Thread by @GeorgeCroner

Yes, to be clear, the report that LeBlanc excoriates is the classified report the PCLOB submitted to Congress, NSA and other concerned federal agencies addressing NSA’s XKeyscore collection program and, in fairness, it seems much easier to take public shots at the content of /1

https://twitter.com/charlie_savage/status/1409992533522984966

the classified report with which LeBlanc obviously disagrees when the actual content of the report cannot be publicly disclosed. That said, there are aspects of LeBlanc’s criticisms that suggest he perceives a role for the PCLOB that exceeds the statutory mandate Congress /2

created for that agency. The PCLOB’s purpose as expressed by Congress is “(1) analyze and review actions the executive branch takes to protect the Nation from terrorism, ensuring that the need for such actions is balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties; /3

and, (2) ensure that liberty concerns are appropriately considered in the development and implementation of laws, regulations, and policies related to efforts to protect the Nation against terrorism.”
LeBlanc opens his critique of the XKEYSCORE report by saying he voted /4

against it because the PCLOB failed to use its investigation into EO 12333 activities “to delve into important technological and modern surveillance issues dominating the public discourse, like algorithmic decision-making.” I’m certainly no technical expert, but I don’t see /5

how such an inquiry ties into the statutorily-defined purposes of the PCLOB that are specifically tied to intelligence activities related to combatting terrorism.
Nor does the statute’s language suggest it is the role of the PCLOB, for example, ‘to engage in evidence-based /6

policy-making" that would have analyzed “the efficacy, costs and benefits of XKEYSCORE.” It may be that LeBlanc, who is a litigator by trade but certainly has extensive cybersecurity experience, feels competent to make these judgments but it is hard to see them falling within /7

the ambit of the PCLOB’s statutory mission.
Indeed, it is obvious from his Bluebook footnoting that LeBlanc is a lawyer, not a technician or an intelligence professional. Moreover, given how LeBlanc’s criticisms tend towards matters outside of the PCLOB’s defined role, /8

and given his role as an advisor to the Electronic Information Privacy Center (EPIC), a group vocally critical of NSA in general, one cannot help but ponder the entire agenda that LeBlanc’s strident dissent is intended to promote. /END