If a senior Senator from the Select Committee on Intelligence says he has been unable to get even preliminary, basic information on the impact of this program from the military, I for one believe him.
The recurring narrative sounds completely correct & shocking & egregious. It sounds like the military is operating completely out of control, with no oversight, because the Senators in charge of oversight say they can't get even basic preliminary information.
Your statement seems dangerous and misleading @willstrafach. If the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence gets nothing, not even basics, something is deeply awry. Who are the cleared representatives? Who has gone and asked serious questions? What does Wyden, who cares deeply, need to do to get whatever clearances you wishfully suggest as magic remedy here? This is fradulent bad misdirection @willstrafachs. It's all suggestion, with not a shred of backing to it.
It's an unacceptably bad and insubstantial reply to one of the most serious, can-kicked-down-the-road the longest issues, a terrible spectre still haunting us from Bush II years. This issue seems never to have been at all handled at all properly, since it's inception, and things are still fast & loose, the basic measures of oversight & responsibility seem deeply obstructed. That's a threat to Democracy, and it constantly throws into peril American trustworthiness under essential programs like EU Privacy Shield.