# Trump accuses Obama of wiretapping him **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 4, 2017, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384 "2017-03-04T15:07:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 38
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/741 "2017-04-01T19:57:03Z")
> [@Okrahoma](#): > > If you say so. How well do you know everyone you talk to? Are you sure none of them are criminals or spies? I don’t know for sure. I talk to a lot of people. I talk to vendors, I talk to clients, I talk to my friends and family. I don’t think any of them are targets of criminal investigations, but it entirely possible that in some of my conversations with the fairly large number of people I communicate with, that some of them may have been. I do know the content of those conversations is nothing illegal, so even if for some reason one of them had done something to catch the eye of some LEO, they won’t have any interest in me. I would not consider any incidental recordings of someone I spoke to who LEO is watching to be me under surveillance. If I hang up the phone with the suspected individual, and call someone else, I am no longer being recorded. > [@Okrahoma](#): > > I already showed above that under Reuters’ and other news sources’ definition of the concept, yes, they were under surveillance. If Trump and/or his team get done talking to the criminals and/or spies that they are talking to, and then pick up the phone to call someone who is not a criminal or a spy, and they are not recorded at that time, then that means that they are not under surveillance. What part of this are you not understanding? Are you trying to claim that somehow, Trump and/or his team should be exempt from being recorded? That if a criminal or spy gets a call from Trump and/or his team, that whatever agency is watching that criminal or spy must turn off their collection equipment? ---
**Author:** ![Okrahoma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90db22/32.png) [@Okrahoma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Okrahoma)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/742 "2017-04-01T20:04:33Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > What part of this are you not understanding? Are you trying to claim that somehow, Trump and/or his team should be exempt from being recorded? Under the current rules, unless the identity of the third party is indispensable to the intelligence contained in the intercept, unmasking that identity is a crime. Even if it is done for political purposes to embarrass that third party. Is that the part you’re not understanding? According to Nunes, based on the documents he has seen (and note that Schiff went strangely silent after viewing the same documents) such unmasking was clearly not necessary. Thus a crime. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/743 "2017-04-01T20:22:12Z")
> [@Okrahoma](#): > > I already showed above that under Reuters’ and other news sources’ definition of the concept, yes, they were under surveillance. Why play semantic pretzel games just to justify an ill-advised and evidence-free tweet? Trump just saw something on Fox News and said it as if it was a fact, thus continuing his history of making baseless claims about Obama. That’s dumb and indefensible, no matter what word games you try and play. Why defend it? ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/744 "2017-04-01T20:24:46Z")
> [@Okrahoma](#): > > Under the current rules, unless the identity of the third party is indispensable to the intelligence contained in the intercept, unmasking that identity is a crime. Even if it is done for political purposes to embarrass that third party. Is that the part you’re not understanding? My understanding of the situation was not that the people were “unmaseked” as it were, but that it was relatively easy to tell, from the content of their convestaions, who the people were that were being recorded. There is also the fact that “masking” involves simply generalizing, so a [Minimized presidential candidate] would be perfectly within the masking rules, even though it’s not really all that discreet. But I do take it that since you are on the unmasking path, that you have completely at this time given up making the claim that they were “under surveillance”, right? You are admitting that Trump’s tweets about Obama being bad or sick for having his wires tapped was complete fabrication based on absolutely nothing but what he half remembered from a Fox segment? > [@](#): > > According to Nunes, based on the documents he has seen (and note that Schiff went strangely silent after viewing the same documents) such unmasking was clearly not necessary. Thus a crime. We’ll see about Nunes’ credibility later, but even taking his claims at face value, it’s still not surveillance, and it’s still not necessarily unmasking. You should also note that the reason that Schiff may have “gone silent” is because they were looking at classified intelligence, and talking about it, as Nunes did was a crime that Schiff did not want to join Nunes in committing. ---
