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 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.
The Brennan Center and 33 other groups sent a letter to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board asking them to urge the administration to make public any information regarding the legal authorities used to collect and use the data of Americans.
If the U.S. charges Edward Snowden under the Espionage Act, they may not be able to extradite him back to the U.S. due to a 1996 treaty with Hong Kong that exempts extradition for political offenses.
