oh noes we pissed off Doug
consequences will never be the same
Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA
This morning, I spent an hour in a closed room with six members of Congress: Rep. Lofgren, Rep. Sensenbrenner, Rep. Bobby Scott, Rep. Goodlatte, Rep. Mike Thompson, and Rep. Amash. No staffers, no public: just them. Lofgren had asked me to brief her and a few Representatives on the NSA. She said that the NSA wasn't forthcoming about their activities, and they wanted me – as someone with access to the Snowden documents – to explain to them what the NSA was doing. Of course, I'm not going to give details on the meeting, except to say that it was candid and interesting. And that it's extremely freaky that Congress has such a difficult time getting information out of the NSA that they have to ask me. I really want oversight to work better in this country.
Surreal part of setting up this meeting: I suggested that we hold this meeting in a SCIF, because they wanted me to talk about top secret documents that had not been made public. The problem is that I, as someone without a clearance, would not be allowed into the SCIF. So we had to have the meeting in a regular room.
Bruce Schneier • January 16, 2014 2:05 PM
"It's worth pointing out that all of these representatives (assuming you mean Bennie Thompson of Mississippi or Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania, and Bobby Scott of Virginia or Austin Scott of Georgia—there are three Rep. Thompsons and three Rep. Scotts) are cosponsors of Sensenbrenner's "USA Freedom Act". In other words, they are already on record as supporters of restricting the NSA's surveillance powers. "
Bobby Scott and Mike Thompson.
And, yes, they are all people who want to rein in the NSA. I was speaking to allies.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/01/today_i_briefed.html
I am a public-interest technologist, working at the intersection of security, technology, and people. I've been writing about security issues on my blog since 2004, and in my monthly newsletter since 1998. I'm a Special Advisor to IBM Security, a fellow and lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School, and a board member of EFF. This personal website expresses the opinions of none of those organizations.
Is this half true, and half lie?
About Bruce Schneier
Intelligence Database Worker Illegally Looked Up Edward Snowden, Others Hundreds of Times
A SENIOR SECURITY database program officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had at least 14 freelance jobs, performed hundreds of illegal searches and admitted to spending approximately “all day” on Facebook.
The findings are contained in a heavily redacted 32-page report compiled in late 2014 by the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community and made public Wednesday by Buzzfeed journalist Jason Leopold.
The document's header says it was approved for release in December, but Leopold, a prolific Freedom of Information Act litigant, said on Twitter he had just acquired it. “These reports are rarely released,” he wrote.
The senior employee’s astounding list of alleged misdeeds was uncovered, the report says, after the CIA’s clearance division found evidence in 2012 that she “engaged in unreported outside activities.”
"Between June 10, 2013 and July 2, 2013, [the employee] ran JPAS record searches for Edward Snowden 357 times under three of her accounts [with outside contractors] while at ODNI facilities during duty hours," the report says. "In the case of 357 unauthorized JPAS queries, [she] violated the Privacy Act."
The JPAS system warns users they may face criminal Privacy Act penalties, the report says, and "regarding only maintenance of records and JPAS queries mentioned above, [the employee] violated the Privacy Act 636 times while at an ODNI facility."
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2017-06-21/intelligence-database-worker-illegally-looked-up-edward-snowden-others-hundreds-of-times