Susan P Crawford, Columnist

How to Train an NSA Watchdog

To ensure that the NSA's programs remain effective without violating people's privacy, Congress needs to ensure that it is subject to better oversight.

July 2, 2014 at 7:54 PM UTC

By Susan P Crawford

Susan Crawford, the John A. Reilly visiting professor in intellectual property at Harvard Law School, is the author of "Captive Audience." Her book "The Responsive City," with co-author Stephen Goldsmith, will be published in September. In 2009, Susan Crawford served as special assistant to President Barack Obama for science, technology, and innovation policy. She is a former law partner at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale). She is the founder of OneWeb Day, a global Earth Day for the Internet held each Sept. 22. She earned a bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, and a law degree from Yale University.

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We are witnessing another swing of the pendulum in the way the U.S. conducts surveillance. This time, to ensure that National Security Agency programs remain effective without violating people's privacy, Congress needs to ensure that the NSA is subject to better judicial oversight.

For decades, domestic surveillance in the U.S. was practiced widely and somewhat indiscriminately -- for 30 years, every telegram leaving the country was collected. In 1978, Congress put its foot down by passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Chastened, leaders of the National Security Agency took extraordinary measures to avoid collecting any domestic information at all.