100,000 in cash prizes with a grand prize of 5,000. For more information go to our web site, studentcam. Org. Next, a conference on government surveillance and privacy. Law professors, Security Experts and former government officials talk about oversight of the Intelligence Community. [inaudible conversations] good morning. Welcome to the cato institute. My name is julian sanchez, im a senior fellow here, and im grateful to everyone who has come out bright and early to the cato auditorium for our 2019 surveillance conference. Weve been doing this for some five years now. When we launched this in the aftermath of disclosures about bulk nsa collection by foreman nsa contractor edward snowden, the nsa itself was a fairly obscure agency, unfamiliar to most americans. And as we kick off our 2019 conference, we find that now even intelligence oversight is itself very much in public headlines. We have an impeachment proceeding kicked off in significant part by a report from the, from the Intelligence Communitys Inspector General. We have forthcoming next week a breathlessly awaited report on allegations of misuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during the 2016 president ial campaign. We have proceedings aired in connection [inaudible] from the House Intelligence Committee. Even intelligence overseers now are at the center, in a sense; of our political discourse in a way that the intelligence agencies themselves began to be earlier, earlier in the cycle in a way that was really unprecedented since the 1970s. So we have a special focus this year on not just the intelligence agencies themselves, but also the mechanisms in place to oversee them. One of the kind of classic problems of intelligence and of surveillance in a free society is how to balance the need for operations that are inherently secret, surveillance that is done publicly in a sense is definitionally not surveillance. I so how do you so how do you balance information gathering in secret while at the same time rendering those with that power subject to mechanisms. Secret surveillance power being abused for political purposes. Is so we have a program today that includes a discussion with one of the most important bodies doing that oversight, the privacy and civil liberty Oversight Board this afternoon. Well is have discussions on the renewed war on strong encryption, one of the mechanisms that act to check large scale collection. Were going to examine later this morning some of what weve learned about compliance issues or misuses of large scale surveillance authorities under authorities such as fisa 702 and 215 and how the Intelligence Community is seeking to address those and how effective those corrective mechanisms have been. But to start off, i think appropriately, were going to begin with an overview of the intelligence oversights apparatus. What are all the different entities that are working to keep this secret use of power in check. Do they operate effectively, and how can they be improved. There are few people better, i think, suited to lead that discussion than our moderator, liz hempowics, who is the policy director at the project on government oversight that works to increase transparency and accountability across government in particular of the intelligence agencies. Ill pass it off to liz to introduce our first excellent panel. Thank you so much. Im going to do some brief introductions. Our panelists have long, storied careers, and so their full bios are on the conference web site, and i encourage you to check them out. Dr. Genevieve lester is the chair of intelligence and associate professor at the u. S. Army war college. She recently published her first book, when should state secrets stay secret with the Cambridge University press. Daniel schuman whose demand Progress Education funds on issues that concern government transparency, accountability and reform, Civil Liberties, National Security and promoting an open internet. Hes a nationally recognized expert on federal transparency, accountability and capacity. Dr. David barrett is professor of Political Science at villanova and author of the cia and congress, the Washington Post called it a triumph of research and one amazon reviewer called it literally one of the coolest books out there. And professor Margo Schlanger is collegiate professor of law, a leading authority on civil rights issues and civil and criminal detention. So i think to kick us off before we get into kind of what are some of the problems with oversight of the Intelligence Community, we should understand kind of what are those, what are the mechanisms that exist to conduct oversight over this relatively secret governmental apparatus. So, professor sclanger, i hope you dont mind that im going to come to you first. Youve looked extensively at the me mechanism of the National Security agency or the nsa. Can you talk about those and the benefits and limits to internal Oversight Offices, and then were going to go into some of the external that exists. Great. The conversation from the role as the former head of the Civil Rights Office at the department of Homeland Security where i was an internal overseer for the tiny sliver of the i. C. That is located at dhs. But i got interested in nsa as kind of the center of this. So if you think broadly about the internal offices placed on role in come