Communications of the ACM
Secret CIA Bulk Surveillance Program Includes Some Americans' Records, Senators Say
Senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich urged the Central Intelligence Agency to tell the public about the program.
Credit: Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
A secret program at the Central Intelligence Agency relied on a form of mass surveillance activity that involved the collection of an unknown data set and included the gathering of some records belonging to Americans, according to a newly declassified letter from two Democratic senators.
Details of the CIA program have been kept from the public as well as some lawmakers, according to the April 2021 letter to the agency from Sens. Ron Wyden (D, OR) and Martin Heinrich (D, NM), members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The letter was partially declassified and disclosed Thursday.
The nature of the type of collection isn't made clear in the heavily redacted letter. It couldn't be determined when the surveillance occurred or if the intelligence program is currently operational. It was also not clear whether another U.S. intelligence agency was performing the actual surveillance that supported the functioning of the CIA program, which isn't unusual.
From The Wall Street Journal
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