I will lay out my understanding in this thread.
First, intel officials were initially barred under our constitution and laws from capturing innocent Americans on wiretaps and surveillance of foreign officials and terrorists.— Sharyl Attkisson🕵️♂️ (@SharylAttkisson) May 13, 2020
She describes the evolution well. The recent slice of unmasking requests makes me wonder if we will see those pertaining to the redacted outside contractors Rogers discovered.
Thanks for link. Here is Sharyll Atkisson’s unrolled thread:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1260704061457936384.html
I will lay out my understanding in this thread.
First, intel officials were initially barred under our constitution and laws from capturing innocent Americans on wiretaps and surveillance of foreign officials and terrorists.
Then, they said, Well, we need to sometimes capture those innocent U.S. citizens incidentally, but we wont store their information. Well protect their American rights.
Then, they said, Well, we will store the info for just a little while, but we will carefully control access and we will mask or hide the identities of the U.S. citizens so they cannot be used for political or nefarious purposes.
Then, they said, Well, we need to store the names & info of the innocent U.S. citizens longer than we first said. And it will go in a database. But dont worry, in the very rare instance when names are unmasked, it will be a careful, contolled process only a few can do.
They added, Nobody will be able to unmask simply because they are curious or suspicious; there will have to be extremely important and well documented reasons directly related to national security. This will be extremely rare.
Now, some are saying: Whats wrong with unmaskings? There are thousands and thousands of them every year
(I was told back in 2015 that this process was increasingly being abused by bad actors.)