Who's In Charge?

 Andrea Widberg has a post today at the American Thinker entitled So it's true: Tucker Carlson got the General Mike Flynn treatment. By the "Mike Flynn treatment," Widberg means that the NSA not only spied on Tucker Carlson, but also leaked his emails to opposition journalists. This is totally illegal. The NSA should only be collecting data on foreign actors, and any United States citizens incidentally caught up in this NSA spying should be masked. As Carlson pointed out, Gen. Nakasone, as head of the NSA should have had to approve the unmasking of Tucker Carlson, so should be able to explain.

If you go to the linked page, you can see how exponentially large the “incidental” target group becomes thanks to the hop rules. For example, if you have 50 friends, the NSA can spy on those friends, as well as 8,170 second-degree friends, and another 1,334,978 third-degree friends. Expand your friend group to 1,000 friends, and the NSA has a pool of 163,400 second-degree friends to spy upon, and 26,699,560 third-degree friends to check out.

Even worse than being spied on, though, is the fact that Tucker got the Michael Flynn treatment: He was unmasked and the information leaked. Both things are grossly illegal. The government is allowed to spy only on foreign targets. Domestic targets are “incidental” and must be protected. Anyone in the government who wants to unmask these incidental targets must prove that the information is within his mandate and that he has an absolute need to know this information...

I have pointed out that while the NSA hoovers up every bit of electronic information in the world, they don't seem to find things like, oh, say, the Boston Marathon bombers, even though our FBI was warned about these people. But the NSA would have had direct knowledge of their plans. Why keep silent? This blog is being recorded by the NSA as you read it. Why they would find the thoughts of a nobody like me interesting is anybody's guess, but they do.

Agencies, like the NSA, CIA, FBI and others are supposed to be nonpolitical. They are supposed to give the President the same information whether he is Democrat or Republican. But they have obviously chosen a side, and it is not YOUR side. But even if it were your side, you should be concerned that the intelligence they are giving the President is biased. And that could get us all killed.

What should be done is to convene another Church Committee to reform these agencies and put them back in the box where they belong. The problem? Even Congress is afraid of these agencies. As Tucker Carlson asked, "Who's in charge?"