The CIA Got Caught Spying On Americans Again. It’s Time For Congress To Make Them Stop
By: Rachel Bovard
February 17, 2022
Nearly a decade ago, Edward Snowden dropped a series of bombshell revelations on the world, chief among them revealing the presence of the PRISM program: a constitutionally dubious surveillance program under which the National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Central Intelligence Agency gather and search through the emails, internet calls, photos, and chats of Americans without obtaining a warrant, usually through the backdoor of America’s major tech companies.
In response, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act in 2015, a bill that amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to ban the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records and internet metadata under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. In its place, Congress authorized more targeted measures subject to transparency, declassification, and reporting requirements.
But based on recently released information from the Senate Intelligence Committee heads Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., the CIA received Congress’s directive and apparently responded with a big, fat LOL.
The pair of senators announced last week they had pressured the CIA into releasing a partial de-classification of two Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) reports, “Deep Dives,” both of which suggest the CIA is collecting more data on American citizens than even Congress is aware of.
To accomplish this, the CIA cites authority under Executive Order 12333, a broad-based, Reagan-era presidential directive that established a framework for data collection by intelligence agencies during foreign missions. The CIA is technically prohibited from collecting data on Americans, but given the bulk nature of modern surveillance – where all kinds of identifiable information is swept up in giant dragnets – the data of Americans is invariably captured.
more
https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/17/the-cia-got-caught-spying-on-americans-again-its-time-for-congress-to-make-them-stop/
