Bruce Schneier has a powerful article in The Atlantic on The Only Way to Restore Trust in the NSA. His prescription is to appoint an independent special council to clean up the mess. My first reaction when reading that was to snort, “Yeah, that’s gonna happen.” I still think that’s correct but Schneier makes a strong case for why it’s needed and why it would, in the end, help the NSA too.
The problem, Schneier says, is that no one any longer believes anything the NSA says and no one believes anything the President says about it either. The NSA has lied and been discovered lying repeatedly resulting in a complete breakdown in trust in the agency, the Intelligence community, and, if the commenters’ opinions are representative, government itself.
A special council with the power and a technically qualified staff to do a thorough investigation could report to the country the truth concerning what the NSA is doing and then we could have rational discussion about what we want to allow and shut down those programs that are clearly illegal. As I said, I doubt that will happen and that’s too bad.
Be sure to read Schneier’s article. It’s one of his best concerning the NSA scandals.