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Cornyn Called Targeted Killing a “Program,” Too

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I noted yesterday that the government, in its cynical attempt to play dumb about what the ACLU and NYT were FOIAing in their Anwar al-Awlaki memo lawsuits, had exhibited the same problems with basic definitions as Clinton had over the definition of “is.”

Plaintiffs do not define, and it is otherwise unclear from their response, what is meant by “targeted killing program.”

Interestingly, Tom Junod revealed that one of his sources got squeamish about his use of the word “program.”

But there is someone else who has received at least a cursory white paper introduction to the Administration’s targeted killing of American citizens who is on the record calling it a program: John Cornyn.

In his efforts (thwarted by all the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee) to pass an amendment requiring the Administration to share all legal analysis on its authority to engaging in targeting killings of Americans overseas, he said this:

Cornyn: This is an amendment I alluded to earlier which would require the Executive Branch to share with Congress the legal basis for their decision to engage in a program of targeted killings, including apparently American citizens abroad. This is, just to be clear, not asking about the program per se, just asking about the legal rationale. I think all of us are troubled at least initially, without further explanation, about the use of targeted killings that involve American citizens. We all understand that even American citizens may become traitors and declare war, in essence, against their own country. But there has to be a rationale for this in law. And I think this is about transparency, this is about accountability, and it’s also important for Congress–the only branch that can actually legislate–if there are aspects of this legal argument or rationale which Congress would choose to hold hearings on, conduct appropriate oversight, or legislate on, this is the kind of information that Congress is entitled to as part of our Constitutional role. I know we can all agree that the decision to use this program bears heavily on core national values. [my emphasis]

Elsewhere in the debate (I’ve included my own transcription of it below), Pat Leahy reveals the Administration provided a white paper on the program (though Cornyn suggests–and Leahy seems to confirm–that didn’t include the legal analysis). Which suggests Cornyn is working from the presentation the Administration gave to Congressional overseers of DOJ.

And based on that presentation, Cornyn seems to believe it’s a program.

My transcript of this part of the hearing–which begins around 98:32–is below the line. Read more →

NGOs to Congress: Don’t Hide Our Secret Government

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I noted last week that the Senate Intelligence Committee had acceded to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s request that it repeal the requirement that his office produce a yearly report on the number of people with security clearances.

On Tuesday a group of NGOs wrote the Intelligence Committees asking they reverse course and retain the report requirement. They argue, in part, that the report has generated far more attention than typical government reports. And that the report offered the public an unprecedented understanding of the size of the clearance community.

We believe the annual report on security clearances provides exceptional value to the public and should continue to be published.
In the two years that the report has been produced, it has dramatically altered our conception of the size and scale of the personnel security clearance system. Prior to the reporting requirement, the Government Accountability Office could only estimate the number of security cleared personnel, and its latest estimate was low by more than a million clearances.
As evidence of the exceptional public interest in this report, we note that the findings of the latest annual report have appeared in the New York Times (July 24), the Washington Post (July 28), and McClatchy Papers (July 27), among others. As you know, this level of attention is well above average for a report to Congress on any topic.
Through this annual reporting requirement, your Committees have provided an unprecedented degree of transparency concerning the security clearance system. We thank you for that, and we respectfully request that you maintain this important reporting requirement.

Let’s hope that bit of flattery at the end works. If not, I guess we can conclude that even this tiny bit of transparency on our secret government is deemed too much for mere citizens to have.

Nuke Site Breached Just Days After SSCI Moved to Eliminate Reporting on Nuke Site Security

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I have been dawdling about writing this post, in which I explain that two of the reporting requirements the Senate Intelligence Committee rather stupidly, IMO, moved to eliminate last week pertain to the security of our nuclear labs.

Back when I criticized the plan to eliminate these reports in June, I wrote,

The bill would eliminate two reporting requirements imposed in the wake of the Wen Ho Lee scandal: that the President report on how the government is defending against Chinese spying and that the Secretary of Energy report on the security of the nation’s nuclear labs. Just last year, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory had to separate from the Internet because some entity–China would be a good candidate–had hacked the lab and was downloading data from their servers. Now seems a really stupid time to stop reporting on efforts to avoid such breaches.

In spite of these very obvious reasons, the Senate did indeed eliminate two reporting requirements pertaining to national labs (though they kept the one pertaining to Chinese spying).

