Date: 8 October 2007

CIA at 60: Domestic Surveillance Continues

Sixty years ago, the U.S. National Security Act led to the creation of the CIA. The spy agency was not supposed to spy on Americans, but KUCI's Subversity host Dan Tsang found out the CIA was spying on him. He took the CIA to federal court, with the help of the ACLU and the Center for National Security Studies, and prevailed. In an out-of-court settlement, the CIA promised to not spy on him again and promised to expunge anything collected on his First-Amendment-protected activities.

Subversity takes this 60th anniversary of the CIA as the opportunity to look back at the CIA and its history of domestic surveilance, before and after 9/11. We air a 1999 interview we did with attorney Kate Martin, of the Center for National Security Studies, who represented Tsang in his Privacy Act lawsuit against the CIA, as well as portions from an hour-long interivew, taped this past July for KUCI show host Mari Frank's "Privacy Piracy" show (www.kuci.org/privacypiracy/#09_12_07) where Frank interviewed Martin and Tsang about his lawsuit that exposed CIA domestic spying after the Privacy Act was enacted supposedly to prevent such illegal activities. We talk about how the CIA used the National Security Act to illegally spy on Tsang. Although the CIA settled the case with Tsang, a U.S. citizen at birth, it refused to promise to not spy on other Americans (or permanent residents).

Subversity airs Monday, October 8, 2007, from 9-10 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in California, and is webcast via http://kuci.org.

For more information, see:

Tsang, Daniel C., "A CIA Target at Home in America," Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1998, M1-M2 (op ed): sun3.lib.uci.edu/~dtsang/ciatarget.htm.

Tsang, Daniel C. "Eyes Only: The Central Intelligence Agency versus Daniel C. Tsang," CovertAction Quarterly, No. 65 (Fall 1998), 60-63. (UCI Langson Library Basement Bound Periodicals Call Number JK468 I6 C68)

Friel, Brian, "CIA Double Checks its FAQs," GovernmentExecutive.com, January 7, 1998: /www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0198/010798b1.htm

Martin, Kate, "Letter to the Edtior," Washington Post, sent February 12, 1997: http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~dtsang/cnss.pdf

Kindy, Kimberly, "Prying Eyes were Watching UCI's Library Activist: Daniel Tsang Battled the CIA for Keeping a File on Him, and the Agency Backed Off, Orange County Register, January 25, 1998. UCI-licensed link

dan

-- 
Daniel C. Tsang
Host, "Subversity" and "Syndicated Potpourri" on KUCI
88.9 FM in Orange County/http://www.kuci.org
dtsang@kuci.org
Subversity site: http://kuci.org/~dtsang
Broadcasting since September 1993
Syndicated Potpourri site: http://kuci.org/~dtsang/synpot/
Broadcasting since October 2007
KUCI Full-text Archive: http://kuci.org/~dtsang/kucift.html