

The Only Way to Restore Trust in the NSA - Scramblejams
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/the-only-way-to-restore-trust-in-the-nsa/279314/

======
hga
[Insert usual rant about Bruce Schneier vs. the real world.]

This is a political problem that needs a political answer. Special prosecutors
are political and always have been, but I really have difficultly seeing how
one could be imbued with enough power.

This sure sounds to me like a job for the nation's Grant Inquisitor, AKA the
Congress, as we saw the last time this happened with the Church Committee:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee)

Given how the first and only vote on this issue, the House's Amash Amendment
was both close and critically didn't break out on any particular set of
conventional lines, like party or region, I say it's way to early to count it
out. Not that we don't need to send a variety of Congresscritters back home to
spend more time with their families, and as a part of that change the
leadership, even if we can't necessarily remove Boehner and Pelosi from their
seats. I.e. we need to make it politically impossible for our representatives
to keep them and their ilk in the leadership.

~~~
j_baker
What on earth makes you think Congress is less political than a special
prosecutor would be? Congress is the very definition of politics.

------
greenlakejake
While it seems unlikely that the NSA will come clean the documents being
released may lead to a tipping point where meaningful oversight may be
demanded and actually occur.

------
JonSkeptic
I'm not sure the NSA can do a lot to restore trust, I think they just have to
hope that most people forget about it.

------
dvmmh
Restore? Since when did they ever have it?

~~~
hga
They had it in the '80s.

Helped that we were fighting an in your face existential threat, the Evil
Empire AKA the Soviet Union with their 45,000 (sic) nuclear warhead inventory
peak in 1988
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_weapons_of_mass_des...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction)).
I in fact supplied a reference for a student acquaintance applying for a job
at the NSA in that year.

------
andrewcooke
dream on, bruce. dream on.

