flashoverride
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2013
- Messages
- 496
Lets assume for a moment that this goes the best way it possibly could and the patriot act is not extended in any way at all. That would be great but.....
Whats to stop the NSA/CIA/Military from simply taking the now "illegal" programs like Prism and continuing them in the dark by classifying them at a level no one in the House, Senate, or White House has? Happens all the time and is a "I win" trump card used by the Military and spook agencies for decades...
Until we dramatically rework our classification system making it impossible for there to be clearance levels that go above Congress and the President, the Military and alphabet agencies will continue to do whatever the hell they please behind the Iron Curtain of Clearance.
Sadly, I feel the Patriot Act going away legally is nothing more than a red herring...
? This is not how classification authority works.
All classification authority resides in the President of the United States, who is Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Original classification authority is delegated to people filling specific billets or posts, and it is delegated by (and can be revoked by) the President. Subsequent classification is of a derivative nature - that is, a document containing information derived from a classified document should - in most cases - be classified to at least the level at which the source document is classified, or else sanitized to protect sources, methods, and procedures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526
The "White House" is often used as a colloquialism for the Executive Office of the President, which is comprised of the President and numerous levels of staffers, many of whom don't hold clearance. Just because the staff doesn't all know doesn't mean the President doesn't know, and one should not conflate the two.