Susan Rice, Michael Flynn, and the politics of surveillance

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R) of South Carolina leaned forward and addressed FBI director James Comey in a pointed manner. The congressman – a booster of the military, a former prosecutor, and reliable conservative – said he was concerned that the United States isn’t doing enough to protect the privacy of citizens inadvertently swept up in the government’s vast counterterrorism surveillance operations.

Voters allow the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency great powers to protect the nation. In return, they expect those agencies to safeguard the names of Americans incidentally collected in electronic espionage, Representative Gowdy told FBI chief Comey, who sat quietly in a congressional witness chair in front of him.

“And when that deal is broken, it jeopardizes American trust in the surveillance program,” Gowdy said in a House Select Committee on Intelligence hearing late last month.

Read the full article at The Christian Science Monitor.