(7) REPEAL OF REPORTING REQUIREMENT REGARDING COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY PRACTICES AT THE NATIONAL LABORATORIES.—Section 4507 of the Atomic Energy Defense Act (50 U.S.C. 2658) is repealed.

(8) REPEAL OF REPORTING REQUIREMENT REGARDING SECURITY VULNERABILITIES OF NATIONAL LABORATORY COMPUTERS.—Section 4508 of the Atomic Energy Defense Act (50 U.S.C. 2659) is repealed.

I’m glad I waited. Now I can use this story to demonstrate how vulnerable our nuclear labs remain.

The U.S. government’s only facility for handling, processing and storing weapons-grade uranium [Oak Ridge National Lab] was temporarily shut this week after anti-nuclear activists, including an 82-year-old nun, breached security fences, government officials said on Thursday.

[snip]

The activists painted slogans and threw what they said was human blood on the wall of the facility, one of numerous buildings in the facility known by the code name Y-12 that it was given during World War II, officials said.

While moving between the perimeter fences, the activists triggered sensors which alerted security personnel. However, officials conceded that the intruders still were able to reach the building’s walls before security personnel got to them.

When James Clapper’s office asked to throw these reports out, they justified it by saying they could just brief the information rather than report it regularly.

This reporting requirement should be repealed because it is over a decade old and the Secretary of Energy and the National Counterintelligence Executive can provide the information requested through briefings, as requested, if congressional interest persists.

Oak Ridge Lab has been breached twice in two years, once via its computer systems and now physically. I’m sure Congress will be getting a slew of briefings about the lab, but it really does seem like a little reporting requirement might help DOE to take this seriously.

Dianne Feinstein Agrees with Obama: Public Can’t Know Targeted Killing Legal Justification

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At the end of a useful Steve Coll piece on the Constitutional danger of the Administration’s unilateral decisions to kill American citizens, he argues that Congress has the ability to force the Administration to release the process by which it executes Americans with no due process publicly.

None of Obama’s legal advisers has testified similarly about what secret system and classified legal memos may exist for judging, in the case of an American citizen targeted overseas, whether and why a capture attempt may be feasible. Congress has the power to force such statements onto the public record. It must try; it is obvious by now that the Obama Administration will not volunteer them. Is “kill or capture” a policy, or are the words just a screen for politically convenient targeted killings?

As I laid out the other day, Congress has tried to ask nicely for the memos on over 10 occasions, only to be blown off by the Administration.

That’s why Dianne Feinstein’s thus far successful effort to undercut John Cornyn’s effort to mandate release of the memos is so dangerous. John Cornyn’s amendment would mandate release to six oversight committees (those overseeing Intelligence, Judiciary, and Armed Services) within a month. DiFi’s bill would require release of all intelligence related memos (which is good), but only to the Intelligence Committees, and with loopholes  that would permit the Administration to withhold a slew of their legal authorities. And any release could be delayed 6 months beyond the passage of the bill (so, if Mitt were to win, beyond the end of the Obama Administration).

There is widespread bipartisan support for releasing a real explanation of this to the public, now. Cornyn’s amendment would be an important half measure, requiring release of the Awlaki kill memo at least to the members of Congress purportedly ensuring government activities remain constitutional. And yet DiFi’s efforts undercut even that half measure.

Update: My original title, which I’ve resigned to the dustbin of over-long novels, stunk. Thankfully, Kade Ellis gave me a better one.

Using Pensions to “Punish” “Leaks” Will Subject Clearance Holders to Arbitrary Power

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The Senate Intelligence Committee’s new anti-leak laws are the part of the Intelligence Authorization that will generate the most attention. Greg Miller already got Dianne Feinstein to admit there’s no reason to think one of the new provisions–permitting only the most senior intelligence officials to do background briefings–will limit leaks.

Feinstein acknowledged that she knew of no evidence tying those leaks or others to background sessions, which generally deal broadly with analysts’ interpretations of developments overseas and avoid discussions of the operations of the CIA or other spy services.

Another of the provisions–requiring intelligence committee heads to ensure that every sanctioned leak be recorded–ought to be named the Judy Miller and Bob Woodward Insta-Leak Recording Act.

