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by cronix 1798 days ago
> For example, this is believed to be how "Tucker Carlson got surveilled by the CIA" -- he is believed to have contacted a surveilled Russian agent to discuss interviews with the Russian president.

Yes, that happens all of the time but one difference here with Tucker is he was deliberately "unmasked." Normally when an American is caught up in foreign surveillance, their identity is blocked out or masked, "incidental collection" as you said. Someone purposefully unmasked it. And someone purposefully leaked it. The same thing was done to General Flynn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmasking_by_U.S._intelligence...

1 comments

That is not the case, and it seems like you've been misled. It's completely routine and legal for unmasking to occur, and in fact is integral to understanding the intelligence.

How could an analyst understand the conversation without knowing both parties?

My understanding is that some 10,000 legal unmaskings occur per year, and Gen Flynn and Tucker's unmasking were both routine, legal, and integral to analyzing the intelligence

When one considers the litany of crimes the disgraced lunatic Flynn committed, it's no wonder he got caught up in collection and that his identity was important to understanding the collection!