POLITICO: Dem duo's warning of CIA 'warrantless backdoor searches' revives domestic spying debate. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/11/warning-cia-searches-revives-domestic-spying-debate-00008307
A newly declassified letter from two Democratic senators warning that the CIA has been conducting “warrantless backdoor searches” of Americans’ data is roiling Washington’s long-running debate over balancing national security with civil liberties. In an April letter declassified on Thursday, Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico allege that the CIA “has secretly conducted its own bulk program … outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection.” “This basic fact has been kept from the public and from Congress,” wrote Wyden and Heinrich, who serve on the Senate Intelligence Committee and have criticized intelligence community practices in the past — Wyden quite vocally. Their letter, addressed to CIA Director William Burns and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, is heavily redacted and does not specify the nature of the data collection or the type of information the agency has access to. But it’s raising new questions about the intelligence community’s handling of Americans’ data as part of its foreign surveillance efforts, most of which is regulated by Congress, and reviving yearslong concerns from privacy advocates who say the U.S. government has consistently violated U.S. citizens’ civil liberties. The senators cited a report from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that, according to the lawmakers, shows that the “full extent of the CIA’s collection was withheld even from” the Senate intelligence panel. They demanded a swift and “urgent” declassification of several aspects of the program, including the types of records that were collected and the “nature of the CIA’s relationship with its sources and the legal framework for the collection.” A congressional source who has viewed the report pushed back on some elements of the senators’ letter, addressing its sensitive allegations candidly on condition of anonymity. This person said that the CIA is not collecting the information on Americans that’s at issue; rather, its analysts have access to a repository of information collected by other intelligence agencies.
