Tucker Carlson vs. the NSA

Julian SanchezCable television host Tucker Carlson hasleveled an explosive charge at the National Security Agency: He claims the spy agency has been snooping through his e-mails and text messages as part of plot to discredit Carlson and his eponymous Fox News program. The NSAtook the rare step of issuing a public statement denying that Carlson had been an intelligence target, and his own network —both its executives and its news division—has beenconspicuously muted about the allegations. So what ' s going on here?Based on the publicly available facts, I feel reasonably confident about three things: First, Carlson ' s sensationalist version of the story —that he was illegally targeted by the Biden administration in service to some political vendetta—is pretty unlikely to be true. Second, it is not only plausible but quite likely that some of Carlson ' s communications were nevertheless intercepted by NSA. Third, on the currently public facts, it not clear whether anyone at NSA or within the broader Intelligence Community did anything improper, let alone unlawful —and this should in itself be disturbing,because it illustrates how dangerously broad our foreign intelligence surveillance authorities have become.Let ' s start with those public facts. Carlson says he was approached by a whistleblower from within the federal government who alerted him that certain of his communications had been reviewed by NSA, proving these claims by providing details that could only have ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs