Can anyone explain the alleged unmasking?
I understand that Flynn’s name was redacted in transcripts or related reports.
So the reporting is that, say, Biden unmasked his name, or else requested it. But in theory, how does he know whose name is redacted? Or is he seeing the redactions, and asking that they be unmasked so he can find out who it is?
It doesn’t seem to be the latter. But if the former, the dots just don’t all connect without knowing more about the process.
I get that there seems to be a conspiracy etc. I’m just trying to understand the process involved.
Unmasking
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Re: Unmasking
I'm certainly not a legal expert, but here's how I understand it.
It's illegal to spy on US citizens without a warrant. But sometimes conversations involving US citizens get recorded when the government is surveilling a foreign party. To protect the constitutional rights of the US citizen, his identity is redacted from all transcripts. "Unmasking" is thus the process of revealing the names and conversations of US citizens obtained without a warrant.
While I'm not sure how the specific process works for requesting surveillance transcripts, with the names unmasked it could be as simple as querying every conversation including Mike Flynn in a certain date range. You can see how that could get out of hand really quickly.
The bigger issue here is that while only a very few people in the government have historically had the right to access unmasked intelligence, Obama rewrote the rules to allow lots of people to join the party. In fact, documents now show that a long list of people with absolutely no legitimate reason to see this stuff -- from the ambassador to the UN to the acting deputy assistant Treasury secretary (I'm not making that up) -- all started accessing unmasked Flynn conversations with foreign dignitaries after the election but before Trump was sworn in. Basically, they weaponized warrantless surveillance and made it super widespread with no real oversight.
Joe Biden was among the last recorded people to access unmasked transcripts of Flynn calls on January 12th, 2017. That was a week after he met with Obama and others in the White House to talk about how they planned to pursue Flynn and hide it from the Trump administration, and a week before Trump took office. On the very same day, parts of a transcript with the Russian ambassador were illegally leaked to the Washington Post in an effort to frame the conversation as violating the Logan Act. And the article was used as precedence for the FBI to interview Flynn on January 24th about Russia collusion which ultimately led to his prosecution on a process crime. If you think that's all just a coincidence, I don't know what to tell ya.
It's illegal to spy on US citizens without a warrant. But sometimes conversations involving US citizens get recorded when the government is surveilling a foreign party. To protect the constitutional rights of the US citizen, his identity is redacted from all transcripts. "Unmasking" is thus the process of revealing the names and conversations of US citizens obtained without a warrant.
While I'm not sure how the specific process works for requesting surveillance transcripts, with the names unmasked it could be as simple as querying every conversation including Mike Flynn in a certain date range. You can see how that could get out of hand really quickly.
The bigger issue here is that while only a very few people in the government have historically had the right to access unmasked intelligence, Obama rewrote the rules to allow lots of people to join the party. In fact, documents now show that a long list of people with absolutely no legitimate reason to see this stuff -- from the ambassador to the UN to the acting deputy assistant Treasury secretary (I'm not making that up) -- all started accessing unmasked Flynn conversations with foreign dignitaries after the election but before Trump was sworn in. Basically, they weaponized warrantless surveillance and made it super widespread with no real oversight.
Joe Biden was among the last recorded people to access unmasked transcripts of Flynn calls on January 12th, 2017. That was a week after he met with Obama and others in the White House to talk about how they planned to pursue Flynn and hide it from the Trump administration, and a week before Trump took office. On the very same day, parts of a transcript with the Russian ambassador were illegally leaked to the Washington Post in an effort to frame the conversation as violating the Logan Act. And the article was used as precedence for the FBI to interview Flynn on January 24th about Russia collusion which ultimately led to his prosecution on a process crime. If you think that's all just a coincidence, I don't know what to tell ya.