The ACLU, the nation’s preeminent civil liberties organization, isn’t loudly denouncing the Obama administration’s apparent “unmasking” of Trump associates in intelligence intercepts.
But if you ask, the ACLU will tell you that it believes existing privacy rules are insufficient to guard against potential abuses.
Asked on Tuesday by THE WEEKLY STANDARD about its response to allegations in recent news reports that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice asked for the identity of Trump associates identified in unrelated intelligence gathering, ACLU attorney Patrick Toomey said in a statement:
Unmistakable, yes but apparently not frightening enough to warrant a press release on the matter. Other ACLU-issued press releases in the last week covered North Carolina’s new transgender bathroom law, a transgender bathroom lawsuit it filed in Pennsylvania, a multilingual First Amendment ad campaign aimed at immigrants and a court fight over Kentucky abortion clinics.
A spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, another leading privacy-rights advocate, said the organization has posted no public statements about the recent surveillance debate, but that “we have said a lot about how the communications of innocent Americans are swept up in NSA surveillance and such.”
In an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday, Rice denied leaking any information to the press about Trump associates. She said there was no political motivation to requesting the identities of U.S. citizens whose names were included in raw intelligence intercepts. Those names are routinely hidden in intelligence reports to higher government officials to prevent infringing on civil liberties of Americans.
