Director of National Intelligence James Clapper? Now, there is a patriotic American. His press release follows.
DNI Clapper Announces Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies
At the direction of the President, I am establishing the Director of National Intelligence Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies to examine our global signals-intelligence collection and surveillance capability.
The Review Group will assess whether, in light of advancements in communications technologies, the United States employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust.
The Review Group will brief its interim findings to the President within 60 days of its establishment, and provide a final report with recommendations no later than Dec. 15, 2013.
James R. Clapper
Director of National Intelligence
From Xeni's article about Clapper:
In testimony he gave in March to the Senate intelligence committee's Ron Wyden (D-OR), Clapper said the NSA did "not wittingly" collect "any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans." More of that exchange is transcribed here.
But in a letter released Tuesday, Clapper told Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) his remarks were "clearly erroneous." He blames the error on the fact he was thinking about a different kind of surveillance … "I apologize," Clapper wrote. "While my staff acknowledged the error to Senator Wyden's staff soon after the hearing, I can now openly correct it because the existence of the metadata program has been declassified."
