TYB
U.S Intelligence Is Under Assault from Left and Right
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A May 2023 poll conducted by the Harvard University Center for American Political Studies and Harris Poll found that an eye-watering 70 percent of Americans surveyed were either “very” or “somewhat” concerned about “interference by the FBI and intelligence agencies in a future presidential election.”
A separate study, conducted in 2021 and 2022 by the Intelligence Studies Project at the University of Texas at Austin and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, found that only 56 percent of Americans thought that the intelligence community “plays a vital role in warning against foreign threats and contributes to our national security.” That number is down 10 points from a previous high—if it can even be called that—of 66 percent in 2019, and the downward trend does not give us cause for optimism. Reframed, that statistic means that in 2022, an alarming (in our view)44 percent of Americans did not believe that the intelligence community keeps them safe from foreign threats or contributes to U.S. national security.
Worse, despite abundant examples of authoritarian aggression and worldwide terror attacks, nearly 1 in 5 Americans seem to be confused about where the real threats to their liberty are actually emanating from. According to the UT Austin study, a growing number of Americans thought that the intelligence community represented a threat to civil liberties: 17 percent in 2022, up from 12 percent in 2021.A nontrivial percentage of Americans feel that the intelligence community is an insidious threat instead of a valuable protector in a dangerous world—a perspective that jeopardizes the security and prosperity of the United States and its allies.
The most obvious recent example of the repercussions of the corrosion of trust in the intelligence community is the recent drama over reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). First introduced in the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, Section 702 is an important legal authority for the U.S. intelligence community to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign persons located outside the United States, with the compelled assistance of electronic communication service providers. According to a report published by Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI), 702 is “extremely valuable” and “provides intelligence on activities of terrorist organizations, weapons proliferators, spies, malicious cyber actors, and other foreign adversaries.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/05/16/united-states-intelligence-public-opinion-cia-section-702/
> awh, the poor IC is feeling the heat.