First of all, there is NO SUCH THING as ethical intelligence gathering.
Frank Church, back in the days of post Viet Nam established a commission which, in attempting to instill ethics in intelligence, instead crippled our efforts for more than a generation. I am NOT talking about bans or limits on assassination of other national leaders, I am talking about low level human intelligence personnel and raw gathering.
Wouldn’t it be NICE to know if Angela Merkel was consciously permitting German engineering firms to sell equipment helpful in the Uranium fuel cycle, or heavy water (H bombs) or …well… anyone remember BASF and what they were doing?
Oh Diane, Diane…
Democrat Senate intelligence chair Dianne Feinstein calls for ‘major review’ of NSA spying and says it’s a ‘big problem’ if Obama was unaware
The U.S. Senate’s top foreign intelligence official said Monday in a scathing statement that she is ‘totally opposed’ to spying of the sort that has gotten the Obama administration into hot water this week.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who chairs the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, seemed miffed at the idea that she and her colleagues were out of the loop when the president’s men conducted surveillance on foreign leaders in Europe and Latin America.
And she said President Obama’s lack of knowledge about monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phones going back to 2002 posed ‘a big problem.’
So she’s tightening the leash.
'The White House has informed me that collection on our allies will not continue, which I support,' said Feinstein.
'But as far as I’m concerned, Congress needs to know exactly what our intelligence community is doing. To that end, the committee will initiate a major review into all intelligence collection programs.'
It’s highly unusual for the majority party in either house of Congress to attack a sitting president in the same party over foreign policy.
HOPELESS.
I don’t believe it is a credible position that Obama did not know. I DO believe that Obama’s people as so out of touch that they believe others will believe this. (If he didn’t know the US govt is OUT OF CONTROL, btw, and run by rogue elements)
The Senate is NOT EQUIPPED to decide the issue at hand as the Church experience made clear via HISTORICAL FACT.
The NSA and CIA have NO BUSINESS collecting metedata (which they claim) and ALL DATA (which I am sure they retain) of cell calls in the USA. They are made on privately owned phones across privately owned networks and received on privately owned phones. All safeguarded by that pesky illegal search and seizure thing.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
But other nations and their leaders, whose ‘alliance’ state varies by subject matter or even date?
Not just fair targets for intelligence but COMPULSORY ONES.
GROW UP Ms Feinstein.
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