The latest news about how far the National Security Agency goes with warrantless spying doesn\u2019t exactly make the agency\u2019s defenders look like policy savants.<\/p>\n
Just ask Dick Cheney.<\/p>\n
When Cheney met privately with Republican donors recently he was completely dismissive on the subject of NSA snooping, maintaining that there\u2019s no way that the organization is abusing its powers.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The idea] that we have created in the National Security Agency this monster bureaucracy that\u2019s reading everybody\u2019s mail, listening to everybody\u2019s phone calls, infringing upon our civil liberties and civil rights. Hogwash,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The \u201chogwash\u201d of it is actually Cheney\u2019s statement, which was debunked late last night by revelations of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Democrat senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) \u2014 the latter two sit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.<\/p>\n
Clapper revealed that NSA has performed warrantless searches on Americans\u2019 calls and emails, used a \u2018back-door search loophole\u2019\u2019 to monitor Americans\u2019 communications \u2014 a new and secret legal rule that justified NSA analysts\u2019 snooping on citizens within the databases \u2014 and collected data through \u2019Prism\u2019 and \u2018Upstream\u2019 programs.<\/p>\n
The two senators released a statement slamming the NSA and the \u201cmisleading\u201d information President Obama has shared with the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is now clear to the public that the list of ongoing intrusive surveillance practices by the NSA includes not only bulk collection of Americans\u2019 phone records, but also warrantless searches of the content of Americans\u2019 personal communications,\u201d the senators wrote in a letter.<\/p>\n