(a) RECORD REQUIREMENT.—The head of each element of the intelligence community shall ensure that such element creates and maintains a record of all authorized disclosures of classified information to media personnel, including any person or entity under contract or other binding agreement with the media to provide analysis or commentary, or to any person or entity if the disclosure is made with the intent or knowledge that such information will be made publicly available.

I’m sure someone can think of some downside to this provision, but I can’t think of it at the moment (which is why Obama will probably find some way to eliminate it). It will end some of the asymmetry and abuse of classification as it currently exists.

In addition, there are a bunch of provisions that are just dumb bureaucracy.

But it’s this one that is deeply troubling. Among the other provisions making nondisclosure agreements more rigorous is a provision that would allow an intelligence community head to take away a person’s pension if they “determine” that an individual violated her nondisclosure agreement.

Read more →

The Administration Has Not Responded to Over 10 Congressional Requests for Targeted Killing Memo

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Back in September 2010, when the Administration successfully argued that whether or not the government had the authority to kill Anwar al-Awlaki was a matter for the Executive and Congressional Branches to decide, it claimed Congress served as a check on that power.

The nonjusticiability of the plaintiff’s claims in this Court “does not leave the executive power unbounded.” Schneider, 412 F.3d at 200. “The political branches effectively exercise such checks and balances on each other in the area of political questions[,]” and “[i]f the executive in fact has exceeded his appropriate role in the constitutional scheme, Congress enjoys a broad range of authorities with which to exercise restraint and balance.” Id. Accordingly, “the allocation of political questions to the political branches is not inconsistent with our constitutional tradition of limited government and balance of powers.” Id.

The Administration’s behavior in the interim period has proven those assurances to be utterly false. Congress has asked the Administration on more than 10 separate occasions for the OLC memo authorizing the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki (many of these 10 documented requests refer to earlier requests, and Pat Leahy sent President Obama a letter that his office could not share).

And yet here we are, 22 months after the Administration assured Judge John Bates that Congress exercised some kind of check on the Executive, at least 17 months after members of Congress first started asking for the legal analysis, and the Administration has not responded to those requests.

Here are the requests.

February 2011: Ron Wyden asks the Director of National Intelligence for the legal analysis behind the targeted killing program. (1)

April 2011: Ron Wyden calls Eric Holder to ask for legal analysis on targeted killing. (2)

May 2011: DOJ responds to Wyden’s request, yet doesn’t answer key questions.

May 18-20, 2011: DOJ (including Office of Legislative Affairs) discusses “draft legal analysis regarding the application of domestic and international law to the use of lethal force in a foreign country against U.S. citizens” (this may be the DOJ response to Ron Wyden).

October 5, 2011: Chuck Grassley sends Eric Holder a letter requesting the OLC memo by October 27, 2011. (3)

November 8, 2011: Pat Leahy complains about past Administration refusal to share targeted killing OLC memo. (4)

February 8, 2012: Ron Wyden follows up on his earlier requests for information on the targeted killing memo with Eric Holder. (5)

March 7, 2012: Tom Graves (R-GA) asks Robert Mueller whether Eric Holder’s criteria for the targeted killing of Americans applies in the US; Mueller replies he’d have to ask DOJ. Per his office today, DOJ has not yet provided Graves with an answer. (6)

March 8, 2012: Pat Leahy renews his request for the OLC memo at DOJ appropriations hearing. (7)

June 7, 2012: After Jerry Nadler requests the memo, Eric Holder commits to providing the House Judiciary a briefing–but not the OLC memo–within a month. (8)

June 12, 2012: Pat Leahy renews his request for the OLC memo at DOJ oversight hearing. (9)

June 27, 2012: In Questions for the Record following a June 7 hearing, Jerry Nadler notes that DOJ has sought dismissal of court challenges to targeted killing by claiming “the appropriate check on executive branch conduct here is the Congress and that information is being shared with Congress to make that check a meaningful one,” but “we have yet to get any response” to “several requests” for the OLC memo authorizing targeted killing. He also renews his request for the briefing Holder had promised. (10)

July 19, 2012: Both Pat Leahy and Chuck Grassley complain about past unanswered requests for OLC memo. (Grassley prepared an amendment as well, but withdrew it in favor of Cornyn’s.) Leahy (but not Grassley) votes to table John Cornyn amendment to require Administration to release the memo.

