Intelligence chief open to surveillance limits
The top U.S. intelligence officer told lawmakers on Thursday that he is willing to consider limits on surveillance by the National Security Agency.
James Clapper is Director of National Intelligence. He said he would consider limits to ease concerns raised by disclosures of NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone and email data.
Testifying on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Clapper bemoaned the "lowering of trust in the intelligence community" that has resulted from recent unauthorized leaks of classified intelligence-gathering programs.
As he has before, Clapper defended the efficacy and legality of the programs in question, but he said the intelligence community would be open to reforms that make the American people more comfortable with the government's surveillance programs.
Clapper said he would consider restricting how far NSA analysts can reach into the U.S. phone records database when tracking connections to a terror suspect.
In his prepared remarks, Clapper said he also would consider limiting how long such data is kept, and releasing statistics on how that data is being used.
Clapper said he's also open to the idea of having an independent representative argue against the government before a secret federal court that reviews all government surveillance requests.
President Obama and others have floated the idea of adding an adversarial presence to the FISA court hearings that govern the use of the intelligence programs to push back against the government's case for surveillance authority.
Next week, the Senate Intelligence Committee will hold a mark-up of a draft bill that aims to increase the oversight and transparency of the surveillance programs while also limiting their scope. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the top Republican on the committee, said the panel is making "very good progress" on a bill that makes "reasonable changes" to the programs.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., one of the most outspoken critics of the government's surveillance authority, promised a "vigorous debate" during next week's markup. "Time and time again the American people were told one thing about domestic surveillance in public forums while government agencies did something else in private," he said on Thursday.
The director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Keith Alexander, urged lawmakers to "step away from the sensational headlines and focus on facts," noting that there have been only "twelve substantiated cases of willful violation" of privacy safeguards over 10 years.
Nevertheless, he added, the "NSA looks forward to supporting the discussion of reform," pledging to "dutifully" carry out any changes lawmakers enact.