14 DAY TRIAL // House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers has been a vocal supporter of bills and programs related to monitoring and surveillance. In an article published in the Detroit Free Press, Rogers makes some interesting comments regarding the recent NSA leak and the individual behind it, Edward Snowden.
According to the official, PRISM allows the NSA to gain access to the electronic communications of overseas terrorists based on a court order.
He has once again highlighted the fact that US citizens are not targeted and that the NSA doesn’t have a backdoor to the servers of US companies.
As far as Snowden is concerned, Rogers believes that he isn’t a “whistleblower” as many regard him, but a “felon.”
“These leaks came from a person not involved in the careful execution of these programs, and with access to only small pieces of a larger puzzle.
“He decided to break the law and the oath he took to the American people by publicly disclosing parts of these classified programs, and then fled to China. These are the actions of a felon, not a whistle-blower,” Rogers said.
The Intelligence Committee chairman highlights that the effectiveness of these terrorism-monitoring programs depends on the fact that the targeted organizations don’t know much about them, so they don’t know how to avoid them.
Rogers claims that after the PRISM leak, intelligence agencies have noticed a shift in the communication tactics of al-Qaida.
“It is much easier for terrorists to hide from us if they understand the sources and methods of our intelligence gathering. We have already seen al-Qaida begin to shift their communication tactics as a result of these leaks, and it will now be much harder for us to find them,” he explained.