July 24, 2012: SSCI passes Intelligence Authorization that requires DOJ to make all post-9/11 OLC memos available to the Senate Intelligence Committee, albeit with two big loopholes.

Congress Can’t Legislate Oversight for Fear of Legal Challenges That’d Accomplish Oversight Congress Can’t Legislate

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Julian Sanchez has his own rebuttal to former DOJ official Carrie Cordero’s claims that FISA has plenty of oversight (see mine here). You should definitely read it, which is wonky and interesting. But I wanted to add my non-wonky answer to a question Sanchez poses.

I’ll grant Cordero this point: as absurd as it sounds to say “we can’t tell you how many Americans we’re spying on, because it would violate their privacy,” this might well be a concern if those of us who follow these issues from the outside are correct in our surmises about what NSA is doing under FAA authority. The only real restriction the law places on the initial interception of communications is that the NSA use “targeting procedures” designed to capture traffic to or from overseas groups and individuals. There’s an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence to suggest that initial acquisition is therefore extremely broad, with a large percentage of international communications traffic being fed into NSA databases for later querying. If that’s the case, then naturally the tiny subset of communications later reviewed by a human analyst—because they match far narrower criteria for suspicion—is going to be highly unrepresentative. To get even a rough statistical sample of what’s in the larger database, then, one would have to “inspect”—possibly using software—a whole lot of the innocent communications that wouldn’t otherwise ever be analyzed. And possibly the rules currently in place don’t make any allowance for querying the database—even to analyze metadata for the purpose of generating aggregate statistics—unless it’s directly related to an intelligence purpose.

A few points about this.  First: assuming, for the moment, that  this is the case, why can’t NSA and DOJ say so clearly and publicly?

Sanchez dismisses a bunch of lame excuses that the government might provide. But he doesn’t consider another obvious answer.

The government can’t tell us it can’t tell us how many Americans get spied on after every foreign telecommunication gets sucked up because if it did, then it’d be a lot easier for the plaintiffs in Amnesty v. Clapper to get standing. And the government can’t have that–particularly not before SCOTUS hears the case on October 29–because if so it would allow the plaintiffs to actually challenge the underlying surveillance, and possibly even to challenge what I’ve called the database exception.

So the government can’t answer Ron Wyden’s questions before the FISA Amendments Act gets extended because the government is not about to let this extension wait until after the election, which is, after all, just a week after SCOTUS hears Clapper. And since the House is planning to leave DC for the election on October 5, it means the public simply can’t be told the underlying facts of this spying program, because it’d give Amnesty and the ACLU more than three weeks to figure out how to win their standing case at SCOTUS.

Which brings me to another piece of oversight we can’t have. Read more →

Senate Moves to Hide Our Secret Government

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A few weeks ago, the fact that there are now 4.8 million people in the US with security clearances got a fair amount of attention. 1.5% of our country has access to at least information classified as secret. The job security of most of those people depends on maintaining good standing in the somewhat arbitrary world of security clearance.

The Senate Intelligence Committee wants to make sure we don’t learn that number anymore.

In the Intelligence Authorization, it just eliminated the requirement for that report.

(3) REPEAL OF REPORTING REQUIREMENTS REGARDING SECURITY CLEARANCES.—

(A) IN GENERAL.—Section 506H of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 415a–10) is repealed.

(B) TABLE OF CONTENTS AMENDMENT.— The National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 401 et seq.) is amended in the table of contents in the first section by striking the item relating to section 506H.

The language this bill would repeal reads, in part,

(b) Report on Security Clearance Determinations.–

(1) Not later than February 1 of each year, the President shall submit to Congress a report on the security clearance process. Such report shall include, for each security clearance level–

(A) the number of employees of the United States Government who–

(i) held a security clearance at such level as of October 1 of the preceding year; and

(ii) were approved for a security clearance at such level during the preceding fiscal year;

(B) the number of contractors to the United States Government who–

(i) held a security clearance at such level as of October 1 of the preceding year; and

(ii) were approved for a security clearance at such level during the preceding fiscal year;

When ODNI requested the elimination of this report in June, arguing that since the government has caught up on the backlog approving security clearances, it suggested there is no more reason to track this information. If Congress still cares how big our secret government has gotten, ODNI says, they can get briefings.

