Senators want more transparency about CIA program that included bulk data collection
Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich say the CIA needs to reveal details about what kind of data was collected.
A pair of US senators say the CIA needs to be more transparent about a newly revealed agency program involving bulk collection of data, including information on some Americans.
The existence of the program was made public Thursday when an April 2021 letter to the CIA from Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich was declassified in a heavily redacted form. In that letter, Wyden and Heinrich, both members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, requested the declassification of a report by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on a CIA bulk collection program. They also asked that the letter itself be declassified.
The letter as released, which has large sections blacked out, doesn't reveal what kind of data was collected, or when, and doesn't say whether the program is still in effect. The letter notes that the bulk collection of data was authorized under an executive order, rather than by Congress, and conducted without oversight by Congress or the judicial or executive branches.
In a statement Thursday, the senators emphasized the importance of the oversight board's report.
"What these documents demonstrate is that many of the same concerns that Americans have about their privacy and civil liberties also apply to how the CIA collects and handles information under executive order and outside the (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) law," the senators said.
Wyden and Heinrich said the CIA needs to reveal more details, including what kind of records were collected and what the legal basis for the collection was, adding that the PCLOB report noted problems with the CIA's handling and searching of Americans' information under the program.
The CIA didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But Kristi Scott, the agency's privacy and civil liberties officer, said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal that the CIA "recognizes and takes very seriously" its obligation to "respect the privacy and civil liberties of US persons."
The CIA is "committed to transparency consistent with our obligation to protect intelligence sources and methods," the statement added.
Though the CIA is generally barred from domestic spying, some mass data collection operations can scoop up information on Americans, something lawmakers in both parties have long raised privacy concerns about.