If there’s one lesson to learn from Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, it’s that America’s classification system is broken. Officials concede that between 50 and 90 percent of the nation’s secrets are not worthy of their classification label.
The Brennan Center and good government groups sent a letter to the DOJ urging the Attorney General to release any reports by the Inspector General regarding the collection of Americans’ telephone records.
The size and scope of America’s secrecy state is staggering. Agencies spent nearly $10 billion in 2012 managing and protecting classified information all while ongoing budget cuts are making life more difficult for federal workers and the millions of Americans they serve.
The FBI is collecting far more than just telephone records and keeping it for far longer than the five-year limit the NSA has evidently imposed on itself. Calls for reform of the NSA should be coupled with demands for restraints on the FBI’s power.
The Brennan Center has issued fact sheets, op-eds, blog posts, and proposals highlighting the need for oversight of our nation's largest police force. This page is a compilation of this work.