Justification: Section 506H includes two enduring reporting requirements. The requirement for a quadrennial audit of positions requiring security clearances should be repealed because the National Counterintelligence Executive, in partnership with other agencies with similar responsibilities, examines the manner in which security clearance requirements are determined more frequently than once every four years. Rather than submit a report regarding a quadrennial activity, the executive branch can provide more frequent briefings, as requested, if congressional interest persists.
With regard to the annual reporting requirement on security clearance determinations, the Executive Branch as a whole has made significant progress in expediting and streamlining the security clearance process since the passage of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, thus reducing the saliency of this report. This reporting requirement should be replaced by briefings, as requested, if congressional interest persists.

I guess “giving citizens a hint of the size of their secret government” has nothing to do with why this report was considered salient.

This is crazy. As our secret government continues to metastasize, and as those who hold clearances are subjected to an increasingly arbitrary system of control (which I’ll discuss in a later report), the Senate Intelligence Committee has moved to hide the one report that gives us a sense of how big the secret government really is (and how much of our secret government consists of contractors).

 

Dianne Feinstein Undermines John Cornyn’s Effort to Get Transparency on Targeted Killing

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As I noted a few weeks ago, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to prevent John Cornyn from adding an amendment to the FISA Amendments Act Extension. I will have to hunt down the language of his amendment tomorrow, but it would basically have required the Administration to share the memos authorizing the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki–with targeted killing addressed specifically–with the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees. [Update: The Amendment is below.]

The Senate Intelligence Committee just passed the language that–DiFi promised–would address the issue. And it still leaves the Administration leeway to do what it has been doing for two years–withholding the actual memo from the committees that oversee it.

That’s because the legislation passed as part of the Intelligence Authorization allows the government to withhold opinions from people not read into covert programs.

(a) REQUIREMENT TO PROVIDE.—Except as provided in subsections (c) and (d), not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Attorney General, in coordination with the Director of National Intelligence, shall provide to the congressional intelligence committees a copy of every classified opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice that was provided to an element of the intelligence community on or after September 11, 2001.

[snip]

(c) EXCEPTION FOR COVERT ACTION.—If the President determines that it is essential to limit access to a covert action finding under section 503(c)(2) of the National Security Act (50 U.S.C. 413b(c)(2)), the President may limit access to information concerning such finding that is subject to disclosure under subsection (a) or (b) to those members of Congress who have been granted access to the relevant finding under such section 503(c)(2).

(d) EXCEPTION FOR INFORMATION SUBJECT TO EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE.—If the President determines that a particular opinion subject to disclosure under subsection  (a) or listing subject to disclosure under subsection (b) is subject to an executive privilege that protects against such disclosure, the Attorney General shall not be required to disclose such opinion or listing, if the Attorney General notifies the congressional intelligence committees, in writing, of the legal justification for such assertion of executive privilege prior to the date by which the opinion or listing is required to be disclosed.

This is, frankly, an outrage both specifically and generally.

First, nothing in this language guarantees the committees will get the memos in question. That’s because the Administration has long been withholding the information even from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee based on claims that it is too secret to share with those who oversee intelligence and the Constitution.

Furthermore, both the Bush and Obama Administrations have fairly routinely withheld OLC memos–particularly drafts–on the basis they’re deliberative and have nothing to do with the basis on which the Administration makes the final decision. The language on Executive Privilege here codifies that practice. Further, in the case of targeted killing, the government went out of its way to get ACLU to agree not to ask for the drafts of their opinions on targeted killing. And remember, before they finalized the memo we think was ostensibly used to authorize the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, they had already tried to kill him, at a time when FBI, at least, didn’t have evidence showing he was operational. The authorization they used for the earlier kill attempt–if it exists–almost certainly looks nothing like the authorization described in the government’s recent transparency theater.

And then there’s this: the 6 months it allows the government to sit on this. That gets the Administration beyond the election, but also beyond the time when, if Obama loses, he’ll leave office. So if there’s anything really embarrassing, he can use late Administration game playing to clean it up.

This is disgusting. Really, really pathetic, even for the serially pathetic Senate Intelligence Committee.

Update: Here’s Cornyn’s amendment. His amendment would have gotten just the targeted killing opinions, shared with just the oversight committees (I had forgotten it included the Armed Services committees, too). But it also would have gotten the opinions within a month (and therefore before the election).

