Trump Moves to Empower the Deep State by Cracking Down on Mass Surveillance Watchdog

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump made many impressive promises wage war on the “deep state”. As soon as he returned to the White House. According to one account, Trump promised to “destroy the deep state.” a total of 56 timeslike last summer. Now that Trump is back in power, there is fairly limited evidence that he will follow through on any of those promises. In fact, one of the first things Trump has done is attack the privacy and civil liberties watchdog, one of the only government agencies dedicated to checking the power of America’s dreaded spy agencies.

The New York Times reports Trump has sought to “paralyze” the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (or PCLOB), an independent agency outside the Executive Branch created in 2004 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The PCLOB is armed with bilateral and subpoena power. His visible goal “To ensure that the federal government’s efforts to prevent terrorism are balanced with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties.”

PCLOB there are five seats. One of those seats is currently vacant, one is held by a board member elected by Republicans, and the other three seats are held by board members elected by Democrats. Now, the Times reports that Trent Morse, Trump’s deputy director of presidential staff, sent emails to each of the three Democratic board members, forcing them to submit letters of resignation by the end of the day on January 23 or face termination. . The Republican member was not asked to leave. “The departure of three Democratic members leaves the agency short-staffed as the Trump administration begins efforts to reshape the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies,” the paper notes.

While PCLOB is better than nothing, it often “the sleeping watchman” and was criticized for doing too little. PCLOB authored after Edward Snowden’s revelations report It conducted an investigation into the NSA’s domestic spying program and concluded that the legislation underpinning it “does not provide an adequate basis to support this program.” However, the PCLOB came to this conclusion only after a whistleblower leaked news of the agency’s widespread spying to the public.

In 2021, the PCLOB submitted a confidential report revealed the mass surveillance program carried out domestically by the CIA. The CIA is technically banned from operating inside the United States, making it somewhat unclear how the agency could legally carry out its so-called Deep Dive surveillance program. Because of its classification, the report could only be shared with senators, not the public. Later, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) spoke about the program and brought it to the public’s attention. Since then, little has been revealed about Deep Dive.

There are very few guardrails when it comes to America’s intelligence agencies, and now Trump is trying to ditch one of them. American oversight committees are similar has been criticized Because they are little more than deaf, dumb and blind servants of the institutions they are tasked with overseeing. Oversight committees were first established in the 1970s after scandals. significant criminal activity by intelligence agencies forced Congress to pass the change.