Surveillance panel shut down

A panel President Barack Obama set up in August to assess the government’s use of surveillance technologies hit some turbulence related to the government shutdown and found itself effectively frozen after its staff was furloughed, according to a person briefed on the panel’s operations.

The five-member Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies was set to meet with the top leaders of Congress’s intelligence committees, the source said. However, Review Group member Michael Morell -- who stepped down as director of the Central Intelligence Agency -- declined to take part, arguing that the panel shouldn’t be pressing on while much of the intelligence community’s workforce was staying home. “I simply thought that it was inappropriate for our group to continue working while the vast majority of the men and women of the intelligence community are being forced to remain off the job,” Morell said. “While the work we’re doing is important, it is no more important than -- and quite frankly a lot less important -- than a lot of the work being left undone by the government shutdown, both in the intelligence community and outside the intelligence community.”