How dangerous: Just as the U.S. faces the most diverse threats in its history, the American intelligence community is forced to operate under some of the most restrictive and bureaucratically ambiguous intelligence-gathering policies since its inception more than 60 years ago.
Nothing reflects these self-imposed restrictions better than Presidential Policy Directive 28. President Obama signed PPD-28 nearly two years ago in a knee-jerk reaction to the release of classified intelligence information by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and the data-collection methods revealed by the theft.
Among its many flaws, PPD-28 requires that, when collecting intelligence on foreign threats, U.S. operatives “must take into account (that) all persons should be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their nationality or wherever they may reside and that all persons have legitimate privacy interests.” This feel-good provision puts a serious crimp in foreign signals-intelligence collection.
The ambiguous language also naïvely extends to non-Americans unnecessary and undefined “privacy” rights. In what way does this make the U.S. safer?
