Legal justifications for NSA's wide-ranging surveillance would be released as lawmakers seek 'informed public debate' on Prism

By Spencer Ackerman, guardian.co.uk, 20 June, 2013

Two US congressmen introduced a bill on Thursday compelling the Obama administration to declassify the secret legal justifications for the wide-ranging surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency.

The disclosure bill, a complement to one pushed in the Senate last week, is the latest in a series of legislative attempts to rein in the NSA's collection and analysis of Americans' phone records and, potentially, Internet usage.

The bill is also another sign that civil libertarian factions of both political parties are uniting in the wake of surveillance disclosures published this month in the Guardian and the Washington Post. Its sponsors are Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, and Todd Rokita, an Indiana Republican [.....]