Ex-NSA official Thomas Drake wrote during a declaration discharged Friday that the agency collected and keep just about all electronic communications going into or out of the Salt Lake area, as well as the contents of emails and text messages.
“Officials within the United States intelligence agency and law enforcement agency viewed the Salt Lake OlympicsField Op as a golden chance to collect resources from each agency to experiment with and fine-tune a brand new scale of mass surveillance,” Drake wrote.
It comes as a part of a legal proceeding filed by lawyer Rocky Anderson, who was the politician of Salt Lake town throughout the Games held a couple of months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Anderson aforementioned the document was disclosed to the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday.
Former CIA and United States intelligence agency director Michael Hayden has denied in court documents that such a program existed. Hayden was United States intelligence agency director from 1999 to 2005.
Current United States intelligence agency operations director Wayne Murphy aforesaid in court documents that the United States intelligence agency surveillance in Salt Lake town was restricted to international communications during which a minimum of one participant was moderately believed to be related to foreign terrorist teams.
Drake disputed that statement, writing that he spoke with colleagues who worked on the operation and were involved regarding its lawfulness. He aforesaid he additionally saw documents showing surveillance equipment being directed to the American state program.
Drake’s declaration was written in support of the previous mayor’s legal proceeding. Anderson aforementioned the proceedings is meant to induce a lot of data regarding what he calls covert, black-market operations.
Drake started operating for the United States intelligence agency in 2001 and blew the whistle on what he saw as a wasteful and invasive program. He was later prosecuted for keeping classified data. Most of the charges were dropped before trial in 2011, and he was sentenced to one year of probation.
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