Feinstein: CIA searched Intelligence Committee computers | Hacker News Reader

Feinstein: CIA searched Intelligence Committee computers

washingtonpost.com

151 pointspachydermic68 comments

I'm curious, Senator: Would this also be called "protecting America"? Or is it somehow different when it happens to you?

Yes, it is different when it happens to her. She represents one of the three branches of government. It is not within the authority of one branch to seize stuff from another.

Well, she's not just complaining about inter-branch stuff.

> And she said that the CIA appears to have violated the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as various federal laws and a presidential executive order that prevents the agency from conducting domestic searches and surveillance.

OP's point was the Feinstein has been defending the NSA's programs, and has, until now, seen no problem whatsoever with the government spying on its citizens.

Possibly because she felt that there was some level of oversight. If she believes that the CIA are intimidating the people meant to be providing that oversight you can see how that might change someone's view of such things.

Perhaps she has seen some secret version of the Fourth Amendment that only applies to her. I hope I'm just joking here...

I thought it was 'we the people' with individual sovereignty and all that.

Moreover she is part of the group which provides a significant part of the oversight which allegedly makes such programmes "safe".

Both are bad but they're in a different league.

That's nice & snarky.

IT looks like this genuine misconduct on the part of a paranoid intelligence agency trying to cover themselves from an investigation. This is what many allege the NSA was doing w/ bulk collection- individual people actively snooping around.

W/ the NSA program, you're just a row in a database, if you're not a terrorist* and do not associate with terrorists nobody has time to give rat's ass about what you're doing unless one can relate you to another suspicious character. That's national security stuff, sorry if ya don't like it, but tough.

THIS is different. This is real domestic spying by spies.

*"But how do we define terrorism, isn't one man's terrorist another man's freedom fighter wahhhh" -Tsarnaevs & people like them? Those are terrorists. Bad guys, got it?

"W/ the NSA program, you're just a row in a database, if you're not a terrorist* or associate with terrorists nobody gives rat's ass about what you're doing unless one can relate you to another suspicious character. That's national security stuff, sorry if ya don't like it, but tough."

This "if you are not a terrorist don't worry" reasoning is flawed. GCHQ was capturing all Yahoo! webcams. That's not anti-terrorism, that's fodder for blackmail. You also don't surveil WoW to find terrorists. The Snowden leaks have shown many projects that have nothing to do with "national security", but if you say those magic words nobody can oversee what you're doing.

The CIA, NSA should be disbanded and replaced with new institutions. Those institutions should have limited scope and much tighter oversight.

I object to the notion that anything is okay so long as it's purportedly for national security.

IT looks like this genuine misconduct...

That doesn't make it different. An important reason for (ignored) prohibitions against what the NSA is doing is because of the possibility of misconduct. We must expect that, because it's humans running these programs, they will behave as humans.

So it's incorrect to say that we should view the violations as separate from the programs themselves. It's all part of the same discussion, which must include weighing what might go wrong, and the damage that it might do.

W/ the NSA program, you're just a row in a database,...

Which vastly multiplies both the opportunity for malfeasance, and the potential scope of damage that would result from it.

UPDATE: to whoever downvoted the parent, I don't think that's correct. Although I strongly disagree with its message, it is a common feeling that needs to be addressed. Even if it's wrong, having the comment as part of the discussion is valuable, as it allows us to explore why it's wrong. I have compensated with an upvote of my own.

> An important reason for (ignored) prohibitions against what the NSA is doing is because of the possibility of misconduct.

Not exactly. FISA wasn't adopted because of the abstract possibility of abuse of domestic surveillance, it was adopted because of actual and substantial abuse of domestic surveillance, including for political purposes.

Except that the US government has a quite long and documented history of spying on political opponents.

Whats sad is a few years ago I wouldn't believe that our gvt would waste money on combating negative views in online forums, but with your user being created 43 minutes ago and everything they've done so far. I don't put it past them that your account/post is paid for buy our tax dollars in some idiotic effort to change the views of the tech community.

The CIA (part of the executive branch) isn't allowed to interfere in a congressional investigation. In that sense, yes, this is very different than any of the fourth amendment debate that has been going here. Quoting the Feinstein transcript:

Based on what Director Brennan has informed us, I have grave concerns that the CIA's search may well have violated the separation of powers principle embodied in the United States Constitution, including the speech and debate clause. It may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function.

Separation of powers? Is Feinstein now supporting states rights? Advocating a limited executive? A reasonable interpretation of the interstate commerce clause?

Jesus, this thing is like a hypocrisy onion, you peel back unreasonable search and seizure only to find, separation of powers, what more could this hold? I have a feeling by the end of this Feinstein is going to sound like a libertarian for a week before the constitution interferes with some power she wants and tosses it aside again.

> The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday sharply accused the CIA of violating federal law and undermining the constitutional principle of congressional oversight as she detailed publicly for the first time how the agency secretly removed documents from computers used by her panel to investigate a controversial interrogation program.

> Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that the situation amounted to an attempted intimidation of congressional investigators, adding: "I am not taking it lightly."

I guess the outrage, and constitutional protectiveness, depends on which citizens are being spied on.

You know, we mere citizens are supposed to have overall oversight on Congress and the government. Can't we get a little outrage love too?

Glad to see she has belatedly grown a sense of moral indignation about overreach by intelligence agencies. Once can only hope that this debacle will add credence to the idea that the US clandestine apparatus is in dire need of meaningful reform.

I understand where you are coming from. But looking at it pragmatically- Citizens will always have right/protection <= to that of Congress. Congress being outraged and defending its rights is at least a step in the right direction that has a realistic chance of leading to the protection of everyones rights.

What in the world would the CIA be looking for in searching members of Congress?

Do they actually think that elected officials are involved in terrorism or endangering the security of the US? If members of Congress are being watched, then I really have to assume that everyone is a suspect.

To be honest, the makes the Nixon spying stuff seem tiny in comparison. I have voted for Obama twice, but if it turns out that this came from his administration it really does seem like grounds for some sort of hearings (I really can't believe I'm saying that, because 99.999% of calls for impeachment are just absurd)

As a matter of fact, US government officials are indeed involved in a wide variety of terrorist activities around the world and do seriously endanger (and routinely and indiscriminately violate) global security and peace. However, I doubt that's what the CIA was trying to find, as they know this all too well - after all, the CIA is the executive branch of the US terrorist network.

I have voted for Obama twice, but if it turns out that this came from his administration...

The heads of the nation's intelligence agencies answer to the President. Congress may approve their funding, but he provides their marching orders.

If there was ultimately nothing inappropriate about this, then their boss, the President, needs to be publicly standing behind the CIA.

Otherwise, if he remains silent and heads do not roll, then he is either complicit or indifferent.

>then he is either complicit or indifferent.

Those aren't the only possibilities.

Go on...

The other options are unaware and impotent. I find these last two options far more likely. Yes, the head of the CIA 'answers' to the president, but the president isn't aware of every detail of every action the CIA takes. I'm sure his knowledge and direction is only at a high level. The fact is these institutions and their behavior do not change much if at all with the passing of each administration. This in itself says a lot.

The other options are unaware and impotent.

The President, at this point, should not be unaware of the CIA spying on the Senate. We know it now, and we aren't privy to a daily classified briefing. So Obama no longer has this particular excuse.

As for impotent: if the CIA is operating independently of all three branches of Government, then it is operating outside of the Constitution of the United States. It is then the sworn duty of the President to address this issue.

If he is incapable of doing this duty, then we no longer live in a Constitutional Republic.

The duty of this nation's citizens would be, at this point, unpleasant to consider.

Or powerless. There seems to exist a large, perhaps even predominant, section of the government that exists outside of the control of the democratic process. The de jure objection to this is that the Administration can fire and hire at will, and can affect these agencies with that power. The de facto reality, however, is that the President only has limited ability to affect these agencies, much more limited in power than we are taught in school.[1] Further, the oversight abilities of Congress have been negated in ways that are well demonstrated here.