**Author:** ![Okrahoma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90db22/32.png) [@Okrahoma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Okrahoma)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/745 "2017-04-01T20:29:37Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > But I do take it that since you are on the unmasking path, that you have completely at this time given up making the claim that they were “under surveillance”, right? Absolutely not, as I explained above, with numerous cites. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/746 "2017-04-01T20:30:38Z")
> [@Okrahoma](#): > > Under the current rules, unless the identity of the third party is indispensable to the intelligence contained in the intercept, unmasking that identity is a crime. Even if it is done for political purposes to embarrass that third party. Is that the part you’re not understanding? > > According to Nunes, based on the documents he has seen (and note that Schiff went strangely silent after viewing the same documents) such unmasking was clearly not necessary. Thus a crime. Silent about what? > **[Rep. Adam Schiff Sees Nothing In Nunes' Secret Documents That Can't Be Shared](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/schiff-nunes-intelligence-committees_n_58df11a0e4b0c777f787a8f1)** > > "These materials should now be provided to the full membership of both committees." AFAIK the “silence” is because what you claim could be a crime,\*\* if there was evidence\*\*, as it is so far Schiff does not care much because the unmasking does not change the issue. (it is also telling that the evidence being used to claim that there was an unmasking is coming from the say so of the informants on the White House and the very unreliable narrator who is Nunes) > **[The Right Spreads Baseless Lie That Nunes Just Validated Trump’s Baseless Lies](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/03/no-nuness-information-did-not-vindicate-trumps-tweets.html)** > > Even if the House Intelligence Chair’s allegations are true, they do not remotely vindicate the president’s “wiretap” claims. > [@](#): > > Normally, when American citizens gets swept up in such surveillance, their names are “masked” in intelligence reports — unless revealing their names is necessary to further an investigation.\*\* But Nunes says that he has seen reports in which Trump transition officials had their names “unmasked” — even though said reports had no intelligence value.\*\* > > \*\*Nunes did not make public the intelligence reports in question, and he attributed his information to an anonymous source. \*\*He provided no evidence that the alleged “unmasking” was unnecessary to any and all federal investigations. > > But if we stipulate that Nunes’s darkest insinuations are true, then intelligence operatives abused their “unmasking” powers to spread sensitive information about the incoming administration throughout the intelligence community. > > \*\*This would be a serious charge, worthy of investigation. It also would not “vindicate” the president’s “wiretap” claims in any way. > \*\* > But don’t tell that to the president or his most trusted news source. > Image > > Per Breitbart’s Joel Pollak: > > > [@](#): > > > > ``` > > Nunes’s information — which he said he would deliver to the White House later — vindicates the bulk of Trump’s claims earlier this month…Though the media, and the political opposition, had attacked Trump for his claims about wiretapping, he later clarified that he had used the term to refer to surveillance in a general sense. He also suggested that more evidence would soon emerge. The result is a vindication of Trump’s controversial claims. > > > > ``` > > The president of the United States retweeted similar sentiments from conspiracy theorist (and leading election forecaster) Bill Mitchell. > Trump further suggested that Nunes had vindicated his tweets, in an interview with Time magazine. > > “When I said wiretapping, it was in quotes,” Trump told the outlet. “And today, [House Intelligence Committee Chairman] Devin Nunes just had a news conference … And a lot of information has just been learned, and a lot of information may be learned over the next coming period of time.” > > This is one of those days when living in Trump’s America feels like being conscripted into a cult. > > Nunes did not vindicate the “bulk of Trump’s claims.” Trump claimed that Barack Obama, a “bad (or sick) guy,” was “tapping my phones in October.” The words tapping and phones were not written in quotes. The president further claimed that this “tapping” was quite likely illegal, saying “I bet a good lawyer could make a great case” out of it. > > \*\*Nunes’s story is that intelligence operatives may have improperly unmasked the names of Trump officials whose communications were intercepted via routine, legal surveillance — after Election Day. > > This story does not vindicate the “bulk of Trump’s claims.” It does not vindicate any of Trump’s claims. > \*\* > Which is to say: The president, and his allies, are trying to prove that he isn’t a shameless liar by spreading a shameless lie. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/747 "2017-04-01T20:31:25Z")
> [@Okrahoma](#): > > I already showed above that under Reuters’ and other news sources’ definition of the concept, yes, they were under surveillance. No, there’s a substantive difference you are overlooking. The FISA 215 program to collect metadata from phone calls is directly intended to sweep up as much data as possible on anyone calling anyone in the United States. To the extent that one seeks to argue that everyone in the US is being surveilled for who is calling whom, I would say that there is an important nuance that the surveillance is extremely low levels of intrusion. If I call you and we talk about Cecil Adams, and someone in the government collects the actual content of our conversation about Cecil, and shares that content about Cecil with other people, there isn’t any fucking possible universe in which Cecil is under surveillance. Nothing Cecil did in this scenario was monitored or collected. It is impossible to call this surveillance of Cecil. ---
