House panel to hold ‘very comprehensive’ NSA hearing

The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on surveillance next week, and Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said it will include the major players in the debate over government surveillance and the National Security Agency.

“It’s going to be a very comprehensive hearing,” Goodlatte told The Hill.

{mosads}According to the committee website, the hearing — “Examining Recommendations to Reform [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] Authorities” — will take place Tuesday.

According to Goodlatte, the hearing will include a representative from the Obama administration, a representative from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) — which oversees surveillance activities — and a representative from the group of privacy and intelligence officials convened by the White House last year to review government surveillance programs.

Additionally, the hearing will include testimony from “a number of outside groups,” he said.

PCLOB Chairman David Medine will be the one testifying at the hearing from his group. He told The Hill on Tuesday that he expected to go over the panel’s analysis at the upcoming hearing.

“I think we’ll lay out our conclusions and how we got there and are happy to take questions form the committee about what we’re recommending,” he said.

The PCLOB and the White House-convened group of experts both issued recommendations for reforming U.S. surveillance programs in recent weeks.

“We’re going to get into it because they all made different recommendations, and they’re all sort of under the auspices of the president,” Goodlatte said of Tuesday’s hearing. “We want to sort through that.”

Julian Hattem contributed to this story.