I am no Obama fan, especially in this regard, but I do believe his Administration is the problem. The problem is systemic rather than political, and these institutions are structured such that they are almost entirely outside of the ability of the democratic process to change.

To say that Feinstein has encountered face of the real American government is probably an exaggeration, but not enough of one for comfort.

[1] http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/

This is silly. Presidents routinely fire generals, even during military conflicts. The CIA and the NSA are under his direct perview. Buck stops with POTUS on this.

Generals are easy to fire and rarely have direct effect on the day to day operations. A new general may attack today instead of tomorrow, but it will be the mid-ranking officers who determine what set of rape pillage and plunder happen in the aftermath.

It is the same with the CIA. The director may set targets and direct stratagity but it is the untouchable civil servants who run the show. Given the Hall of Mirrors effect, I think it could be possible that the appointed leaders are mere figure-heads just there to take the blame what a job goes bad.

"Generals are easy to fire and rarely have direct effect on the day to day operations"

The second half of this sentence doesn't ring true.

The last two major generals Obama fired were McChrystal and Patraeus. Both hugely influential in structuring day to day operations, if not direct tactical decision. The latter was the author of http://armypubs.army.mil/doctrine/DR_pubs/dr_a/pdf/fm3_24x2.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_A._McChrystal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus

Several members of the committee were attempting to declassify the report about waterboarding. I think this was related.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/11/feinstein-accus...

Senator Feinstein is shocked, SHOCKED, that the dogs she said should be trained to bite other people's hands have bitten hers. Never saw this one coming.

To paraphrase Bender, "This is the worst kind of spying: the kind against me!"

They threatened her staff; that's why she's speaking out.

I honestly dislike Senator Feinstein. I think she's excused actions that are unacceptable to me and her conception of her constitutional duties to the people of the United States seems off.

However, if this is what it takes to get some of this out in the open, so be it.

So someone correct me if I'm wrong, but is the CIA really investigating a leak ..... to the oversight committee?

And her actual speech here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/transc...

Ohhhh, I see.

It only 'raises Constitutional issues' and '[undermines] the Constitutional framework' when it happens to you.

A new category of laws needs to be enumerated: "Laws that only apply to Congress".

This is the reverse of the "Laws that do not apply to Congress" [0]

[0] Whistleblower Protections; Subpoenas for Health and Safety Probes; Keeping Workplace Records; Prosecution for Retaliating Against Employees; Posting Notices of Workers’ Rights; Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Retaliation Training

http://www.propublica.org/article/do-as-we-say-congress-says...

Would someone be willing to share with me their impression of Senator Feinstein? I have thought quite highly of her because every time there's been an issue I care deeply about, I have noticed her name as one of the Senators who wrote the relevant bill or supported it very early on. I recently mentioned this to a friend who had nothing but horrible things to say about her record and it seems she isn't so popular on HN as well (and the politics of HN and those of my friend differ greatly - hence my curiosity about what her reputation is). I feel like I must be misinformed about some other things :)

I find her to be extraordinarily repulsive. I'd put her on the top 10 list of worst standing politicians in America. She has been one of the strongest supporters of the military's domestic espionage programs. As a powerful US Senator, that inherently makes her one of the biggest supporters of the rapidly expanding police state, with all the violence and broad Constitutional violations that entails.

Don't forget wrecking the US Postal Service so that her husband's real estate company can profit.

She's a hyper statist.

I don't know that much about her in general, but from what I do know she has typically defended the actions of the NSA. So I would think that for her to come out publicly against the CIA like this is a pretty big deal.

Yeah, I just got an email from her that said:

> First, please be assured that the NSA does not conduct mass surveillance on U.S. citizens. Its mission is to collect foreign signals intelligence to detect foreign national security threats.

Stating the mission as a rationalization to deflect accusations is just silly. Frankly, I see little difference between the two agencies. They clearly are doing whatever the hell they want with our data.

The right hates her, because she's an effective Democratic politician. Silicon Valley hates her because she favors Hollywood over tech. I support some of her positions and oppose enough that I've voted against her most of the chances I've had.

