The Boston Globe reports President weakens espionage oversight given no reasons for the action, but clearly we have too much oversight on our intelligence services. President Ford created the Intelligence Oversight Board "made up of private citizens with top-level clearances to ferret out illegal spying activities."
"Under the old rules, whenever the oversight board learned of intelligence activity that it believed might be 'unlawful or contrary to executive order,' it had a duty to notify both the president and the attorney general. But Bush's order deleted the board's authority to refer matters to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation, and the new order said the board should notify the president only if other officials are not already 'adequately' addressing the problem.
Bush's order also terminated the board's authority to oversee each intelligence agency's general counsel and inspector general, and it erased a requirement that each inspector general file a report with the board every three months. Now only the agency directors will decide whether to report any potential lawbreaking to the panel, and they have no schedule for checking in."
Sounds exactly the way you'd want an oversight committee to operate doesn't it? I mean it's not like the FBI has been improperly accessing your telephone records, credit report or internet usage for four years running. Oh wait, they have been. And it's not like the NSA has it's Total Information Awareness program in place. Oh wait, they do.
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