House members voice skepticism about surveillance programs after FBI, NSA briefing

How many of you here were somewhat relieved to learn that there was a meeting today to brief the House of representatives about the surveillance program? Now I say somewhat since I still think the NSA pulled the top secret card. If some computer geek from Dell can get this info, why not the people we elect to represent us? There should be nothing secret from them. We elected them into our trust. How many NSA folks did we elect?

Anyways, many didn't seem very happy after hearing a bit more details than you or I know. And also because they didn't get as much info as they felt entitled to. Why the NSA held back, I don't know, since the American public is about to hear a lot more leaks on this from The Guardian. I heard that Snowden leaked over 1000 pages! Woot woot!

Emerging from an early evening closed-door briefing with officials from the National Security Agency, the Justice Department and the FBI, some members of the House of Representatives said they had more questions than answers about the surveillance programs that sweep up records from phone and Internet accounts belonging to millions of Americans.

The House briefing came hours after eight U.S. senators – six Democrats and two Republicans – introduced legislation that would require the U.S. attorney general to make public secret decisions of the court that grants permission for collection of such records. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has rejected only 11 such applications among the more than 30,000 cases it’s considered since it was founded in 1979.

House members voice skepticism about surveillance programs after FBI, NSA briefing

Anger was mounting in Congress on Tuesday night as politicians, briefed for the first time after revelations about the government's surveillance dragnet, vowed to rein in a system that one said amounted to "spying on Americans

Intelligence chiefs and FBI officials had hoped that the closed-door briefing with a full meeting of the House of Representatives would help reassure members about the widespread collection of US phone records revealed by the Guardian.

But senior figures from both parties emerged from the meeting alarmed at the extent of a surveillance program that many claimed never to have heard of until whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked a series of top-secret documents.

NSA surveillance: anger mounts in Congress at 'spying on Americans'
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Hold on. The court rejected 11 applications? Good God! You have to wonder how egregious were these projected abuses, that they were rejected by a rubber-stamp court? Holy HELL! Now that's some documents I'd like to see leaked....

These Senators and House members are idiots. The Executive Branch could easily have them by the balls at any time, and they are going to let that happen?

Hell, The Executive Branch already has them by the balls and is doing whatever it wants to without congressional oversight!

It affects them, they are going to lose all power to the Executive Branch! They need to unite against The Executive Branch, not squabble among themselves while they are being castrated!

Do they want to be disbanded?? That is what happened in Rome.

You know after much thought, there shouldn't be any debate on this. No one in this country can give away my 4th amendment right. It is mine and no one elses to give away.

I'm not relieved at all. This is simply damage control by the NSA and FBI. They know the NSA Kid has released thousands of pages of documents to that same reporter so all they're doing is trying to stay ahead of what they expect will become public in the next week.

As someone who worked on small elements which are part of the larger machine I can tell you they ARE NOT fully briefing the public representatives as required, not even the secret, intelligence oversight committees are told the full extent of these programs.

I hadn't been watching the news so when the Verizon issue came out I wasn't all that interested but last night, when I saw the powerpoint that listed Prism by name along with it's fiber tapping counterpart (again by code name) my jaw literally hit the floor. My wife and I spent a couple of hours discussing things I hadn't been able to talk to her about which (now that they're public knowledge) I could fill in some history for her. If the rest of the releases contain what I think they will there's a very, very good chance you're going to see multiple resignations in an attempt to shield the executive office. I don't know if this will lead to Obama resigning but it's very possible.

I knew sooner or later the contractors would lead to something like this, the hiring standards have been completely compromised, especially in rapid growth jobs such as analysis. Still, this kid should be given whistle blower protections under law as he is exposing activities and policies that go far beyond the mandate and allowances that even our current security over liberty environment has brought. I can't wait, personally.