This week, Critical State digs into new research about legislative oversight when it comes to security issues. As historian Peter Roady writes in a new article in the Journal of Policy History, the National Security Agency has escaped congressional oversight with two words: "It's classified."
Snowden is a bit of a hero in Russia, though he's hardly been seen since receiving asylum there. Reports in the Russian press say Snowden will start work for one of the largest websites in Russia next month.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court has a PR problem. Its very existence as a "secret court" has rankled critics, who've demanded greater transparency. James Carr, who served on the court from 2002 to 2008 has offered his own solution to mend the public's confidence in the court.
The New York Times this weekend revealed an expansion of power concentrated in the FISA court, the judges charged with reviewing government surveillance requests and approving or rejecting them. In virtually all cases, though, they're approved. And new rulings show how that power is expanding.
At least two terrorist attacks, including a plot against the New York Stock Exchange, were thwarted thanks to government surveillance programs, U.S. officials said at an Intelligence Committee meeting Tuesday. The government has been trying to reframe the conversation around the programs after their existence was made public by Edward Snowden.
Big data has been the catchphrase of the week since the story broke about NSA surveillance. But what exactly is big data and what does the collection of big data mean for the future? Anchor Marco Werman talks with author, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger.
The NSA has been publicly accused of tracking data on Americans. The agency requested -- and was granted -- a court order requiring a unit of Verizon to turn over all of its records on a daily basis. Plus, the NSA and the FBI are accused of operating a top-secret program to track user data from the servers of nine leading Internet companies.