order to obtain this, the team has to be independent. “We continue to learn how each of the oversight mechanisms that the administration has pointed to have continuously failed. The background of this panel indicates that it, too, is unlikely to be meaningful or effective,” Stepanovich said.
The one highlight of the panel is Peter Swire, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who has criticized surveillance abuse in the Bush administration and challenged the NSA programs disclosed by Snowden to the Supreme Court.