An ex-NSA chief and ACLU adviser can agree on surveillance reform. Why can't Congress?

[Commentary] The current debate over surveillance has been divisive and polarizing. But if a constitutional law professor and an American Civil Liberties Union advisory board member can find common ground with a former director of the National Security Agency and Army general, then Congress should be able to arrive at a compromise on surveillance reform as well.

As Americans, we share these bedrock principles: that freedom, privacy, and individual liberty are fundamental American values; that a core responsibility of our government is to keep our nation and our people safe; that the collection of intelligence is essential in the modern world to protect our nation’s security; and that, at present, the trust of the American people has been eroded and needs to be reestablished with new safeguards that ensure that the agencies charged with carrying out the collection of intelligence do so in a manner that is consistent with our deepest national values. We both support taking a hard look at surveillance laws to find ways to maintain the operational effectiveness of our counterterrorism tools, while safeguarding privacy and civil liberties. With that goal in mind, we both support crafting new legislation that would restore the American people’s trust in our intelligence agencies and ensure both legitimacy and support for critical intelligence collection.

[Gen. Keith Alexander (ret.) served as the director of the National Security Agency from 2005-2014. He is currently the CEO and president of IronNet Cybersecurity Inc. Geoffrey Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and a member of the National Advisory Council of the American Civil Liberties Union.]