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A senior Democratic lawmaker with knowledge of some of the U.S. government\u2019s most secretive operations has said he has \u201cdeep concerns\u201d about certain activities by the Central Intelligence Agency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The two-line letter written<\/a> by Sen. Ron Wyden, the longest serving member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, does not disclose the nature of the CIA\u2019s activities or the senator\u2019s specific concerns. But the letter follows a pattern in recent years in which Wyden has publicly hinted at wrongdoing or illegality within the federal government, sometimes referred to as the \u201cWyden siren.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In a statement (via the Wall Street Journal\u2019s Dustin Volz<\/a>), the CIA said it was \u201cironic but unsurprising that Senator Wyden is unhappy,\u201d calling it a \u201cbadge of honor.\u201d<\/p>\n When reached by TechCrunch, a spokesperson for Wyden\u2019s staff was unable to comment, as the matter was classified.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tasked with oversight of the intelligence community, Wyden is one of a few lawmakers who is allowed to read highly classified information about ongoing government surveillance, including cyber and other intelligence operations. But as the programs are highly secretive, Wyden is barred from sharing details of what he knows with anyone else, including most other lawmakers, except for a handful of Senate staff with security clearance.<\/p>\n As such, Wyden, a known privacy hawk, has become one of the few key members of Congress whose rare but outspoken words on intelligence and surveillance matters are closely watched by civil liberties groups.<\/p>\n Over the past few years, Wyden has subtly sounded the alarm on several occasions in which he has construed a secret ruling or intelligence gathering method as unlawful or unconstitutional.<\/p>\n In 2011, Wyden said that the U.S. government was relying on a secret interpretation<\/a> of the Patriot Act, which he said \u2014 without disclosing the nature of his concerns \u2014 created a \u201cgap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Two years later, then-NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed<\/a> that the National Security Agency was relying on its secret interpretation of the Patriot Act to force U.S. phone companies, including Verizon, to turn over the call records of hundreds of millions of Americans on an ongoing basis.<\/p>\n Since then, Wyden has sounded the alarm on how the U.S. government collects the contents of people\u2019s communications<\/a>; revealed that the Justice Department barred Apple and Google from disclosing that federal authorities had been secretly demanding the contents of their customers\u2019 push notifications<\/a>; and said that an unclassified report<\/a> that CISA has refused to release contains \u201cshocking details\u201d about national security threats facing U.S. phone companies.<\/p>\n