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Two US senators have asked the Central Intelligence Agency to release the details of a secret bulk data collection program that has apparently ensnared Americans.
Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore. ) and Martin Heinrich (D-N. M. ) wrote the particular director of national intelligence plus the CIA (PDF), asking them to declassify a review of a CIA program known as “Deep Dive II, ” the details of which were redacted from their letter. The letter was written in April 2021 but was classified until yesterday.
The secret CIA program is operated under typically the authority of Executive Order 12333 , which former President Ronald Reagan issued in 1981. It has been used to justify bulk data collection of people in the ALL OF US, including phone calls, SMS messages, in addition to, until recently, email metadata. That practice was limited by a 2015 reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, which banned the bulk collection of phone and SMS metadata by the FBI.
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