U.S. News: 'Unmasking' Disclosures in Spy Reports Rise

"WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency agreed to reveal classified information about U.S. identities that appeared in foreign spy reports more than 31,000 times last year, nearly triple the previous year's amount, according to a government report.

The number of instances of so-called unmasking, in which redacted information regarding American individuals or corporations is revealed to other federal agencies, appeared to be the highest recorded since U.S. spy agencies began publishing details about their surveillance practices in an annual transparency report a decade ago. Back then, the figure tallied only into the hundreds or low thousands.

The report on the increase in disclosures follows the much-contested renewal this month of the law that authorizes the collection of the foreign intelligence data. The process of unmasking became a politically charged issue during the Trump administration, when then-President Donald Trump and some of his allies lobbed unsubstantiated claims that senior Obama administration officials had improperly weaponized unmasking to spy on Trump's transition team.

A majority of the increase last year resulted from one episode related to an unidentified foreign intelligence agency unleashing a hacking campaign that sought to infiltrate and harm American critical infrastructure, a senior intelligence official said Tuesday.

Those unmaskings didn't concern identities of specific American individuals, such as their names, but instead related to technical identifiers -- for example, an email account or IP address -- for companies and utilities that were vulnerable to attack, the official said.

"An important piece here is 'a person' means more than a human being," said Becky Richards, head of civil liberties and privacy at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in reference to how intelligence agencies refer to "U.S. persons." The unmaskings tied to the cyberattack were "related to critical infrastructure and U.S. companies."

Officials declined to share specific details about the attempted cyber intrusions. Senior Biden administration officials have sounded alarms in recent months about Chinese hackers pre-positioning themselves in systems to disrupt or destroy water facilities, the energy grid and more in the event of a major conflict with the U.S.

The NSA agreed to reveal U.S. identities in classified reports distributed to other government agencies 31,330 times in 2023, the report said. That figure was an increase of about 172% over the previous year.

Unmasking is designed to be used only for national-security reasons, such as helping officials assess intelligence by providing the identity of someone two foreign spies might be discussing on a call. But the process is governed by strict rules that make it illegal to use unmaskings for political purposes or to leak classified information." [1]

1. U.S. News: 'Unmasking' Disclosures in Spy Reports Rise. Volz, Dustin.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 01 May 2024: A.3.