The CIA is Spying on Americans
I am disgusted by this. According to Two Senators, the CIA is collecting personal information in bulk on every American citizen.
When I was with the CIA, 1984 to 1996, it was not this way. If we encountered a “U.S. Person” (i.e. citizen, green card holder, etc.) in the course of intelligence collection it was an immediate mind-shattering alarm. Kind of like the fire alarm in your building when you are in the hall right next to one the high-pitched screeching one.
We did not move forward until the CIA lawyers were consulted. From there, 99% of the time it was either get the FBI involved or back the hell off. It was not the CIA’s job to spy on U.S. citizens. That is not to say it hasn’t happened in the CIA’s history, but that was the wisdom and the guidance during my days in the Agency.
I was proud of that.
U.S. citizens were the ones whose rights we were protecting. We didn’t go around willy nilly violating those rights. Our Constituion is about protecting the individual, each individual has those rights.
Now we find out that the CIA has been collecting information on U.S. Citizens. Some quotes from the report:
“…these documents reveal serious problems associated with warrantless backdoor searches of Americans”
“…the CIA has secretly conducted its own bulk program, authorized under Executive Order 12333, rather than the laws passed by Congress.”
I’ve spied on other people, with the sanction of my government, foreign targets who were of interest to the U.S., and I have been spied on by the intelligence services of other countries. It is an invasive, intrusive and sordid business. It is the extreme case, necessary because the power and might of other sovereign nations threaten us. I don’t want my own government, that I pay taxes to, that I support, that elect with my rightful vote to spy on me.
If someone is suspected of committing a crime, law enforcement is responsible for investigating. The CIA has no law enforcement role. As an American citizen, the only database I should be part of in the CIA is my old employment records.
The FBI plays by different rules, they have chains of custody, their specialty is investigating crimes, protecting the innocent and prosecuting the guilty. We have openly and knowingly chartered the FBI with doing this, given them special privileges and strict responsibilities on handling the information from their cases.
I’ve said this before, information is power, absolute information is absolute power. This means that every available detail of your life can be accessed by anyone in power who needs leverage on you – for example, elected political leaders trying to leverage their opponent, their opponent’s supporters and their opponent’s funding sources. This is a whole lot of power. And for those of you who ask “what do you have to hide?” I’ll just go ahead and punch you in the face for your ignorance of history and current events.
You may recall that NSA had a similar program that was outed by Snowden. They were collecting the phone logs of American citizens, a hugely invasive program. This was shut down in 2015. Now NSA must get these records on a case by case basis, with a court order. To me this means that some semblance of the old guidance with its respect for American rights, still exists.
But the question is why do people in the CIA believe that they have the right to collect information on U.S. citizens? Why are they not aware of the slippery slope into totalitarianism that this entails.
The cynic in mean says that perhaps the information on American citizens was too valuable to our political leaders, who have likely used it in the worst possible ways, trying to get leverage on Americans. Maybe this is harsh and untrue, but I’m pissed.
The people I served with at the CIA were some of the finest, most dedicated, most patriotic Americans I’ve ever met. Some of them died for their country. The best way to respect their dedication and sacrifice is to remove the political/executive layer from the CIA that would allow this to take place.
You can thank the commie democrats for the spying Obama the Kenyon started it
Ken,
Goddamn, Bush and the political right authorized the Patriot Act even though several Democrats were outspoken in their opposition to the government surveillance. But when conservatives thought it was going to be used against Muslims y’all were cool with it. Now that it has expanded to white nationalist terror groups, you’re concerned?
GTFO
I’ll bet that your daughter in law is worried
Larry KKKuhn,
Nope, but Joe is… rightfully so.