Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), who both sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee, made a surprising announcement late Thursday, releasing a statement saying that they had discovered the CIA had been running a “secret bulk collection program.”
Spooks gonna spook and no safeguards will stop them. I suppose the CIA “forgot” they’re not supposed to fuck about in the USA.
Presumably it’s just another copy of the internet, every e-mail ever sent, and a collection of dark web sites, like the NSA already has?
When was this program started and who ordered it? Who are they trying to protect?
I saw that Fox News picked this one up fast last night and was accusing the Democrats of snooping on Repuglicans. I am a little concerned this is going to go south fast for the Dems.
A little background info for context.
Y’all keep calling us tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theorists.
And we all keep getting validation that we’re not nutcases after all.
It’s not tin-foil hat, everyone knows that the NSA copies everything that goes through the tubes of the internet. Turns out the CIA do, too.
Edited FBI to CIA - although now I think about it more…
Secret Bulk. Wasn’t that T****'s Secret Service code name?
The fact that the program was revealed by a couple of Democratic senators evidently caused no cognitive dissonance, not that “cognition” is a trait at Fox.
This is for you: one internet, slightly soiled.
Yes, and the NSA thoroughly denied it for years, and worked hard to discredit whistleblowers along the way, also lied to the public and Congress about it, until finally caught out by Snowden.
That this is what they’re saying right out of the gate makes me think that they’re trying to prepare the public for the revelation that it was about snooping on Democrats. It’s the standard every-accusation-is-a-confession play. The public will just remember that some politicians were spying or being spied on or whatever and politicians amirite? and everybody does it and if the Republicans are doing it it’s only because they learned the trick from Democrats and this is boring let’s watch something else.
The CIA’s privacy and civil liberties officer, Kristi Scott, told the New York Times that the intelligence agency is “committed to transparency consistent with our obligation to protect intelligence sources and methods.”
Somehow I don’t thlnk The CIA’s privacy and civil liberties department has much actual concern for the privacy and civil liberties of common citizens. And being transparent while being obligated to protecting intelligence gathering sources and methods is a far, far cry from actual transparency.
That was no secret. T rumpp’s SS code name was the Incredible Bulk.
Ron Wyden, just a few years ago, hinted (in public) at such a program and said he was very much concerned about it, but couldn’t describe it since it was classified.
Just because we’re right, doesn’t mean we’re not nutcases. 
Who became a martyr by running to Russia.
Well, we didn’t exactly leave him a lot of choice. A lifetime behind bars for blowing the whistle on some traitorous shit the NSA was pulling off should have had him being celebrated.
Que Conservative outrage when it is revealed to be militia groups and far right extremists.
Some do time, some flee the country. Different strokes for different folks. We can imagine he would have spent life behind bars, but he never took the chance to find out. Ironically, I imagine that living in Putin’s regime is not so much different than a life behind bars. Maybe Russia offered financial incentives, as well, but that is speculation, too.