On Monday, surviving members and staff of the Church Committee published an open letter to Congress, President Barack Obama, and the American public, calling for a “Church Committee for the 21st Century—a special investigatory committee to undertake a thorough, and public, examination of current intelligence community practices affecting the rights of Americans and to make specific recommendations for future oversight and reform.”
Interesting article, and an interesting letter. A Church Committee for the 21st Century may well be in order - certainly it must be so to judge from current circumstances. What the former members of this committee fail to point out is that not only is the current sweep of government intelligence activities unprecedented - the sweep of private sector data harvesting is equally as unprecedented, equally as huge, and just as troubling. And all of the focus on the NSA ensures all eyes are focused away from the private sector. EDIT: And if it happens that as a result of Snowden and the push for this new Church committee that the federal intelligence community finds themselves restricted in their activities, we will then wake up to discover that the Private Sector reigns supreme in their ability to apply their ill gotten gains from 4th Amendment violations any way they see fit. Against tar sands activists, global warming proponents, political opponents, and whomever else they may see fit.
This is why activists have to push just as hard (if not more so) against private data collection and exploitation.