It may or may not surprise you, but the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been collecting personal and private information of Americans in a secret surveillance program for years now, according to a recently declassified letter that was released by Democrat senators Ron Wyden (OR) and Martin Heinrich (NM).
The senators have said that the data collection is “warrantless backdoor searches” and they have sent a letter calling for more details from top intelligence officials.
Those senators also want more of the operation to be declassified, demanding immediate action, writing that the program is “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 [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] collection.”
Heavily redacted material was dropped by the CIA on the partly declassified ‘Deep Dive I and Deep Dive II,’ believed to be an enormous database which worked out of the sight of Congress and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court.
The senators invoked Congress’ “clear intent, expressed over many years and through multiple pieces of legislation, to limit and, in some cases, prohibit the warrantless collection of Americans’ records, as well as the public’s intense interest in a support for these legislative efforts. And yet, throughout this period, the CIA has secretly conducted its own bulk program” – the next text in their letter is blacked out.
Senate Intelligence Committee members had sent a letter to the CIA back in April 2021, asking about the program, but it wasn’t declassified until February 10 and what was given contained large amounts of redacted information.
In March 2021, the Senate Intelligence Committee had been given a report from The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
Senators Wyden and Heinrich, stated in their letter to the CIA that they had operated outside of the laws passed and reformed by Congress, with their bulk data collection program and in a joint statement, the Senators noted that:
“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,” Wyden and Heinrich noted. “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.”
Executive Order 12333, first signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, is the governing document of CIA Surveillance, and is not under the purview of the FISA Court. However, precautions are supposed to be put in place to ensure the CIA isn’t secretly spying on private data sent by Americans domestically.
This isn’t the first time the government has been caught out spying on Americans and taking advantage of laws that were in place.
Reason’s Scott Shackford, reported on the past abuses of privacy by other government agencies, like the NSA, who used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to expand their powers.
Shackford noted the similarities between Intelligence agencies:
This entire program is completely separate from the NSA surveillance that Snowden exposed back in 2013. Then, the NSA contended that Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act authorized the mass collection of Americans’ phone and internet metadata to gather information about potential terrorists. It sought (and received) blanket permission from the FISA Court. In 2015, after Snowden’s whistleblowing, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, which banned the government from collecting the data in bulk and set tighter rules for access.
And so while this program is separate from what the NSA was doing, it had the same big flaw. While pursuing information on terrorists—what the CIA is supposed to be doing—the agency was also collecting and storing mass amounts of our private data without any warrants or any oversight outside the agency itself.
What sorts of records the CIA has collected has not been declassified, but given the comparisons and the time frame, it’s easy to imagine that these are probably telephone and internet records. Wyden and Heinrich are calling for the CIA to provide details on what kind of records were collected and what legal framework they used to justify the collection.
ALL of the alphabet agencies must be dismantled,the criminal operatives arrested,charged,tried,convicted and imprisoned,then ALL of the alphabet agencies must be restructured,and be forced to follow ALL laws as written.
Our government has truly become one of the most corrupt in the world.
Yes it has.
It is the British Empire that has taken over the U.S. and has from the beginning of our republic been working to bring the US back under the Monarchy. We lost the Revolutionary war! They have commanded and influenced our government, pushed through laws in the US backed by British elitists freely sharing our mined and stolen information with all nations that kowtow to British royalty, while kissing their collective ass. It is time to root out and remove these infiltrated spies from our government. The state department is not ours, but acts as a 5th column to control our foreign relations and and our domestic government, pushing its will upon America. Additionally, these so called tax free foundations need to be seized, stripped of their assets and outlawed. They have used these funds to slowly and sometimes not so stealthily, to bribe our politicians that will eventually destroy the United States.
Now we are being pushed to go to war with Russia over the Ukraine. Seems like it was our state department, who aided George the Forge Soros to over throw the legitimate elected government and give it to some filthy Nazi fascists, even financing it with 5 billon dollars of U.S. funds. The current anti-president of the U.S. is wading in a swamp he and his handlers have created and will eventually become filled with the dead bodies of America’s best and finest sons and daughters.
Charles , your right that our Gov. is corrupted but Britain isn’t the culprit , but CHINA RUSSIA are and are being supported by many of OUR political whores
The CIA, FBI started out corrupt intentionally as a cover to bring into America under Operation Paperclip thousands of nazis, providing them with new identities and placing them into positions of power within all of our institutions. Media, Schools, Courts, Pharmaceutical industries and our processed foods industries, etc. One of the first thing these nazi scientists did in 1945 was to add fluoride to our public drinking water under the pretence fluoride was good for our teeth??????? Flouride was added to the drinking water in the German prison camps to subdue the prisoners. Aspartame the diet sweetener in all of our processed foods turns into Methanol, Formaldehyde above 68 degrees….our bodies temperature is 98.6
Our enemy, whom is well infiltrated, well connected and well funded has one goal. Total control, achieved by our enslavement, which through successfully brain washing people will love. Already they have a lot of our population through believing absurdities committing atrocities against the unvaccinated and unmasked.
We are approaching the hour of America being fully conquered. There is no other America to rescue her.
Goes much further than that under this regime, it’s pure evil, and working far outside its described limits. In fact, the FBI is given the authority to operate within the United States, and the CIA to operate ootside the U.S.. The CIA is not to be collecting information or spying on Americans unless in an espionage capacity. This Administration has perverted our government and now the CIA to act as America’s KGB, or Germsny’s Gestapo, targeting American civilians, and that is totally unconstitutional, but then the current tegime does not follow any of the Constiturion. It disregards it out of hand, and now its cohorts, like the Media, and Corporations in collusion with them like google, Twitter and the others are disregarding the Constitution too, and when THAT happened , it is just a piece of paper with no forcr behind it, and this disregard of our nations Basic Rule of foundational law must be restored to its proper force of law as pur nations Founding Fathers intended, and abusers (government and Corporate), must me punished, and penalized.
Exactomento!
Proofread your prose before posting!
Dude, this is very old news. Many have known this for years.