Glenn Greenwald: "Dianne Feinstein is Outright Lying" about NSA Surveillance Abuses
Watch the full interview with Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald on Democracy Now! at http://owl.li/mkCnI. Greenwald, who broke the NSA surveillance stories, talks about the mystery around Edward Snowden and the Obama administration's decision to charge Snowden with espionage.
Greenwald says: "Dianne Feinstein is outright lying when she says that she doesn't know of any instances of abuse at the National Security Agency. Leaving aside the fact that there have been several different reports by ABC News, by The New York Times, of the NSA abusing its eavesdropping powers over the last four years, there is a 2011 opinion, 80 pages long, from the FISA court, the secret court that oversees the NSA. And what it ruled, although the court—the opinion is top-secret and hasn't been publicly released. What it ruled is that the way in which the NSA is spying on American citizens is in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, as well as in excess of the limitations imposed by the statute, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. In other words, what the NSA is doing is both unconstitutional and illegal. And so, although the public doesn't have access to that opinion—shockingly, that in a democracy you could have a court rule the government has violated the law and the Constitution and keep it all a secret—Dianne Feinstein has access to that opinion. And so, when she says into the camera that there's no evidence that she is aware of that the NSA has abused its spying powers, she's simply lying, because she knows that the claim she's making is false."
Russia Today: NSA lies? Agency lacks evidence it thwarted 54 terrorist attacks
Russia Today: NSA methods reminiscent of those used in USSR under Stalin – Lavrov
Washington's Blog: Former Top NSA Official: “We Are Now In A Police State”