The CIA has a secret, undisclosed data repository that includes information collected about Americans, two US senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee said.
While neither the agency nor lawmakers would disclose specifics about the data, the senators said that the CIA had long hidden details about the program from the public and the US Congress.
Senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich sent a letter to intelligence officials calling for more details about the program to be declassified. Large parts of the letter, which was sent in April last year and declassified on Thursday, were blacked out.
Photo: AP
Wyden and Heinrich said that the program operated “outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection.”
There have long been concerns about what information the intelligence community collects domestically, driven in part by previous contraventions of Americans’ civil liberties.
The CIA and National Security Agency have a foreign mission and are generally barred from investigating Americans or US businesses, but the agencies’ sprawling collection of foreign communications often snares Americans’ data incidentally.
The CIA released a series of redacted recommendations about the program issued by an oversight panel known as the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
The document shows that a pop-up box warns analysts using the program that seeking information about US citizens or others covered by privacy laws requires a foreign intelligence purpose.
“However, analysts are not required to memorialize the justification for their queries,” the board said.
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