Years ago, in 2015, we had PRISM, copiously denounced by whistle-blower Snowden, who then had to haul his backside over half the world to end up, after serious efforts to stop and catch him — including the intercept of the flight of the head of state of a mostly friendly nation which was going to bring him, as a refugee, back with him — instead in Russia, as Putin’s forced guest.
That was all about the National Security Agency’s “Prism” program.
Now there are news that the CIA, by law constrained to spy only overseas and on those residents clearly suspect of being foreign agents, is also doing its thing with its own unsupervised intercepts’ vacuum cleaner:
“Officially, the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) have a foreign surveillance mission and domestic spying is prohibited by the CIA’s 1947 charter.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60351768
Excerpts:
Then:
“[In 2015] A Washington Post analysis of the Snowden leak found some 90% of those being monitored were ordinary Americans “caught in a net the National Security Agency had cast for somebody else“. ”
“Top officials had until then denied – and even lied under oath to Congress – that they were knowingly collecting such data.
The programme, known as Prism, was later ruled unlawful by a US court.”
Officially, the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) have a foreign surveillance mission and domestic spying is prohibited by the CIA’s 1947 charter.
But in 2013, a programme of data collection using extensive internet and phone surveillance by American intelligence was disclosed to the public by Edward Snowden, an NSA contractor-turned whistle-blower.”
….
Now:
“The CIA released a declassified report on one of the programmes on Thursday, but declined to declassify the other, citing the need to protect “sensitive tradecraft methods and operational sources.
But Mr Wyden, of Oregon, and Mr Heinrich, of New Mexico, said by failing to do so the agency was “undermin[ing] democratic oversight and pos[ing] risks to the long-term credibility of the Intelligence Community”.
The senators, who sit on the Intelligence committee, said the public deserved to know “the nature and full extent” of the surveillance, which is all but certain to include records on Americans.
The still-classified programme operates under the authority of a Reagan-era executive order and is therefore “entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection,” they said.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) non-profit said: “These 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”.
“In the course of any lawful collection, CIA may incidentally acquire information about Americans who are in contact with foreign nationals,” a CIA spokesman told BBC News on Friday.
“When CIA acquires information about Americans, it safeguards that information in accordance with procedures,” set out to restrict how it can use the data, the spokesman added.” “
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV
