What Did Congress Really Know About NSA Tracking?

[mitty14u2]

What Did Congress Really Know About NSA Tracking?


Rockefeller, who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says he never feels adequately briefed. He remembers his days on the committee during the previous administration.
"I would go up there to the White House and get briefed, and come back knowing nothing," he says.

Rockefeller says in this case, he had been told about the two surveillance programs in question, but another member of the Senate Intelligence Committee — Republican Susan Collins from Maine — says she was never briefed. And don't even tell her she could have just asked more questions.

"Well, how can you ask when you don't know the program exists?" Collins says.
Collins just joined the Intelligence Committee this year, so maybe she would have gotten the lowdown eventually. But during the last Congress, she was the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee, and she still never heard about either the email monitoring or phone records collection.

"I had, along with Joe Lieberman, a monthly threat briefing, but I did not have access to this highly compartmentalized information," Collins says.

So what's a member of Congress to do? If you're not on a committee privy to this kind of national security information, how do you get informed?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/06/11/190742087/what-did-congress-really-know-about-nsa-tracking

[Thinkingabout]

1. Bush spoke of this in 2005, where in the hell has these people been since 2005. This is not

new to those who paid attention, it is unbelievable these statements are being made now. Some just can not seem to get to the truth.

[Agnosticsherbet]

2. If they won't explailn the program to you, don't fund it.

A full explanation of what a program does and the thorough legal brief on how it fits within the Constitution should be required by all members of Congress before they vote to fund a program.

Only Congress can raise funds.

[mitty14u2]

3. WASHINGTON — The US House on Wednesday evening overwhelmingly approved a spending bill that would gi

WASHINGTON — The US House on Wednesday evening overwhelmingly approved a spending bill that would give the Pentagon about $600 billion next year, while narrowly killing a measure that targeted controversial NSA surveillance programs.

The chamber’s 2014 defense appropriations bill, approved on a 315-109 vote, includes about $512.5 billion for the Pentagon’s base budget and around $82 billion for overseas operations. The base budget figure is about $3 billion less than the White House requested.

Some of the most dramatic moments of the two days of floor debates came late Wednesday afternoon when the House addressed amendments to limit the National Security Agency’s controversial spying program, place restrictions on US aid to Egypt, and put strings on dollars eligible for use to pay for a Syria military intervention.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130724/DEFREG02/307240022/US-House-Approves-Defense-Spending-Bill-Keeps-NSA-Surveillance-Programs-Alive

WOW; Members sparred for nearly a "half-hour" over the most-anticipated amendment of the process

[blkmusclmachine]

4. They could tell you, but then they'd have to kill you. For "National Security," of course.