It was a week in which the National Security Agency seemed to be all over Washington. From the US House of Representatives to the Justice and State departments, the headlines generated frequently had to fit in the long word surveillance.
When fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden - who leaked documents revealing previously undisclosed details about the agency's internet and telephone data collection - appeared close to being given permission by Russia to seek asylum there, the Justice Department leaked a letter in which it assured Moscow that Snowden would not face the death penalty if sent home.
Earlier in the week, the State Department urged Russia "to do the right thing" and send Snowden home, while on the floor of the House, members voted not to curtail the NSA from using the PATRIOT Act - a sweeping anti-terrorist law passed after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington - to collect records of people who are not the subject of an investigation.
Supported by an odd mix of pro-privacy and civil libertarian House members from both left and right, the narrowly defeated amendment was considered the first real test of political sentiment on the NSA programmes since the Snowden leaks. The vote was preceded by a lively debate over the phone and email snooping programmes. One supporter of the amendment said it was an opportunity to repair some of the damage caused to the US reputation abroad. Opponents thrashed the proposal as endangering national security, with one warning that cutting the programme would hurt efforts to find terrorists. "Have 12 years gone by and our memories faded so badly that we forgot what happened on September 11?" once Congressman asked.
Meanwhile, the National Press Club hosted a revealing panel discussion about surveillance operations in which three former NSA officials sharply criticised the agency's surveillance. The event was sponsored by the Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based non-governmental organisation dedicated to protecting whistleblowers and advocating free speech.
Former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake, who as an employee of the NSA objected to warrantless spying on innocent Americans, said the government itself "has become a criminal enterprise." Former NSA technical director William Binney and former NSA senior analyst J Kirk Wiebe said they quit the agency when they realised it was violating its mandate.
Each of the men sought to correct NSA abuses internally only to find that higher authorities could use the complaint process to identify and punish those who raised questions. Their bottom line: the NSA tries to collect as much phone, email and social media data as possible from the world's population, including US citizens, for storage and potential retrieval later. The three had a lot to say about the NSA's defence of its surveillance by saying it is limited to "metadata" - data about data - as opposed to content of messages. They said NSA can retrieve data when it desires, and can match internet protocol addresses to names.
"They have ways and means" to tap into conversations and other communications, Binney said. Government references to metadata as trivial are misleading. A lot can be gleaned by looking at the packets that move over the internet - what language is being spoken, for example. Asked whether the NSA records conversations, Binney referred to public testimony in 2011 in which FBI director Robert Mueller said with one query he could search a database and find the information he needed.
Binney said he knew first hand that the US programmes have become the envy of some of the most notorious espionage operations in history. He cited a lieutenant colonel in the East German secret police who was quoted as saying that the NSA's PRISM programme would have been "a dream come true" for the totalitarian regime. "This concept of spying on the populace is spreading around the world," said Binney. "It's a threat to every democracy in the world."
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