Opinion

Monitoring Ray’s mouth

No one knows better than Ray Kelly what it’s like to be on the receiving end of ill-founded criticism. So we were all the more disappointed to see the police commissioner piling on the NSA.

On Monday, Kelly suggested the National Security Agency needs more oversight. “I think if you listen to [NSA leaker Edward] Snowden,” said Kelly, “he indicates that there’s some sort of malfeasance, people sitting around and watching the data. So I think the question is: What sort of oversight is there inside the NSA to prevent that abuse, if it’s taking place?”

“I think it’s a problem if that’s in fact what’s happening,” he went on to say. “If in fact they can sort of rummage through this type of material without authorization . . . I think that’s something that has to be looked at.”

The irony is that Kelly’s careless remarks about the need for more oversight at the NSA echo the calls we regularly hear in New York for more oversight — including an independent monitor — for the police department. In general, these calls come from people who don’t appreciate how much oversight already exists.

In the NSA’s case, these programs have executive, legislative and judicial oversight. And just like the NYPD, the NSA hasn’t been shown to have done anything illegal. Meanwhile, Snowden sneaks off to Hong Kong, where he’s sharing the Internet-protocol addresses of computers in China he says the NSA has targeted.

Of all people, Kelly should appreciate that the critics of the NSA and NYPD are largely the same. Last week, for example, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the NSA’s phone program. That was followed yesterday by an ACLU suit attacking the NYPD for its “suspicionless surveillance program.”

Yesterday, Kelly clarified his remarks by saying, “Snowden betrayed his country. He should be hunted down and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” Glad to hear it. But he still owes the NSA an apology.