Cybersecurity expert Jody Westby calls “for the facts to be found out and the truth to be determined” about the NSA surveillance program in order for the nation’s leaders to make “informed decisions about how this country should be operating and the values it should be upholding in the digital age—before it turns into a full police state.”
Under the headline, “It Is a Scandal That No One is Investigating the NSA,” Westby, who is CEO of Global Cyber Risk, a fellow at the Carnegie Mellon CyLab, and adjunct professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as a frequent Techonomy participant, proclaims in a Forbes essay this week that she is stunned that no one but she has called for a full investigation.
Listing the numerous outright Orwellian NSA practices that have come to light since last June, as well as several examples of how various governmental bodies have failed to take any action, Westby argues for an “independent counsel to be appointed, a Congressional Committee to be established, or a special counsel to be appointed with full authority to seek and obtain information on exactly what the NSA has been up to, what authorizations or orders were given to establish these programs, how the collected data has been used and who has used it, and what private sector entities have cooperated and under what terms.”
As Westby notes, however, “[T]here is no party in this mess that is pure. Not the NSA, the Administration, Congress, or Snowden.” Readers who commented on Westby’s essay express cynicism that the truth could ever be obtained: A government investigation into government activities, they say, could not be trusted.
