U.S. Intelligence Chief Admits That The NSA Phone Tracking Program Should Have Been Made Public

Spy Chief: We Should’ve Told You We Track Your Calls -- Eli Lake, Daily Beast

The U.S. government long considered its collection of Americans' call records to be a state secret. Now the Director of National Intelligence admits it would have been better if Washington had acknowledged the surveillance in the first place.

Even the head of the U.S. intelligence community now believes that its collection and storage of millions of call records was kept too secret for too long.

The American public and most members of Congress were kept in the dark for years about a secret U.S. program to collect and store such records of American citizens on a massive scale.The government’s legal interpretation of section 215 of the Patriot Act that granted the authority for this dragnet collection was itself a state secret.

Then came Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked the court warrant authorizing the surveillance—along with troves of other top-secret documents. Since that first disclosure of the secret warrant, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has had to defend the government’s activities against a skeptical Congress and wary public.

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Intelligence chief says NSA should have been transparent about mass surveillance -- The Verge
Clapper: We should have told you we were spying on you -- Salon
Intelligence Director Has Regrets Over the NSA's Secret Surveillance Programs -- In The Capital
Clapper admits NSA should have been ‘transparent from the outset’ on surveillance -- RT
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