{"id":9241,"date":"2013-08-11T07:41:53","date_gmt":"2013-08-11T07:37:45","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-11T07:37:45","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=9241","title":{"rendered":"WaPo: Lawmakers say obstacles limited oversight of NSA\u2019s telephone surveillance program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WaPo: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/lawmakers-say-obstacles-limited-oversight-of-nsas-telephone-surveillance-program\/2013\/08\/10\/bee87394-004d-11e3-9a3e-916de805f65d_story.html?hpid=z1\">Lawmakers say obstacles limited oversight of NSA\u2019s telephone surveillance program<\/a> by Peter Wallsten:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Obama administration points to checks and balances from Congress as a key rationale for supporting bulk collection of Americans\u2019 telephone communications data, but several lawmakers responsible for overseeing the program in recent years say that they felt limited in their ability to challenge its scope and legality.<\/p>\n<p>. . .<\/p>\n<p>And when a handful of skeptics on each panel raised concerns about the surveillance program or proposed changes, such as shifting the data collection to the companies rather than the government, they were handily defeated by bipartisan majorities who saw the program as a crucial tool in preventing terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn terms of the oversight function, I feel inadequate most of the time,\u201d said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee and an NSA critic. Bulk surveillance \u201ccertainly was approved by Congress. Was it approved by a fully knowing Congress? That is not the case.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>b2evALnk.b2WPAutP <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=9241\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}