Ron Wyden: The Lonely Hero of the Battle Against the Surveillance State

When historians write about the civil-liberties crisis of this decade, the story will be full of vivid figures—Bradley, now Chelsea, Manning, the fragile soldier who broke in a battle zone and has paid a high price; Edward Snowden, the high-school dropout who did a data-dump of the government's deepest secrets and ended up cowering in Sheremetyevo Airport; Julian Assange, the flawed prophet of global leaks seeking refuge from sex-abuse charges in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

But if there is any good outcome to the current miserable situation, it will also be the work of a figure a who is a good deal less colorful but much more durable: Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.

For years before the Snowden leaks, the Democratic lawmaker had been carefully balancing two imperatives: his own oath as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee to keep the secrets conveyed in confidence to the committee; and his larger commitment to the American people, who were being fed a diet of soothing lies.

Ideally, the committee would represent the people, advocating their interests behind closed doors. But, Wyden says, “Congress can't do vigorous oversight if they can't get straight answers.”

In other words, as we now know, the spymasters lie—not only to us, in public, but to their supposed overseers on the Hill. That sense—that executive-branch officials weren't telling the truth—led to Wyden's now famous question to James Clapper, director of national intelligence, in an open Senate hearing last March:

“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/ron-wyden-the-lonely-hero-of-the-battle-against-the-surveillance-state/280782/