US Congressmen have to extract secrets from the NSA from Bruce Schneier
On Thursday, January 16, one of the world's leading information security experts, Bruce Schneier, talked with six US congressmen for an hour. Lawmakers invited him to get information about the activities of the NSA, which they could not get through official channels. The National Security Agency is very reluctant to share information about its work even with representatives of the US parliament, and Bruce Schneier is not only well versed in the technical aspects of cyber security, but is also one of the “elect” who have access to the database of documents obtained by Edward Snowden.
In theory, representatives of the legislative and judicial branches of government should be able to oversee the NSA and similar secret services. However, congressmen have to obtain information about the Agency’s work from a third-party expert, and the original source of this information is Snowden’s accidental leak. Supervision from the side of judges is also nominal - the specialized FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), created in 1979 to consider requests for wiretapping by special services, over the years of its work rejected only 11 of 33,900 requests. For ordinary mortals, the activities of the NSA are so secret that companies forced to share information about their clients with the Agency are prohibited from disclosing even the very fact of such cooperation.
Interestingly, the meeting of congressmen with Bruce Schneier, where top secret information was discussed, took place in a normal unprotected building. Schneier writes in his blog that he offered to meet with congressmen in a specially equipped room specifically designed to work with top-secret documents, but they could not get permission to use it, since Schneier does not officially have the necessary level of access.
In theory, representatives of the legislative and judicial branches of government should be able to oversee the NSA and similar secret services. However, congressmen have to obtain information about the Agency’s work from a third-party expert, and the original source of this information is Snowden’s accidental leak. Supervision from the side of judges is also nominal - the specialized FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), created in 1979 to consider requests for wiretapping by special services, over the years of its work rejected only 11 of 33,900 requests. For ordinary mortals, the activities of the NSA are so secret that companies forced to share information about their clients with the Agency are prohibited from disclosing even the very fact of such cooperation.
Interestingly, the meeting of congressmen with Bruce Schneier, where top secret information was discussed, took place in a normal unprotected building. Schneier writes in his blog that he offered to meet with congressmen in a specially equipped room specifically designed to work with top-secret documents, but they could not get permission to use it, since Schneier does not officially have the necessary level of access.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/209414/
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