Since the NSA wasn't open about its practices, Schneier was asked to fill in the gaps

Jan 17, 2014 08:53 GMT  ·  By

Security expert Bruce Schneier was asked to brief the US Congress after the NSA was reluctant to give out information.

Schneier is one of the cryptographers that has helped journalists figure out the NSA files leaked by Edward Snowden.

“This morning I spent an hour in a closed room with six Members of Congress: Rep. Lofgren, Rep. Sensenbrenner, Rep. Scott, Rep. Goodlate, Rep Thompson, and Rep. Amash. No staffers, no public: just them,” Schneier starts his blog post.

He explains that the members of the Congress said the NSA wasn’t forthcoming about its activities, and they wanted him, a person with access to the Snowden files, to explain to them what the NSA was doing.

“Of course I'm not going to give details on the meeting, except to say that it was candid and interesting. And that it's extremely freaky that Congress has such a difficult time getting information out of the NSA that they have to ask me. I really want oversight to work better in this country,” Schneier wrote in his blog post, stressing the complete lack of actual oversight for the NSA.

The scandal surrounding the National Security Agency started in June 2013 once Edward Snowden leaked a trove of top-secret files exposing all the ways the intelligence agency managed to violate the privacy of millions of people across the world.

There have been many programs revealed thus far, involving NSA’s collection of phone call and email metadata, text messages, geolocation of mobile phones and more. It has also been revealed that the NSA spies on foreign country leaders, including Angela Merkel and Dilma Rousseff, diplomats, embassies and the United Nations.

This week, US President Barack Obama is expected to present a list of NSA reforms that would curb its powers and add more oversight.