Government Officials Fight Against NSA, Ask For Better Transparency

Government officials want the National Security Agency (NSA) to declassify more information about its national and international surveillance programs. According to several officials, the NSA has served up information in a piecemeal way that has only led to an increasingly confusing picture of the program.

US Attorney General Eric Holder is among those officials who are arguing that the NSA surveillance apparatus needs to be better explained with clear and concise information.

Officials began to more openly confront the agency after President Obama said he “welcomes a debate” about the program. Obama says the NSA already strikes an appropriate balance between privacy and security while remaining 100 percent legal.

While the program claims to have stopped at least 50 terrorist plots, Eric Holder says an understanding of the agency still makes sense. Holder tells Bloomberg News:

“We’d like to do it sooner rather than later, but I also think that we want to do this in such a way that we tell a complete story. You want to have something that will be understandable to people that have access to this information, something that is not piecemeal, but really is holistic.”

Edward Snowden continues to speak out about the NSA’s practices in interviews that could ultimately lead the agency to share information regardless of its own desires. Snowden has gone so far to claim that he was given uninhibited authority to wiretap anyone in the world.

Holder continues: “I think we can help clear up by declassifying things, so I think that’s what we’re intending to do.”

Government agents are not asking that the NSA become a fully transparent agency, only that it better explains its practices both in American and abroad.

Do you think government officials who are fighting against the NSA can actually push for more transparent data sharing from the agency?