The CIA has a secret data repository that includes information collected on Americans, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday. Although neither the agency nor lawmakers released specific details of the data, the senators asserted that the CIA had long withheld details about the program from the public and Congress.
Senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich sent a letter to high-ranking intelligence officials asking that more details of the program be declassified. Much of the letter — which was sent in April 2021 and declassified on Thursday — and the documents released by the CIA were redacted. Wyden and Heinrich said the program operated “outside the regulatory framework that Congress and the public believe governs this collection.”
There have long been concerns about the information the intelligence community collects inside the United States, in part because of prior civil rights violations. The CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) have a foreign mission and are generally prohibited from investigating US citizens or businesses. However, the extensive collection of foreign communications by spy agencies often incidentally intercepts messages and data from Americans.
Intelligence agencies are required to take steps to protect US information, such as redacting the names of any Americans from reports, unless they are deemed relevant to an investigation. The process of removing censorship is known as “unmasking.”
“The CIA recognizes and takes very seriously our obligation to respect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans in the performance of our vital national security mission,” Kristi Scott, the agency’s chief privacy and civil liberties officer, said in a statement. a statement. “The CIA is committed to transparency consistent with our obligation to protect intelligence sources and methods.”
The CIA published a series of redacted recommendations about the program issued by an oversight panel known as the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. According to the document, a pop-up box warns CIA analysts using the program that seeking any information about US citizens or others covered by privacy laws requires a foreign intelligence purpose.
“However, analysts are not required to record the rationale for their inquiries,” the board noted.
Both senators have long pushed for intelligence agencies to be more transparent.
In 2013, Wyden asked then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper if the NSA collected “any kind of information on the millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.” Clapper initially replied, “No.” He later clarified, “No.” deliberately”.
Former systems administrator Edward Snowden revealed months later that the NSA had access to a huge amount of data via US internet companies and hundreds of millions of call records from telecommunications service providers. These revelations sparked a worldwide controversy and led to new laws in Congress.
Clapper would later apologize in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee, describing his response to Wyden as “obviously misguided.”
According to Wyden and Heinrich’s letter, the CIA’s mass collection program operates outside of laws that Congress passed and amended, but under the authority of Executive Order 12333, the document that broadly governs community activity. intelligence and that President Ronald Reagan signed for the first time in 1981.
“It is crucial that Congress not legislate without knowledge of a (…) CIA program, and that the American public not be misled into believing that reforms to any reauthorization legislation fully encompass the collection of their records by of the intelligence community,” the senators wrote in their letter. The pre-“CIA program” part was redacted in the letter.
Additional documents released by the CIA on Thursday also revealed limited details about a program to harvest financial data from the Islamic State group. Said program has also incidentally caught some registrations from Americans.
Intelligence agencies are subject to guidelines in the handling and destruction of data on Americans. These laws and guidelines governing intelligence activity have evolved over time in response to earlier revelations of domestic espionage.
The FBI spied on the civil rights movement in the United States and secretly recorded some of Dr. Martin Luther King’s conversations. In the so-called Operation Chaos, the CIA investigated whether the movement that opposed the Vietnam War was linked to foreign countries.
“These reports raise serious questions about the types of information the CIA amasses en masse and how the agency exploits this information to spy on Americans,” Patrick Toomey, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “The CIA conducts these extensive espionage activities without any court approval and with minimal or no congressional safeguards.”
