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The US government has created "an always expanding, omnipresent surveillance state," according to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), and if something isn't done, it may soon become impossible to dismantle."If we do not seize this unique moment in our constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we will all live to regret it," Wyden said in a speech at the Center for American Progress on Tuesday.Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that although he and others in the Senate have tried to alert the US public to the erosion of civil liberties caused by government surveillance programs, current law bars even members of Congress from publicly disclosing details of those programs.The gag order is so strict, Wyden said, that although he and some of his Congressional colleagues managed to shut down an NSA email mass-monitoring program in 2011, they weren't allowed to tell anyone they had done so until just a few weeks ago.Some of this is only now starting to change, Wyden said, in light of the revelations made by NSA leaker (and current asylum-seeker) Edward Snowden."Last month, disclosures made by an NSA contractor lit the surveillance world on fire," Wyden said. "Several provisions of secret law were no longer secret and the American people were finally able to see some of the things I've been raising the alarm about for years. And when they did, boy were they stunned, and boy are they angry."
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Topic: Senator: Surveillance state based on secret law 'has no place in America' (Read 837 times)
