The panel of ‘outside’ experts, appointed by President Obama to investigate the controversial NSA spying program for civil liberties violations, is not independent at all, but rather, functions under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and is comprised of Democratic Party insiders, Associated Press revealed in a report released Sunday.
The review panel operates under the very office that oversees the NSA programs the panel is supposed to investigate. Associated Press reports:
Furthermore, the people who comprise the panel have demonstrated ties to Democratic presidents. Associated Press reveals:
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the NSA spying story, slammed the panel in the following tweet sent Sunday.
As Common Dreams previously reported, the first meeting of the “oversight” panel was slammed by some attendees as a gathering of “intelligence insiders” that did not question the basic ethics of NSA spying programs.
Obama convened the panel in an early August speech in which declared that “outside experts” to look into NSA surveillance policies and produce a report within 60 days in response to mass outrage about secret spying. Obama claimed the aim of the panel was to “consider how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used.”
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