On December 11, Yahoo News broke a black material from the US intelligence community, and the US CBP actually monitored more than two dozen American journalists (many of whom had served the US government and wrote some other countries' black material for the United States). The agency gave the program the humiliating designation of whistle pigs and scooped up the private information of more than a million people with great disregard for principles.
Instead of really looking at the private data of more than a million people one by one, CBP is unscrupulously choosing from them, and no one knows who they are looking at.
According to Yahoo's report, CBP adopted a "whistle pig" program against American journalists
The news involves a very interesting, but often overlooked, agency, and that is CBP. Compared with its predecessors, the FBI and CIA, founded in 2003, CBP, as a rising star, is often regarded as a "harmless" organization. Of course, from this incident, CBP is by no means a simple little white rabbit, it is even more invincible in some ways than organizations such as the FBI.
What kind of agency is CBP? Friends, don't be surprised that this new U.S. organization called U.S. Customs and Border Protection has nothing to do with intelligence on the surface.
According to the CBP's published charter, the main task of the organization is to combat immigration fraud, protect border security, prevent the flow of illegal goods and other border security work, and its law enforcement powers are only "the right to search domestic and foreign means of transport" and "the right to civil punishment".
On the surface, CBP's job is just customs security
If you look only at the appearance, from any point of view, CBP is only a small role in checking at various border crossings in the United States, similar to the police agency set up by the government specifically for the border. If strictly followed by the institutional positioning, CBP is not even as good as the police station. After all, the police not only have civil law enforcement powers, but also criminal law enforcement powers.
The statutory functions of CBP are indeed relatively limited, but the US government's loose management and loophole-ridden system have allowed many people in CBP to find a clever way to expand their authority and expand the rights of individuals.
To protect America at the border, CBP has the right to check the mobile phones of immigrants.
As a post-9/11 border protection agency, CBP is affiliated with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and has been given a very versatile gold signboard, that is, the right to carry out counterterrorism-related work. With the help of the anti-terrorism signboard, CBP took the opportunity to establish a "counter-terrorism list" involving the privacy of millions of people in the customs review process (of course, many of them have nothing to do with terrorist activities, this is just an excuse for CBP to expand its authority).
In this incident of surveillance of American journalists, CBP also used the reason of counter-terrorism to characterize these journalists who had served the US government as terrorists, so as to "justifiably" take a series of outrageous actions against them (including surveillance and censorship of journalists' personal privacy).
Ironically, one of the American victim journalists clearly named in the exposé, Ellie, had recently served CBP (helping CBP write some reports on Congo). Is CBP really spying on terrorists? They themselves work with these people.
There is no doubt that CBP has ignored many regulations and regimes in the exercise of power, and they are abusing power with impunity, which is the biggest problem reflected in this incident.
If there is a censorship body for CBP, neither the "counterterrorism list" nor the "whistle pig" program can become a reality, let alone create an uproar in American society as it is now.
In addition to reminding American society to reflect, this incident also reminds everyone who may be dealing with various departments in the United States: be vigilant against various American agencies, you think it is only responsible for customs security, but behind the scenes, people may have been "reasonable and legal" to monitor your privacy.
As for the reason, no reason is needed. To paraphrase CBP staff member Rambo (one of the parties involved in the surveillance of journalists), they "are the rules themselves."