Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., keeps getting under the skin of the NSA\u2019s biggest supporters with his warnings about intelligence agency abuses \u2014 and the latest dispute resulted in a high-profile dustup on the Senate floor on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Wyden said the public needs to know about a secret court opinion that found fault with the Trump administration\u2019s use of data collected by the National Security Agency, prompting Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, R-Ark., to warn of \u201cconsequences\u201d for \u201cdistorting highly classified material.\u201d<\/p>\n
The unusually pointed back-and-forth came amid a fight over the reauthorization<\/a> of a controversial domestic spying program<\/a>. The barbs exchanged by the senators highlighted how much Wyden has angered colleagues aligned with the NSA who want the spy program to be renewed without changes.<\/p>\n By the end of the day, Congress voted to give the program a 45-day extension to allow further negotiations over its fate.<\/p>\n Wyden had argued for a shorter extension, but he was able to secure a concession. Cotton and the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, agreed to pen a letter to the executive branch asking for the court opinion to be declassified within 15 days.<\/p>\n Wyden says that opinion details serious violations of the program\u2019s guidelines.<\/p>\n \u201cThat ruling found serious violations of Americans\u2019 constitutional rights and how the Trump administration has used Section 702,\u201d Wyden said. \u201cCongress should not vote \u2014 should not vote \u2014 to renew Section 702 when Americans are left in the dark about these troubling abuses,\u201d Wyden said.<\/p>\n Wyden has a long history<\/a> of trying to pry loose evidence of civil liberties violations by intelligence agencies. Most famously, in 2013, he attempted to force<\/a> then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to acknowledge the existence of a phone record dragnet months before NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden\u2019s disclosures<\/a> made it public.<\/p>\n His sometimes-cryptic statements warning about secret spy programs have been dubbed \u201cthe Wyden siren<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Most recently he has zeroed in on the court opinion. He irritated supporters of the NSA program on Thursday by initially refusing to give his consent for a 45-day extension of the program, until he secured the letter from Intelligence Committee leaders.<\/p>\n While speaking on the floor about why he opposed that extension, he accused Cotton of ducking the court opinion, prompting a pointed response.<\/p>\n \u201cI am ducking nothing. I am pointing out the senator from Oregon\u2019s long-standing practice of distorting highly classified material in public,\u201d Cotton said<\/a>. \u201cOne of these days there are going to be some consequences, and it may be while I\u2019m the chairman of this committee.\u201d<\/p>\n Cotton\u2019s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Members of Congress are protected from prosecution for comments they make on the floor under the speech or debate clause of the Constitution.<\/p>\n