Griffith Statement on Newly Declassified NSA Documents

Statement

Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA) issued the following statement regarding newly declassified documents that pertain to the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program on American citizens:

"It is clear to me that Congress should stop this NSA spying program. On July 24, I voted in favor of the Amash-Conyers amendment to rein in the NSA spying program, and I believe it is imperative that we take further votes on this issue as information continues coming to light.

"I am in the process of reviewing the hundreds of new pages of declassified documents released today, but it is clear that law-abiding Americans have had their constitutional and privacy rights violated. While the NSA ultimately revealed these deficiencies, the intrusion by the government into the private lives of law-abiding citizens for whom there was not a "reasonably articulable suspicion' of wrongdoing is outrageous in a free society. When 89 percent of the phone numbers checked by the NSA were checked in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court instructions, it's hard to believe that it was merely accidental or inadvertent. But that's what happens when you set up a system where you have a secret agency overseen by a secret court which reports to a secret select committee of Congress.

"When all members of Congress are not given the opportunity to review un-redacted court opinions, it is not fair to say that Congress is an effective watchdog. I strongly encourage my colleagues to join me in dismantling the NSA spying program on American citizens until we have an oversight system that can assure us that the laws regarding the surveillance programs are not being flagrantly broken, and Americans' rights are not being violated."

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