means with externallyimposed norms and with what you might broadly speaking call internal oversight, its a pretty big list. And i suspect that some of my fellow panelists will quarrel with inclusion of some of these, but i actually needed to make sure i didnt skip any, i needed notes. So there is, at the nsa, a Compliance Office responsible for aspects of compliance with especially the strictures of the fisa court and also the 12333 rules. Theres the office of general counsel which functions in part as an Oversight Office, although in large part not. In large part as an enabling office to enable its client to do what its client wants to do. But in some degree, thats also an Oversight Office. Theres the nsa i. G. Which is more independent, obviously. Theres the Civil Liberties and Privacy Office at the nsa which has both a policy creation role to be at the table when policy is originated, a policy implementation role and an oversight role. There is, at the department of justice theres the National Security division. A quote that i like that says this is not such a big Oversight Office comes from a former, a doj official who calls the nsd the place the i. C. Goes to get blessed. So that makes it sound not very oversightlike, but other people disagree with that and say, yes, that actually functions as an Oversight Office. Theres the intelligence oversight function at the department of defense. Theres the Intelligence Community igs office. Theres at odni, the Civil LibertiesProtection Office which particularly has a role in 702 compliance work. Theres the odni office of general counsel, the odni mission this is integration. Thats not right, is it . Mission integration. Which, again, has only compliance oversight sorts of functions. Theres the president s intelligence advisory board, intelligence Oversight Board. Theres the fisk itself, so now im exiting from my role here, and the [inaudible] which other people will talk much more about. But give me two more minutes if thats about the right time. The challenge of oversight, internal Oversight Offices is simultaneously the Office InternalOversight Offices are desired by the agencies they work for because they want the blessing of those offices. They want the external credibility that such blessings get them. If they can create enough authority or enough of a reputation that the blessing actually carries some reputational benefit, right in thats the thing that they want from them. They might also want the expertise, but they dont always want the expertise. What they mostly want is the blessing. But then the question is, well, what comes with that. So what comes with that has to be some kind of actually bringing into the agency the norm that the office is designed to further. So if its a Civil Liberties office, there has to be some Civil Liberties credibility that comes with that. And so what those offices have to do if theyre going to be effective at all is they have to maintain simultaneously their influence in the agency and their commitment to whatever thatting external norm is, which is a norm that Academic Work sometimes calls a precarious value. A value thats challenged in the agency and thats kind of continually under threat. And so this office, whatever it is say the Civil Liberties and Privacy Office has to carry a sustained commitment to Civil Liberties and privacy against what is a really very Strong Mission orientation thats hinged to run against that value. It has to do that simultaneously while maintaining influence in the agency. And thats the challenge. And so how can it do that. Well, it has to maintain pretty strong affiliation both with the agency and simultaneously with external reference points outside [inaudible] if that needle can be threaded, and well have more time to talk about it, then what it can do is [inaudible] issues inside the office for more empowered entities that can actually, you know, tell people what to do as opposed to just advise them. It can increase Public Access by writing reports, both reports that are publicly available and, honestly, reports that either get void or leaked or disclosed in discovery. But generating internal papers that becomes external. And it can build a relationship with external advocates that help the agency actually respect the norms that are in in questi. So thats the basic idea. And if it sounds hopeless, my position on this is its not hopeless but, boy, its very, very hard. Yeah. Yeah, id say internal Oversight Offices certainly serve a purpose, but they cant be the only, they cant be the only check on what especially in the Intelligence Community could be very extreme abuses of their authorities. Can i just say its not only because not empowered enough to be the only check, but because if theyre the only check, they will lose both influence, and theyll lose that external orientation i think they need to succeed. Right. So for both reasons. Both theyre underauthorized but also because theyll lose whatever influence and commitment they have if theyre the only check. Yeah. So putting aside questions of their effectiveness for now, and this is a question to the whole group, what are some of the major external oversight bodies that play a role in oversight of the Intelligence Community . Whoever wants to take it. Well, we could start briefly with congress. There are two full