Not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall submit, in classified or unclassified form, all legal analysis in effect on the date of the enactment of this Act related to the President’s authority to target and kill United States citizens overseas to—

(1) the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate;

(2) the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate;

(3) the Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate;

(4) the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives

(5) the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives; and

(6) the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives.

Why Are FAA Boosters Satisfied with Inadequate Oversight?

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Julian Sanchez hosted a Cato event yesterday that examined surveillance generally and the FISA Amendments Act specifically. At it, Ron Wyden presented his concerns about the FISA Amendments Act and other surveillance, and then ACLU’s Michelle Richardson and NYT’s Eric Lichtblau added their own views.

There was one question asked during the question period claiming that the program undergoes adequate reviews. The questioner was Georgetown’s Director of National Security Studies, Carrie Cordero, who had a role on FISA implementation until 2010, who has now reprised and expanded her comments at Lawfare.

She starts by addressing Wyden’s request that DNI to tell Congress how many Americans have had their communications “collected or reviewed.”

In particular, they have, in a series of letters, requested that the Executive Branch provide an estimate of the number of Americans incidentally intercepted during the course of FAA surveillance. According to the exchanges of letters, the Executive Branch has repeatedly denied the request, on the basis that: i) it would be an unreasonable burden on the workforce (and, presumably, would take intelligence professionals off their national security mission); and ii) gathering the data the senators are requesting would, in and of itself, violate privacy rights of Americans.

The question of whether the data call itself would violate privacy rights is a more interesting one. Multiple oversight personnel independent of the operational and analytical wings of the Intelligence Community – including the Office of Management and Budget, the NSA Inspector General, and just last month, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, have all said that the data call requested by the senators is not feasible. The other members of the SSCI appear to accept this claim on its face. Meanwhile, Senator Wyden states he just finds the claim unbelievable. [my emphasis]

Note, first of all, that she mischaracterizes Wyden’s request. He asked about US person communication that had been “collected or reviewed,” whereas she claimed he was asking only about incidental interception. Those are different things, and what Wyden’s interested in is far more invasive than simply having your communications sitting in a data warehouse in UT unread.

That’s important because Cordero treats one aspect of the DNI IG’s response–the privacy claim–as an “interesting question,” but then she proceeds to not answer the question. She instead reverts back to what she had correctly portrayed as NSA’s claim that NSA didn’t have the capacity because it would be “unreasonable burden on the workforce,” then asks why Wyden doesn’t believe that claim.

Remember, the privacy claim was raised solely in terms of whether the NSA’s Inspector General could conduct a review, not whether NSA analysts should be pulled off reviewing intercepts to find out how many of them are Americans. So if that claim is not credible–and ultimately, she doesn’t say it is–then NSA IG’s sole remaining rationale is a manpower one.

Frankly, if it would take that much manpower to come up with an answer, it says the program isn’t being tracked adequately.

Cordero then gets to the jist of a comment she made at the hearing: that there are a bunch of reviews which provide adequate oversight.

Meanwhile, the assertion of today’s program’s title that the FAA enables “mass spying without accountability,” is debunked by the SSCI’s own report issued on June 7. The intelligence committees have been on the receiving end of a mountain of reports describing FAA activities, the FISA Court’s reviews, and the Executive Branch’s own compliance reviews. The SSCI report, and the additional written views of Senator Feinstein (D-CA), the Committee’s Chair, states that the statutorily-mandated reporting requirements “provide the Committee with extensive visibility into the application of…minimization procedures,” and have enabled the Committee to conduct “extensive” and “robust” oversight. The report goes on to detail all of the different categories of reports and briefings that have been provided to the Committee to facilitate their oversight role, in accordance with the National Security Act of 1947, as amended. [my emphasis]

Cordero claims that the SSCI report and DiFi’s additional reviews boast about reporting requirements. But only the word “extensive” appears in the report approved by SSCI as a whole, and it appears to simply repeat language from an appendix Eric Holder and James Clapper provided. The rest comes from this paragraph:

Third, the numerous reporting requirements outlined above provide the Committee with extensive visibility into the application of these minimization procedures and enable the Committee to evaluate the extent to which these procedures are effective in protecting the privacy and civil liberties of U.S. persons. Read more →