Three Hearings, Nine Hours, and One Accurate Statement: Why Congress Must Begin a Full Investigation into NSA Spying

Last week, press reports revealed more about the National Security Agency's (NSA) elite hacking unit, the Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO). The press also helped the public grasp other NSA activities, like how it's weakening encryption. All of this is on top of the NSA's collection of users' phone calls, emails, address books, buddy lists, calling records, online video game chats, financial documents, browsing history, and calendar data we’ve learned about since June.

By contrast, thus far Congress as a whole has done little to help the public understand what the NSA and the larger intelligence community is doing. Even members of Congress seem to learn more from newspaper reports than from “official” sources.

Regaining Congressional Oversight

Something is very wrong when Congress and the public learn more about the NSA's activities from newspaper leaks than from the Senate and House intelligence committees. The committees are supposed to oversee the intelligence community activities on behalf of the public, but more often—as the New Yorker describes it—"treat[] senior intelligence officials like matinée idols.”

It's time for Congress to reassert its oversight role and begin a full-scale investigation into the NSA’s surveillance and analytic activities. The current investigations—which aren't led by Congress—are unable to fully investigate the revelations, Congressional committees' hearings have added little, and Congress cannot rely solely on mandating more reports from the NSA as a solution.

Hearings Inside Congress

So far, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy is valiantly attempting to shine more light on the NSA's activities, but the hearings have only served as venues for administration officials to parrot talking points and provide non-answers to important questions. This is very similar to what happened after the New York Times released the first reports of warrantless wiretapping in December 2005.

The hearings’ ineffectiveness are shown by the fact that it took three hearings—nine hours—for Senator Leahy to clarify just how many terrorist attacks the collection of all Americans' calling records stopped. In the