CIA Director Criticizes Privacy Protections
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CIA head John Brennan criticized reforms that protect Americans’ privacy in the wake of the Paris attacks.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
…Brennan said Monday he suspects the Islamic State is currently working on more terrorist plots against the West following Friday’s attack in Paris that killed at least 129 people and injured hundreds more. He also criticized new privacy protections enacted after Edward Snowden’s disclosures about U.S. government surveillance practices.
“I would anticipate that this is not the only operation ISIL has in the pipeline,” Brennan told a crowd at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s not going to content itself with violence inside of the Syrian and Iraqi borders.”
…In his remarks, Brennan said the attacks should serve as a “wake-up call” for those misrepresenting what intelligence services do to protect innocent civilians. He cited “a lot of unauthorized disclosures, and a lot of handwringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists.”
He added that “policy” and “legal” actions that have since been taken now “make our ability collectively, internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging.” In June, President Barack Obama signed into law legislation reforming a government surveillance program that vacuumed up millions of Americans’ telephone records. Passage of the USA Freedom Act was the result of a compromise between privacy advocates and the intelligence community.
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