U.S. Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes And The ACLU Find Common Ground On Criticising The Obama Administration's Policy On 'Unmasking' Individuals?

The Hill: Intelligence chairman accuses Obama aides of hundreds of unmasking requests

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is accusing top political aides of President Obama of making hundreds of requests during the 2016 presidential race to unmask the names of Americans in intelligence reports, including Trump transition officials.

Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), in a letter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, said the requests were made without specific justifications on why the information was needed.

“We have found evidence that current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information,” Nunes wrote in the letter to Coats.

The letter was provided to The Hill from a source in the intelligence community.

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WNU Editor: The ACLU story is here .... Improper Obama-Era NSA And FBI Spying Detailed In Latest Declassification Of Memos (The Hill). I am always sceptical of U.S. Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes .... he is a partisan Republican .... but when I see him and the ACLU complaining about the same thing .... the unmasking of U.S. individuals and surveillance/privacy concerns ..... it catches my interest. It should be noted that the Obama officials in question are all claiming that their reasons for why they requested these unmaskings involved national security concerns. The problem with this denial is that in the case of Susan Rice, when it become known that investigators wanted to look at her files on this issue, they were then told that they are at the Obama Presidential Library, and they are sealed for five years .... NSC Adviser Susan Rice’s Unmasking Documents Are Now At The Obama Presidential Library And Are Sealed For Five Years (June 20, 2017). Something is wrong here, and I am willing to bet that this story is not going to die.