What Do US Spies Do? Don’t Ask America’s Espionage Chiefs

  • Spy chiefs miss deadline to define intelligence terms
  • Civil liberties rest on spying terms’ definitions, Wyden says

Avril Haines 

Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
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US lawmakers want the intelligence community to define what it does. They still don’t have an answer.

US intelligence agencies blew through a Sept. 30 deadline to define 23 terms such as “open source intelligence” and “signals intelligence” that would help explain how they conduct espionage. That’s prompting fresh concern from Congress and civil-society groups.