Senator, who has repeatedly warned about secret US government surveillance, sounds new alarm over ‘CIA activities’

A senior Democratic senator with access to some of the U.S. government’s most closely guarded intelligence programs has said he holds “deep concerns” about certain activities carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The brief, two-line letter from Sen. Ron Wyden, the longest-serving member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, does not specify what the CIA is allegedly doing or explain the nature of his concerns. Still, the letter fits a familiar pattern seen over recent years in which Wyden has publicly hinted at potential wrongdoing or illegality inside the federal government — a phenomenon often referred to as the “Wyden siren.”

In a statement reported by the Wall Street Journal’s Dustin Volz, the CIA responded by saying it was “ironic but unsurprising that Senator Wyden is unhappy,” adding that it considers such criticism a “badge of honour.”

When contacted by TechCrunch, a spokesperson for Wyden’s office said they could not comment further because the matter remains classified.

As part of his role overseeing the U.S. intelligence community, Wyden is among a tiny group of lawmakers authorised to review highly classified information related to ongoing government surveillance, including cyber operations and other intelligence activities. Because these programs are deeply secret, Wyden is legally prohibited from sharing what he knows with the public — or even with most of his colleagues in Congress — aside from a limited number of Senate staff members who hold the appropriate security clearances.

As a result, Wyden, long regarded as a strong advocate for privacy rights, has become one of the few members of Congress whose infrequent but pointed public statements on intelligence and surveillance issues civil liberties organisations closely scrutinise.

Over the past decade, Wyden has repeatedly issued subtle public warnings when he believed secret rulings or intelligence-gathering practices crossed legal or constitutional lines.

In 2011, Wyden cautioned that the U.S. government was relying on a classified interpretation of the Patriot Act, saying at the time — without revealing specifics — that it had created “a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says.”

Two years later, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden disclosed that the agency was indeed using a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act to compel U.S. telecommunications companies, including Verizon, to hand over the call records of hundreds of millions of Americans on an ongoing basis.

Since those revelations, Wyden has continued to raise alarms about how the U.S. government collects the contents of private communications. He has disclosed that the Justice Department prohibited Apple and Google from revealing that federal authorities were secretly demanding access to users’ push notification data. Wyden has also said that an unclassified report the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has declined to release contains “shocking details” about national security threats facing U.S. telecommunications providers.

As noted by Techdirt editor Mike Masnick, it remains unclear why Wyden has once again sounded the alarm over CIA activities. But history suggests that when Wyden issues such warnings, subsequent disclosures have consistently shown his concerns to be well-founded.