Last Month I Briefed Congress on the NSA

This is so bad it's hilarious. From Bruce Schneier:

Last Month I Briefed Congress on the NSA

Quote :

One morning in January, I spent an hour in a closed room with six members of Congress: Rep. Lofgren, Rep. Sensenbrenner, Rep. Bobby Scott, Rep. Goodlatte, Rep. Mike Thompson, and Rep. Amash. No staffers, no public: just them. Lofgren had asked me to brief her and a few Representatives on the NSA. She said that the NSA wasn't forthcoming about their activities, and they wanted me -- as someone with access to the Snowden documents -- to explain to them what the NSA was doing. Of course, I'm not going to give details on the meeting, except to say that it was candid and interesting. And that it's extremely freaky that Congress has such a difficult time getting information out of the NSA that they have to ask me. I really want oversight to work better in this country.
Surreal part of setting up this meeting: I suggested that we hold this meeting in a SCIF, because they wanted me to talk about top-secret documents that had not been made public. The problem is that I, as someone without a clearance, would not be allowed into the SCIF. So we had to have the meeting in a regular room.
This really was an extraordinary thing.

That is fucking amazing.
Congress can't get the NSA to talk to them. Time to grow some balls, fellas.

_Howard wrote:

Time to grow some balls, fellas.

Yeah, who approves their budget?

The NSA's budget? I would assume it is approved by the defense industry contractors. The same ones who approve all of the defense and intelligence agencies' budgets.