Not even Congress knows how the NSA works

While the president and the intelligence community cling to “Congressional oversight” as a justficiation for the pervasive intelligence-gathering programs in place within the US, members of Congress theselves are saying that they don’t have the information they need to exercise real authority over the NSA. A recent report in The Guardian quotes two House members, Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Alan Grayson (D-FL), who have both requested information about the agency and its programs from the House Intelligence Committee, only to be rebuffed.

In a June 25th request, Rep. Griffith asked the committee for the “classified FISA court order(s)” discussed on Meet the Press the previous weekend — a 2011 opinion holding that many of the NSA’s programs under the FISA Amendments Act were unconstitutitional. Weeks later he requested additional information surrounding Yahoo’s legal challenge to the NSA’s PRISM program and Verizon’s supplying of customer metadata to government intelligence agencies. More than six weeks since the first letter, Griffith still hasn’t received a response.

SOURCE: theverge.com