Congressional Staffers Told To Pretend NSA Leak Docs Don't Exist; So How Are They Supposed To Respond?

from the i-prefer-not-to-be-governed-by-the-insane dept

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Last week, we thought it was ridiculous enough that the DoD (of which the NSA is a key part) had reminded all staff that they were not allowed to look at any of the leaked NSA documents, even if they came across them in the press. If they spotted any, they had to alert various security officials and delete what they saw "by holding down the SHIFT key while pressing the DELETE key for Windows-based systems and clearing of the internet browser cache." As we noted at the time, pretending these documents aren't public does not make much sense, and suggests a government agency that does not want to live in reality.Now we can add Congress to that list as well. Senate staffers have now been told not to look at the leaked documents , and similarly that they need to "contact the Office of Senate Security for assistance" if they happened across any of the documents accidentally. Once again, this is insane because it means Congress should deny reality and pretend to live with its collective head in the sand -- which is no way to govern.However, the muchdeal is that if this were actually obeyed (and it's not), this would effectively hinder Congress's required duty of oversight of the NSA to prevent abuse. If the very Congress that's supposed to monitor the NSA's practices, and which has already been directly lied to by the intelligence community is now being told that it can't even look at the leaks to understand what's going on, how the hell are they supposed to do their oversight job?Furthermore, last week, we pointed to some video of Rep. Grayson on the House floor giving an impassioned speech about the leaks... and displaying many of the leaked NSA docs blown up on an easel. If Congress isn't allowed to look at them, but Congress is also presenting them on the floor of the House and broadcasting live on C-SPAN and YouTube for the world to see... was the rest of Congress just supposed to avert its eyes while Grayson spoke? Is that a reasonable world?

Filed Under: classified information, congress, oversight, staffers, transparency