Real News From The Blaze': Intelligence Community Makes Shocking Admission

Some in the Senate have been inquiring, and are now able to report, that the executive branch has admitted to have abused and violated Constitutional prohibitions on unlawful search and seizure with intelligence gathering techniques on at least one occasion. Wired Magazine reports:

The admission comes in a letter from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassifying statements that a top U.S. Senator wished to make public in order to call attention to the government’s 2008 expansion of its key surveillance law.

“On at least one occasion,” the intelligence shop has approved Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to say, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court found that “minimization procedures” used by the government while it was collecting intelligence were “unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” Minimization refers to how long the government may retain the surveillance data it collects.  The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is supposed to guarantee our rights against unreasonable searches.

Wyden does not specify how extensive this “unreasonable” surveillance was; when it occurred; or how many Americans were affected by it.

These inquiries are generally held up by the classified nature of the programs involved. On 'Real News' Thursday the panel discussed the details of what the Intelligence Community has admitted to, and what this means for the future of national intelligence: