Jim Ramstad Quotes
I strongly agree that a National Intelligence Director should be established to oversee and coordinate the 15 federal intelligence agencies.
Ramstad, Jim. Congressional Record. United States Government Printing Office, 2004.
When he became a candidate, he modified this position and stated that he would abolish both agencies spying on Americans activities but not necessarily abolish all the functions of the agency.
He was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The NSA had hacked into the servers of these firms and others that were located out of the country. (They would need to have a warrant if inside the country.) The companies had never known it until Edward Snowden made this practice public. The result was, the public was learning that there was no privacy in any of their e-mail, social media activity, exchange of photos or videos or anything else. The companies feared that this would then harm their business, and that the techniques NSA used to hack there servers would then be discovered and used by others to steal identities, credit cards and do such other damage to customers. Even if the particular hacking methods were not leaked to the bad guys, they, knowing that the servers were vulnerable, would be encouraged to work to figure it out.
He was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The major idea of intelligence agencies in a democracy is for the intelligence agencies to provide the policy makers with facts on the ground and data with which they can make sounder policies. However, many times the policies of the administration is so firm that the political ideology restrict not only the kinds of analysis the intelligence agencies do, but in some cases shape or control the conclusions of otherwise sound studies. The influence of Vice President Cheney on the CIA and the invasion of Iraq.
The scandals of the past of CIA lies to Congress and the President, mistakes they had made, and a raft of illegal activities, had eroded support for the agency. We still had the NSA and the Military Intelligence Agencies which had not been involved in the CIA scandals.
James Marvin Ramstad was an American lawyer and politician from Minnesota who served in the Minnesota Senate from 1981 to 1991 and in the United States House of Representatives from 1991 to 2009.
