CIA unveils new rules for collecting information on Americans
CIA unveils new rules for collecting information on
Americans
By Jonathan Landay January 18, 2017
LANGLEY, Va. (Reuters) - The Central Intelligence Agency
on Wednesday unveiled revised rules for collecting, analyzing and storing
information on American citizens, updating the rules for the information age
and publishing them in full for the first time.
The guidelines are designed "in a manner that
protects the privacy and civil rights of the American people," CIA General
Counsel Caroline Krass told a briefing at the agency's headquarters in Langley,
Virginia.
The new rules were released amid continued public
discomfort over the government's surveillance powers, an issue that gained
prominence following revelations in 2013 by former government contractor Edward
Snowden that the National Security Agency (NSA) secretly collected the
communications data of millions of ordinary Americans.
The guidelines were published two days before President
elect-Donald Trump is sworn into office and may be changed by the new
administration. Trump has said he favors stronger government surveillance
powers, including the monitoring of "certain" mosques in the United
States.
The CIA is largely barred from collecting information
inside the United States or on U.S. citizens. But a 1980s presidential order
provided for discrete exceptions governed by procedures approved by the CIA
director and the attorney general.
Known as the "Attorney General Guidelines," the
original rules over time became a "patchwork of policies and
procedures" that failed to keep pace with the development of technology
that can store massive amounts of digital data, said Krass.
In 2014, legislation gave U.S. intelligence agencies two
years to develop procedures limiting the storage of information on U.S.
citizens.
The new procedures, under development for years, were
signed on Tuesday by CIA Director John Brennan and Attorney General Loretta
Lynch.
While the 1982 guidelines were made public two years ago,
sections were blacked out. The updated procedures were posted in full for the
first time on the CIA's website on Wednesday.
The updated procedures include what the CIA must do when
it clandestinely obtains a computer hard drive holding millions of pages of
text, hours of videos and thousands of photos containing information on
foreigners and U.S. citizens.
Because extensive time and many analysts are required to
assess such large volumes of data, the new rules regulate the handling of
material whose intelligence value cannot be promptly evaluated.
They also regulate how such data can be searched and
create strict requirements for dealing with unevaluated electronic
communications, which must be destroyed no later than five years after the are
first examined.
The rules were unveiled a week after civil liberties groups
decried new guidelines approved by the Obama administration expanding the NSA's
ability to share communications intercepts with other U.S. intelligence
agencies, including the CIA.
(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel; Editing by
Jonathan Oatis)
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