President Barack Obama pledged he’d appoint “outside experts” to review the country’s surveillance practices, but he’s since tapped largely insiders for the key posts.
The group, formed to examine the policies and procedures at the National Security Agency as it tracks terrorism suspects’ digital communications, is composed mostly of Washington types, many with connections to the very intelligence establishment they’re now tasked with scrutinizing in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks.
There’s Michael Morell, a CIA veteran who once led the agency on an interim basis; Richard Clarke, a top counter-terrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations; and Cass Sunstein, a well-known academic who did regulatory work for the Obama White House and is married to United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power. The panel also includes Peter Swire, a former Clinton administration privacy expert, and Geoffrey Stone, a top professor at the University of Chicago Law School who knows the president.
Announcing the inquiry at an Aug. 9 press conference, Obama described it as “a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies” — and he stressed it would be “independent.”
“I think it’s fair to say that by stressing the idea of an independent review board, the appointees don’t live up to what most people view as independent,” said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
What Obama was actually seeking, Harris said, was a group to look at the internal management and effectiveness of surveillance programs. She added the board has a “very broad mission, and I’m going to withhold judgment until I see what they do.”
Via: PoliticoContinue Reading....
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