Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
The New American
April 3, 2014
After years of denial — much of which likely constituted perjury — officials of the National Security Agency (NSA) admitted to having conducted unwarranted surveillance of Americans, a violation of the protections against such searches provided by the Fourth Amendment.
Previously, NSA chiefs have confirmed only that the conversations of foreigners had been caught in the surveillance web, but the letter from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to Senator Ron Wyden, released Tuesday by Wyden’s office, revealed that in fact Americans were directly targeted for monitoring.
Citing a recently declassified document, Clapper confirms that “there have been queries, using U.S. persons identifiers.”
In a joint statement issued by Wyden and Senator Mark Udall (D-Colo.) accompanying the publication of Clapper’s letter, the senators pointed out the NSA’s perfidy:
Senior officials have sometimes suggested that government agencies do not deliberately read Americans’ emails, monitor their online activity or listen to their phone calls without a warrant. However, the facts show that those suggestions were misleading, and that intelligence agencies have indeed conducted warrantless searches for Americans’ communications.
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