A few days after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) uncovered over 90 instances of the NSA and the FBI violating the civil liberties of American citizens from 2009 to 2016, House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) levied further allegations at the Obama administration. Nunes specifically charged Obama administration aides with filing requests to unmask names of American citizens during the 2016 presidential election.
Nunes directed his outrage to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, writing the following:
We have found evidence that current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information.
The letter specifically charged that former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, who had no business in the intelligence community, “made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration.” The letter stated that only one of them was justified in a manner that was not boilerplate.
Last March, Nunes informed the press that Obama had ordered the surveillance of members of Donald Trump’s campaign and transition teams immediately following his electoral victory against Hillary Clinton. This decision angered his Democratic counterpart, Adam Schiff (D-CA).
The Obama administration received considerable criticism from liberal and conservative groups for Obama’s 2011 decision to loosen the rules for intelligence officials to unmask the names of people whose emails and phone calls the intelligence community intercepted. The argument stemmed from the Fourth Amendment protection from unwarranted searches and seizures.