MAJOR FINDING
The intelligence community has employed surreptitious collection techniques -- mail opening, surreptitious entries, informants, and "traditional'' and highly sophisticated forms of electronic surveillance -- to achieve its overly broad intelligence targeting and collection objectives. Although there are circumstances where these techniques, if properly controlled, are legal and appropriate, the Committee finds that their very nature makes them a threat to the personal privacy and Constitutionally protected activities of both the targets and of persons who communicate with or associate with the targets. The dangers inherent in the use of these techniques have been compounded by the lack of adequate standards limiting their use and by the absence of review by neutral authorities outside the intelligence agencies. As a consequence, these techniques have collected enormous amounts of personal and political information serving no legitimate governmental interest.
Subfindings
(a) Given the highly intrusive nature of these techniques, the legal standards and procedures regulating their use have been insufficient. There have been no statutory controls on the use of informants; there have been gaps and exceptions in the law of electronic surveillance; and the legal prohibitions against warrantless mail opening and surreptitious entries have been ignored.
(b) In addition to providing the means by which the Government can collect too much information about too many people, certain techniques have their own peculiar dangers:
(i) Informants have provoked and participated in violence and other illegal activities in order to maintain their cover, and they have obtained membership lists and other private documents.
(ii) Scientific and technological advances have rendered traditional controls on electronic surveillance obsolete and have made it more difficult to limit intrusions. Because of the nature of wiretaps, microphones and other sophisticated electronic techniques, it has not always been possible to restrict the monitoring of communications to the persons being investigated.
(c) The imprecision and manipulation of labels such as "national security," "domestic security," "subversive activities," and "foreign intelligence" have led to unjustified use of these techniques.
