Senators Blast CIA over Lack of Transparency on Bulk Data Collection
On February 10th, Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) issued a press release calling for new transparency over the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) bulk surveillance. The Senators’ press release follows the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board’s release of documents revealing “a secret bulk collection program and problems with how the agency searches and handles Americans’ information.” This press release follows an April 13, 2021 letter from the two Senators requesting “an expedited declassification review of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board’s (PCLOB’s) ‘Executive Order 12333 Central Intelligence Agency Deep Dive II.’”
According to the April 2021 letter, the extent of the CIA’s bulk collection program is “entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection” and “has been kept from the public and from Congress.” The Senators even note that until March 2021, “the nature and full extent of the CIA’s collection was withheld even from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.”
The Washington Post’s reporting provided additional details. According to the redacted recommendations issued by the PCLOB, “a pop-up box warns CIA analysts using the program that seeking any information about U.S. citizens or others covered by privacy laws requires a foreign intelligence purpose.” The PCLOB’s recommendations noted that CIA analysts “are not required to memorialize the justification for their queries.”
These redacted documents continue to build on Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing case against mass federal surveillance and intelligence collection on U.S. persons. Snowden’s whistleblower case led to increased scrutiny over the scope of surveillance and intelligence gathering, though it is not clear how successful this scrutiny has been. Senator Wyden and Heinrich’s letter nonetheless brings this issue to the forefront given that the CIA’s bull collection program “operates outside of laws passed and reformed by Congress, but under the authority of Executive Order 12333.”
Due to Snowden’s whistleblowing, many Americans are intimately familiar with the bulk collection methods and surveillance programs. Civil liberties organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have taken these issues heads on. The ACLU’s “Privacy & Technology” webpage highlights issues ranging from airlines requesting a new passenger “no-fly list” to facial recognition technologies. While the ACLU often makes headlines for its stances on progressive social issues, it recently took the United States to court over the limited transparency of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). This secretive court has been at the center of the debate over whether the U.S. intelligence agencies are seeking Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants on U.S. persons.
Back in November 2021, the Supreme Court declined to hear ACLU v. United States, which discusses whether the First Amendment provides a qualified right of public access to the FISC’s significant opinions. The result was that the American Civil Liberties Union would be unable to access the FISC’s significant opinions thus leaving Americans with little to no transparency over the Court’s activities. Justice Gorsuch’s dissent attacked the government’s claims, “on the government’s view, literally no court in this country has the power to decide whether citizens possess a First Amendment right of access to the work of our national security courts.”
In conclusion, it is important to note that Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, has been a vocal advocate for the everyday American against both private sector and government surveillance and bulk data collection. He, along with Senator Rand Paul, have spearheaded numerous efforts to reform the intelligence agencies even despite pushback from Senate colleagues. Civil liberties advocates owe Senator Wyden a debt of gratitude for calling for reform of these intrusive and, arguably, unconstitutional practices.
