Oregon Hill Lawmakers Want DHS to Answer Claims It Spied in Portland Protests
Sen. Ron Wyden and three other Oregon Democrats sought answers Friday from the Department of Homeland Security about reports it spied on Portland protesters’ cellphones this summer. "Congress has a responsibility to investigate,” Wyden, Sen. Jeff Merkley and Reps. Earl…
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Blumenauer and Suzanne Bonamic wrote acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf. They asked for information by Oct. 9, including why DHS hasn’t responded to a July 31 letter from Wyden and six members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asking to confirm the accuracy of then-acting DHS Undersecretary-Intelligence and Analysis Brian Murphy's July 23 statement during a briefing for committee staff that the department “neither collected nor exploited or analyzed information obtained from the devices or accounts of protesters or detainees.” The lawmakers now asked Wolf to detail any instances in which DHS, “whether directly, or with the assistance of any other government agency, obtained or analyzed data extracted from phones of protesters in Portland” and whether the department “obtained or analyzed data collected through the surveillance of protesters’ phones.” They want to know if the agency “used commercial data sources.” The department didn’t comment.