Feinstein is the Senator that consistently works against the interests of her constituents in Silicon Valley.

Would someone be willing to share with me their impression of Senator Feinstein?

I mostly can't stand her. There may an issue or two where we are aligned, but of the things she has been very vocal about, and the things I'm particularly passionate about, we are pretty much diametrically opposed.

The most obvious example would be the extent to which she is notoriously "anti gun" while I am a staunch supporter of private firearms ownership.

Overall, she comes off as mostly pro-big-government, and I'm a radical anarchocapitalist / voluntaryist type who wants all but none of the kind of "government" we have today. So I don't think she'll be on my Christmas card list, or vice-versa, anytime soon.

So they are getting charged under the Espionage Act, right? Or is that reserved only for whistleblowers now, and not for real spies, spying on their own country? Just wanting to make sure.

Feinstein's motivations are confounding.

I suspect that she knows that in the long run of history the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program will be considered an unambiguous set of war crime's authorized at the highest levels of the US government and seeks to be personally exonerated from these crimes.

Anywho, https://shameonfeinstein.org/

Everyone in this thread seems to be conflating the NSA metadata spying and the CIA torturing people. These are very different things and it seems Feinstein has been (surprise surprise) consistent in her view that torture is bad and the CIA shouldn't do it, and that the NSA's activity has adequate oversight.

I disagree on the latter point, but I have to say the former is more important and can't fault Feinstein for focusing on it.

With my tin-foil hat on, this is just a ruse to improve her credibility.

At first, I was excited about this and saw it as our generation's "only Nixon could go to China" moment. The spy agency's leading cheerleader within Congress accused them of going too far? Wow!

However, according to the NY Times article, the documents were removed from the computer her staff was using in 2010. It clearly wasn't enough to change her mind in the past 4 years. That makes me rather cynical about whatever she is doing now.

"The searches, officials said, were conducted in an effort to determine how committee staff members had gained access to a draft version of an internal agency review of its controversial interrogation program."

"Feinstein confirmed that committee investigators had received and reviewed documents detailing the interrogation policy but said she didn’t know whether they were provided intentionally or unintentionally by CIA officials or by agency whistleblowers."

These political games are extremely complex and I don't know if we'll ever know what actually went on here. I suppose it's possible that the CIA leaked these unauthorized documents to Feinstein to give them a pretext for searching her computers.

Let me know when the perps are put on trial. The rest is noise.

"Even the police began to sit up and take notice."

And they found what we all know, her husband, Richard Blum, has had billions steered his way in the form of government contracts.

Apparently it goes both ways.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/03/07/220273/senate-staffers...

You could argue that the legislative branch has every right to do this, regardless of if the CIA knew or approved.

After all, even if the CIA declared legislators broke the law (which they probably didn't due to their constitutional oversight role in the government trumping any normal laws), legislators are in fact the only people in government who could retroactively make their actions legal-

No, I don't think you can. That isn't how classification boundaries work.

The Constitution is more authoritative than some law, which by definition is secondary to the Constitution. Congress could also pass a law that gives all of these committee members full access to everything that exists, and the CIA would be powerless to stop it without breaking the law.

Her CSPAN video: http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4486712/sen-feinstein-accuses-...

What's the big deal? So long as they've got nothing to hide they shouldn't be worried.

First reported 5 days ago, only news once Feinstein says something?

The spies will spy. This is nothing new you cant fault them for it. Put someone on trial and maybe things will change.

What you said is contradictory. Either they "can't be faulted" or they can, and need to be charged.

However, it doesn't make sense to say "spies will always spy". So are you saying they should have the power to spy on anyone? Even Congress, the president and their overseers? That doesn't sound very good for democracy to me. So if it is legal to do that for them now (which I'm sure it isn't), then it should be made illegal anyway.

Spies spy, that's what I am saying. It is in their nature to be deceptive, that is why I said cant fault them for it. Not in a legal way just it is what they do. Until you hold them accountable they have no reason to change.

The CIA is explicitly banned from spying within the US. That's FBI territory.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/additional-publicat...

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