NSA Officials Admit: 'We're Screwed Now' After Feinstein's Statement

[unhappycamper]

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131028/18152925045/nsa-officials-admit-were-screwed-now-after-feinsteins-statement.shtml

NSA Officials Admit: 'We're Screwed Now' After Feinstein's Statement
from the maybe-shouldn't-have-pushed-the-limits-so-much dept
by Mike Masnick
Tue, Oct 29th 2013 9:25am

While we're a bit cynical about the reasoning behind Senator Dianne Feinstein's sudden "conversion" to realizing that perhaps the NSA is out of control with its spying, and needs greater oversight and control, apparently her statement sent chills through officials at the NSA. After all, Feinstein was the strongest Senate defender of the NSA's activities -- to the point that we'd suggested in the past a somewhat co-dependent relationship. However, it sounds like she just turned on the NSA and has suggested that perhaps it needs to go to rehab. Shane Harris and John Hudson at Foreign Policy's The Cable blog have the details:

"We're really screwed now," one NSA official told The Cable. "You know things are bad when the few friends you've got disappear without a trace in the dead of night and leave no forwarding address."

Of course, that's the sort of crazy hyperbole that the NSA is increasingly known for. Feinstein hasn't "disappeared." She's just finally pointed out what many of the rest of us have been arguing for ages: that the NSA is out of control, going way beyond what it's authorized to do, and has little real oversight, in part because of its regular practice of misleading pretty much everyone over the details and extent of its surveillance programs.

Even more important, the statement from that NSA official shows that they still don't recognize what got them into this mess. If the NSA had actually been upfront about what it was doing with others, perhaps it wouldn't find itself in this mess today. It makes you wonder if the NSA is so focused on being super secret about its operations to the outside world that it couldn't distinguish enough about being transparent to government oversight bodies as well.

[Scuba]

1. So DiFi finally figured out that they're spying on her too.

[Laelth]

2. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth