UNMASKING EXPLAINED
WHAT IS UNMASKING?
During routine, legal surveillance of foreign targets, names of Americans occasionally come up in conversations. Foreigners could be talking about a U.S. citizen or U.S. permanent resident by name, or a foreigner could be speaking directly to an American. When an American's name is swept up in surveillance of foreigners, it is called 'incidental collection.' In these cases, the name of the American is masked before the intelligence is distributed to administration officials to avoid invading that person's privacy.
Unless there is a clear intelligence value to knowing the American´s name, it is not revealed in the reports. The intelligence report would refer to the person only as 'U.S. Person 1' or U.S. Person 2.' If U.S. officials with proper clearance to review the report want to know the identity, they can ask the agency that collected the information - perhaps the FBI, CIA or National Security Agency - to 'unmask' the name.
Unmasking requests are common, according to Michael Morell, former CIA deputy director and host of 'Intelligence Matters' podcast.
'Literally hundreds of times a year across multiple administrations. In general, senior officials make the requests when necessary to understand the underlying intelligence. I myself did it several times a month and NSA adjudicates the request. You can't do your job without it,' he said.
Morell emphasized that unmasking is not the same as declassification. 'When a name is unmasked, the underlying intelligence to include the name remains classified so leaking it would be a crime.'
WHEN WOULD AN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY UNMASK A NAME?
The request is not automatically granted. The person asking has to have a good reason. Typically, the reason is that not knowing the name makes it impossible to fully understand the intelligence provided.
The name is released only if the official requesting it has a need to know and the 'identity is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance,' according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's latest report, which includes statistics on unmasking. 'Additional approval by a designated NSA official is also required.'
Former NSA Director Mike Rogers has said that only 20 of his employees could approve an unmasking. The names are shared only with the specific official who asked. They are not released publicly. Leaking a name, or any classified information, is illegal.
HOW OFTEN ARE NAMES UNMASKED?
The number of unmasking requests began being released to the public in response to recommendations in 2014 from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
There were 9,217 unmasking requests in the 12-month period between September 2015 and August 2016, the first period in which numbers are publicly available. The period was during the latter years of the Obama administration.
The number rose during the Trump administration. The 9,529 requests in 2017 grew to 16,721 in 2018 and 10,012 last year.
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