Three Senate Democrats slammed a government surveillance loophole...
Three Senate Democrats slammed a government surveillance loophole that an intelligence official confirmed in the last week. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sent a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Friday confirming that “there have been queries, using U.S.…
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person identifiers, of communications lawfully acquired to obtain foreign intelligence by targeting non U.S. persons reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S. pursuant to Section 702 of” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (http://1.usa.gov/1hB7yCL). That statutory authority has widely been seen to target non-citizen communications outside the U.S. The “admission by the Director of National Intelligence is further proof that meaningful surveillance reform must include closing the back-door searches loophole and requiring the intelligence community to show probable cause before deliberately searching through data collected under section 702 to find the communications of individual Americans,” said Wyden and Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., in a joint statement Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/1hBiGj0). “The revelation that -- despite the clear intent of Section 702 to target foreign communications -- the government is deliberating [sic] searching for the phone calls or emails of specific Americans and circumventing traditional warrant protections should be concerning to all.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., also slammed the news in a separate statement, saying such loopholes “cannot be tolerated” and are “an outrage.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has actively alerted the public to this surveillance practice in the last week, tweeting out on Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1pRJEnc) the same declassified government report that Clapper referred to in his letter.