Anger was mounting in US Congress on Tuesday night as politicians, briefed for the first time after revelations about the government's surveillance dragnet, vowed to rein in a system that one said amounted to “spying on Americans.”
Intelligence chiefs and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) officials had hoped that the closed-door briefing with a full meeting of the House of Representatives would help reassure members about the widespread collection of US phone records.
But senior figures from both parties emerged from the meeting alarmed at the extent of a surveillance program that many claimed never to have heard of until whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked a series of top-secret documents.
The congressional fury came at the end of a day of fast-moving developments.
• In a lawsuit filed in New York, the American Civil Liberties Union accused the US government of a process that was “akin to snatching every American's address book”.
• On Capitol Hill, a group of US senators introduced a bill aimed at forcing the US federal government to disclose the opinions of a secretive surveillance court that determines the scope of the eavesdropping on Americans' phone records and internet communications.
• A leading member of the Senate intelligence committee, Ron Wyden, came close to saying that James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, misled him on the scope of government surveillance during a March hearing. Clapper admitted earlier this week that he gave the "least untruthful" answer possible to a question by Wyden.
• Chuck Hagel, the defence secretary, said he ordered a wide-ranging review of the Defence Department's reliance on private contractors. Snowden had top-security clearance for his work at Booz Allen Hamilton, an NSA contractor. Booz Allen issued a statement on Tuesday saying that Snowden had been fired for “violations of the firm's code of ethics”.
• In Brussels, the European Commission's vice-president, Viviane Reding, sent a letter demanding answers to seven detailed questions to the US attorney general, Eric Holder, about Prism and other American data snooping efforts.
• Snowden was at an undisclosed location after he checked out of a Hong Kong hotel on Monday. The director of Human Rights Watch, Peter Bouckaert, said Snowden should not consider himself safe in the Chinese province.
After the congressional briefing, Xavier Becerra, leader of the House minority caucus, said there had not been enough oversight of government surveillance programmes. “We are now glimpsing the damage,” he said, referring to failures to repeal the Patriot Act sooner. “It was an extraordinary measure for an extraordinary time but it shouldn't have been extended.”
Others said the White House and intelligence committee leaders had been misleading when they claimed all members of Congress were briefed about the mass swoop of telephone records.
“There was a letter that we were supposed to have received in 2011 but I can't find it and most of my friends in Congress did not receive this either,” said New Jersey Democrat Bill Pascrell, who claimed the widespread collection of phone data amounted to “spying on Americans … This is one of the first briefings I have been to where I actually learned something.”
The anger was apparent in both parties. The conservative Republican Steve King of Iowa predicted joint action from Congress would be imminent. “There is going to be a bipartisan response to this,” he said.
Pascrell said, “There were no Democrats or Republicans in there at all, which is a healthy sign, it means we can get something done about this.”
Another Republican, Tom McClintock of California, claimed that the phone snooping amounted to an abuse of fourth amendment rights. “Going back to the days of British rule we have sought to stop the authorities barging in on people's privacy just in case they found something,” he said. “The fourth amendment was passed to make sure that never happened and it is time to make sure it does not ever happen again.”
Elijah Cummings, another Democrat unhappy at the Obama administration's security practices, came out of the secret briefing saying: “We learned a lot [but] I'm not comfortable.”
Pascrell said, “People should know what's going on in their name but we need to start with Congress knowing what the heck is going on.”
Earlier the Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, called Snowden, 29, former intelligence contractor who revealed the extend of the surveillance efforts – a traitor. But as attention switched from the leaker to the issues raised by his actions now looks increasingly certain that Congress will take steps to try to rein in the power of the intelligence services.
