Robert Eatinger, whose name was redacted 1,600 times in the Senate Torture report, and who went on to file a crime report against Senate staffers for using materials provided to them by CIA, is complaining about lack of trust in this summary of Edward Snowden’s role in surveillance debates.
“The loss in trust with the U.S. public and businesses has a real operational effect. Despite Hollywood portrayals, U.S. intelligence has limited authorities, personnel, and resources,” Robert Eatinger, former senior deputy general counsel at the CIA, said. “Our intelligence agencies depend on the willingness of U.S. persons and companies to provide information and assistance, either voluntarily or through a contract mechanism. A loss in trust reduces the number of Americans willing to assist our intelligence agencies. It reduces not only voluntary assistance but also the number of companies willing to enter into contracts.”
“We have seen recent examples of major U.S. companies not only declining to help U.S. intelligence, but activity seeking to frustrate it. Perhaps the most obvious is Twitter, Inc.’s recent directive to the data analytics company Dataminr to cease selling data, not precisely defined in the press reporting, to U.S. intelligence agencies,” Eatinger added.
At least according to Twitter, this is a false representation of what has happened. Twitter says that its policy on Dataminr selling data to the intelligence community is longstanding, not a recent change.
Constitution Project’s Katherine Hawkins actually tried to have Eatinger’s name unredacted in the released summary via the formal process to do so, with no luck.
I can think of few things that have eroded trust in recent years than the serial coverups of CIA’s torture, in which Eatinger has had a central role.
So I guess they went to the expert in eroding trust.