14 DAY TRIAL // It may sound as a joke, but it’s not. Officials from the Obama administration told a Senate hearing, with a straight face, that limiting public accountability for the NSA spying program harms the privacy of American citizens.
Yes, yes, they actually said that. Someone must have laughed when hearing this, right?
In a joint statement, Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Bradford Wiegmann, deputy assistant attorney general, said that the new “Surveillance Transparency Act,” which would have the NSA report the number of Americans it collects information on and free tech companies of the gag order imposed by the government, would actually diminish the privacy of US citizens.
“Attempting to identify the numbers of persons or US persons whose communications or information may be incidentally collected would, in practice, have a privacy-diminishing effect directly contrary to the aims of the bill,” they wrote.
They back the claim by saying intelligence officials would have to research and review such information for the purpose of complying, which would actually conflict with the agency’s efforts to protect privacy.
They are referring perhaps to the claims that despite the fact that the NSA collects data in bulk, it only looks at certain individuals when they have a court order.
Someone did actually roll their eyes at the statement and that’s Kevin Bankston, staff attorney with the Center for Democracy and Technology, who told the Senate panel that the entire position of the Obama administration doesn’t make sense. “The privacy has already been violated,” he pointed out.
Furthermore, Bankston supported the idea that people need more information about this type of programs that the NSA runs.
Google also expressed its desire to have some reform. Richard Salgado, a Google exec, testified in front of the committee and said that the Internet freedom must be protected.