committees on intelligence, and they have existed since roughly the mid to late 1970s. Theres been a logic, a sort of constitutionallyderived logic of congressional oversight of executive Branch Agencies that goes back to the presidency of George Washington in terms of congressional oversight of intelligence, and my specialty has been especially cia. It was very informally carried out in the 40s through the mid 70s but not very adequately. Certainly not systematically. And so now we have the house and the Senate Intelligence committees which one hopes i mean, the thing is about intelligence agencies, surveillance and all this, so much of it is carried out and must be carried out in secret. So on behalf of the american public, we have democraticallyelected officials to try to monitor these secret activities. So theres a president , with but theres also congress and especially these two committees to preside over legislation to keep them functioning, to create boundaries, to investigate, to see that they are performing with both we ten but also competence but also legality. Ill pick up on that a little bit. I would argue, you know, further that the congressional oversight committees, theyre really intended to rebalance information asymmetry when it comes to the relationship with the external World Intelligence agencies, because youre looking at the difference between the executive branch ownership of intelligence information, the Intelligence Committees balance that by asking questions, bringing in people, requiring reports, testimony, that type of thing. And i think one thing that david touched upon is both these committees were set up in the 1970s in the wake of scandal. So the church of and Pike Committees investigated the intelligence abuses, and these committees were stood up as a way, a bipartisan way of putting boundaries on intelligence activities. And i think that the scandalous birth or the birth from scandal that these committees, these select committees show is an interesting political piece to the whole picture that these, intelligence oversight was done rather sporadically up to that point and decided we need manager a little bit more formal to be put in place to rebalance this relationship. I think thats important when you think about congressional oversight. Its not just house and Senate Intelligence committees. Fisa is overseen in part by the judiciary committee. The appropriator plays a role here as well. The house and Senate Intelligence committees [inaudible] to being, you know, the supporters or almost the boosters for the Intelligence Community. So the role that they play has changed from the postchurch and Pike Committee role, but to really being, no, no, were actually going to be your biggest advocates. Theres other players as well. Theres the Government Accountability office which has a number of folks with clearances who are intended to aid congress in getting questions answered. The Intelligence Community tries to work around gao and undermine their ability to engage in oversight, but they do have that role. Theres also the inspectors general that exist, and we probably can talk about this more than i can. Theres dissidents, theres whistleblowers, theres the press. There are a number of players that help educate and bring in particularly congress. Is the major point of leverage where you can actually force folks to answer questions. And you see a lot of games that get played. Theres 1. 1 Million People with top secret or higher clearances. Theres 40 something people on the House Intelligence Committee. The number of senators who have access to a staffer with a clearance is, i think, 37. So most senators dont even have someone who can get their basic questions answered. So when youre talking about oversight, you know, its to what degree, to what extent of whom with what help. And i think when you look at it in the congressional context, the political games that are played so just think about [inaudible] for one final whack at them, because its fun for me. Its a select committee which means the members are chosen by the speaker and the minority leader. It is not a Standing Committee like judiciary. Its members are supposed to reflect the composition of the chamber, but that doesnt actually happen in effect. Often times they dont have representatives, so theyre required to have someone from judiciary. Theyve had periods of time where they havent had anyone from that committee. So, you know, theres the overseers, but the extent to which they oversee is an interesting and open question. I was, if nobody else brought up the role of whistleblower overseeing the Intelligence Community, i definitely [inaudible] so im glad you beat me to it, daniel. Professor or dr. Barrett, your book the cia and congress, the untold story, examines the years between the creation of the cia and the bay of pigs invasion. What one reviewer referred to as the dark ages of congressional oversight. Do you think congressional oversight of the Intelligence Community has changed much since those dark ages . Oh, i think theres some common features across those many decades, but its changed very substantially. In the old days, in those first three decades or so, there were tiny and very secretive subcommittees of the Armed Services committees and appropriations committees, and they so four of them, and