Judging Freedom - Secret CIA Bulk Surveillance Program

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Secret CIA Bulk Surveillance Program Includes Some Americans' Records, Includes Some Americans' Records.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello there, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Valentine's Day, February 14th, 2022. It's about two o'clock in the afternoon on the east coast of the United States Late last Friday, three or four days ago The Senate Intelligence Committee persuaded the CIA To send a letter to the committee Explaining the nature and extent of its current spying in the United States Now that should be an oxymoron because the CIA is not allowed by law to spy in the United States. The 1947 charter of the CIA and the enabling legislation expressly prohibit the CIA from

being involved in law enforcement and from gathering evidence in the United States. If there's somebody that has to be spied in the United States, the federal government has 16 other spying agencies to do its spying work. CIA's work is supposed to be outside the country. All of that changed in 1981 when President Reagan signed an executive order reporting to authorize the CIA to violate federal law and spy in the United States. But Reagan insisted on a wall of separation between the CIA and the FBI. So if the CIA discovered that a janitor in the Russian embassy in Washington was really a KGB colonel, but he was abusing his wife in their suburban Maryland home, the CIA would not have been able

to pass on evidence of his domestic violence to Maryland authorities. All of that changed in 2001, 20 years later, when President George W. Bush demolished the wall. So not only could the CIA share data with the FBI, it was required to do so. got in on domestic spying without warrants, gathering vast amounts of information about millions of Americans. That's the background. Fast forward to last week when this letter was sent to the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It admitted that the CIA continues to engage in spying in the United States in bulk, meaning it is not going to a federal judge or a state judge and asking for a surveillance warrant on a particular individual based upon probable cause of that person committing a crime. Rather, it goes to big tech with a checkbook, and it says, we'll pay you to give us unlimited access to the data that you have. We want everything we can get, financial, legal, medical, personal, professional, undifferentiated,

meaning we're not aiming at any one person. We want everything on hundreds of millions of Americans. Some big tech told the CIA to go take a hike. Some accepted their cash and opened up their spigots to the voracious federal appetite. When this letter was sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, two members of the committee claimed that they were shocked that they didn't know that the CIA was still doing this. So notwithstanding the persistent efforts of members of Congress from both parties, the CIA continues to spy at will, at random, without any evidence on hundreds of millions of Americans.

How will this end? It will probably continue. Congress, with the exception of a few civil libertarians, liberal Democrats in the Democratic Party, libertarian Republicans in the Republican Party, Congress will look the other way. Just as presidents, since Reagan and Bush unleashed this monstrosity upon us, have looked the other way. The CIA is indifferent to the Constitution. It couldn't care less about it. Will we ever have a government that obeys the Constitution? Judge Napolitano, judging freedom.