Newly declassified documents indicate the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) has been secretly collecting private data on Americans without oversight for years using a massive surveillance program.
The program has reportedly been operated without congressional approval, any court approval, or any safeguards to ensure the protection of civil liberties.
Not to mention the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against warrantless searches.
Senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich, both Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have called for “critically needed” transparency on the program.
The two lawmakers posted a letter they sent to Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, and William Burns, the CIA director, on April 13, 2021 and which was declassified on Thursday.
In it, they accuse the CIA of conducting the program “entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection, and without any of the judicial, congressional or even executive branch oversight that comes from FISA collection.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) tweeted that the new reports “raise serious questions about what information of ours the CIA is vacuuming up in bulk and how the agency exploits that information to spy on Americans.”
“This invasion of our privacy must stop,” they added.
This surveillance is done without any court approval, and with few, if any, safeguards imposed by Congress to protect our civil liberties.https://t.co/zeLbFI7En1
— ACLU (@ACLU) February 11, 2022
Snowden Warned Us
In light of the report showing the CIA collecting private data on American en masse, journalist Glenn Greenwald, who rose to prominence by working with Edward Snowden to reveal unconstitutional spying programs, harshly criticized the agency as a “criminal organization.”
“The CIA is a criminal organization,” he tweeted. “Their interference in US politics is particularly pernicious.”
Greenwald pointed out that the media often uses CIA analysts as commentators on the “news.”
“Maybe journalists should be skeptical of their planted stories?” he suggested.
The CIA is a criminal organization. Their interference in US politics is particularly pernicious.
Maybe news outlets should stop hiring all of the people who run this agency to help “analyze” and report the news? Maybe journalists should be skeptical of their planted stories? https://t.co/9Xmqmth3FT
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 11, 2022
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shared the CIA mass surveillance of private data story calling it “huge.”
Fox News reports that the bulk surveillance program operates under the authority of Executive Order 12333, first signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
The order was amended in 2008 through Executive Order 13470 by President George W. Bush which strengthened the role of the Director of National Intelligence.
“The CIA and National Security Agency have a foreign mission and are generally barred from investigating Americans or U.S. businesses,” Fox reports. “But the spy agencies’ sprawling collection of foreign communications often snares Americans’ messages and data incidentally.”
You are about to witness an enormous political debate in which the spy agencies and their apologists on TV tell you this is normal and OK and the CIA doesn’t know how many Americans are in the database or even how they got there anyway.
But it is not ok.https://t.co/KtL0Us0vBi
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 11, 2022
Warrantless Backdoor Searches of Americans
Wyden (D-OR) and Heinrich (D-NM) called for new transparency about the bulk surveillance of private data conducted by the CIA.
“What these documents demonstrate is that many of the same concerns that Americans have about their privacy and civil liberties also apply to how the CIA collects and handles information under executive order and outside the FISA law,” they said.
“In particular, these documents reveal serious problems associated with warrantless backdoor searches of Americans, the same issue that has generated bipartisan concern in the FISA context,” a press release from the lawmakers reads.
In 2013 @snowden told you the CIA/NSA were spying on you. And you didn’t do anything to make them stop. And Obama didn’t do anything about it but chase Snowden to Russia. And the people in charge of the program are regular guests on @MSNBC now.https://t.co/vhMu5jTVSE
— 🅲🅷🆄🅲🅺 (@benigma2017) February 11, 2022
What could possibly go wrong here? Let’s focus on today, as an example.
Former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden tweeted not that long ago that it would be a “good idea” to send unvaccinated Trump supporters to Afghanistan.
What if somebody like that, while working for the CIA, had access to private data about Americans and their vaccination status?
The first person to roll their eyes and tell me how everyone already knows the CIA is spying on all Americans all the time is welcome to choke on a printed out copy of the “…and yet you participate in society” meme which I will shove down their throat. https://t.co/fMQ9UCoMLg
— Eva (@evacide) February 11, 2022
The Democrat senators did not reveal what type of data is being caught up in the CIA program.
An intelligence official insists the Senate Intelligence Committee was already aware of the agency’s classified collection of the data, if not the sources used or the data itself.
In their letter from 2021, Wyden and Heinrich pressed the CIA to reveal the kinds of records it was collecting and “the rules governing the use, storage, dissemination and queries (including U.S. person queries) of the records.”
The CIA has secretly collected data on Americans for years without a warrant, say Senate Intelligence Committee members.
Lawmakers report “serious problems” with searches, which are “outside the statutory framework.” The CIA has refused to disclose how many people were spied on. pic.twitter.com/B8XFzormCv
— AJ+ (@ajplus) February 11, 2022
Last summer, Fox News host Tucker Carlson received a fair share of criticism for claiming a whistleblower within the United States government provided information that the Biden administration – particularly the NSA – had been spying on his texts and emails as a means “to take this show off the air.”
Tucker Carlson says a whistleblower told him that he is being spied on by the NSA and that he filed a FOIA request for information:
“The Biden administration is spying on us. We have confirmed that.” pic.twitter.com/LY2vmDLFTK
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 29, 2021
“It’s illegal for the NSA to spy on American citizens, it’s a crime,” Carlson stated at the time. “It’s not a third-world country. Things like that should not happen in America.”
“If they are doing it to us – and again, they are definitely doing it to us – they are almost certainly doing it to others,” he said. “This is scary, and we need to stop it right away.”
This article was originally published by The Political Insider. Read the original article.
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