The scandal now is supposed to be that the names of Trump associates made it into these reports at all. The N.S.A., whose main job is signals intelligence—tapping phones and intercepting e-mail and other kinds of electronic communications—has wide latitude to legally spy on foreigners. But oftentimes foreigners are talking to or about Americans, who are not legal targets of N.S.A. surveillance. The agency has safeguards to protect the privacy of those Americans who are incidentally swept up in the legal surveillance of foreigners.
As Rogers explained in his March 20th testimony, the first step is to determine whether the intercepted communication has “intelligence value.” He said, “We’ll ask ourselves, is there criminal activity involved, is there a threat, potential threat or harm to U.S. individuals being discussed in a conversation?” If the N.S.A. determines that the information doesn’t have value, it purges the data. If it determines that it does, it masks the identity of the Americans before circulating the intelligence. If a policymaker wants to unmask the identity of a redacted name that she comes across in a report, so she can better understand the intelligence, she can make that request to the N.S.A.
Yesterday, several right-leaning outlets reported that some of the materials shared with Nunes and Schiff showed that Susan Rice made unmasking requests that revealed the identities of Trump associates. This news is being treated as a full-blown intelligence scandal on conservative talk radio and Fox News. Naturally, Trump tweeted about it and Spicer emphasized the news during his briefing.
