Serious question --- and I will probably agree with your answer, I think --- how else could it work? We're talking about surveillance of foreign terrorist and weapons proliferation networks. What's the part of this that shouldn't be secret?
It's not black and white. It should be secret for a specified period of time, and then declassified. After all, the secrecy of "take Biggin Hill" only has value until the order is executed.
The "period of time" needs to be short - in the 12-to-24 month range, rather than the 50-100 year range.
The US effort to disrupt Al-Qaeda is over a decade old. At what point in that effort does the public interest in tracking what NSA/DOJ/CIA is doing override the public interest in not compromising sources and methods for what is still a very real threat to the world?
Maybe a model statute that required the USG to (a) declare its surveillance objectives publicly (it's no secret that we're after AQ and ISIS, nor should the USG get to be secretive about its broad objectives) and (b) limit use of the FISC process to targets operationally relevant to those objectives.
But while I would be happier with that kind of transparency, I think people actually involved with surveillance would say it's just window dressing, because the totality of the FISC process and the 2001 and 2003 AUMFs has the same effect.
Nothing I suspect. If other countries don’t want to join in then the NSA could be turned into a more effective version of wikileaks. While I doubt anything like this will ever happen, it certainly would be interesting.