**Author:** ![Okrahoma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90db22/32.png) [@Okrahoma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Okrahoma)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/748 "2017-04-01T20:35:56Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > No, there’s a substantive difference you are overlooking. The FISA 215 program to collect metadata from phone calls is directly intended to sweep up as much data as possible on anyone calling anyone in the United States. To the extent that one seeks to argue that everyone in the US is being surveilled for who is calling whom, I would say that there is an important nuance that the surveillance is extremely low levels of intrusion. And even with that “low level” Reuters still called those people “under surveillance”. Some of the other links I gave describe much higher “levels” of surveillance. None of the links described court-ordered surveillance of people, and they were still characterized by those news sources as “under surveillance”. ---
**Author:** ![Okrahoma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90db22/32.png) [@Okrahoma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Okrahoma)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/749 "2017-04-01T20:38:30Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > [No, Nunes’s ‘Information’ Did Not Vindicate Trump’s Tweets](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/no-nuness-information-did-not-vindicate-trumps-tweets.html) That article is from more than a week ago. A lot more facts were uncovered since. And yes, in spite of what the article says, if Nunes’ allegations are correct, it would show that Trump was in fact “under surveillance” and that a crime has been committed by people in the intelligence community under Obama administration. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/750 "2017-04-01T20:53:33Z")
> [@Okrahoma](#): > > That article is from more than a week ago. A lot more facts were uncovered since. And yes, in spite of what the article says, if Nunes’ allegations are correct, it would show that Trump was in fact “under surveillance” and that a crime has been committed by people in the intelligence community under Obama administration. The facts uncovered are more damming to Nunes. [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-30/devin-nunes-and-the-tragedy-of-the-russia-inquiry](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-30/devin-nunes-and-the-tragedy-of-the-russia-inquiry) > [@](#): > > Last week, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Devin Nunes, announced dozens of intelligence reports that inappropriately included details on President Donald Trump’s transition. This week, he told me that his source for that information was an intelligence official, not a White House staffer. > > It turns out, he misled me. The New York Times reported Thursday that Nunes had two sources, and both worked for the White House. This distinction is important because it raises questions about the independence of the congressional investigation Nunes is leading, which may lead to officials at the White House. > > Nunes is leading a double investigation of sorts. His committee is probing ties between the Trump campaign and Russia’s influence operation against the 2016 election. It’s also looking into whether Barack Obama’s White House inappropriately spied on Trump’s transition. > > The chairman told me Thursday that elements of the Times story were inaccurate. But he acknowledged: “I did use the White House to help to confirm what I already knew from other sources.” This is a body blow for Nunes, who presented his findings last week as if they were surprising to the White House. He briefed Trump, after holding a press conference on Capitol Hill. And as he was leaving the White House, he made sure to address the press again. > > But this was a show. The sources named by the Times work for the president. They are political appointees. It strains credulity to think that Trump would need Nunes to tell him about intelligence reports discovered by people who work in the White House. > > Another U.S. official familiar with the affair told me that one of the sources named in the article, former Defense Intelligence officer Ezra Cohen-Watnick, did not play a role in getting information to Nunes. This official said Cohen-Watnick had come upon the reports while working on a review of recent Justice Department rules that made it easier for intelligence officials to share the identities of U.S. persons swept up in surveillance. He turned them over to White House lawyers. > > The fact that a serious investigation is being undermined by Nunes’s ever-changing story is a tragedy ---
**Author:** ![Okrahoma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90db22/32.png) [@Okrahoma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Okrahoma)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/751 "2017-04-01T20:59:45Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > The facts uncovered are more damming to Nunes. > > [Bloomberg - Are you a robot?](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-30/devin-nunes-and-the-tragedy-of-the-russia-inquiry) The “fact” that it was White House people that gave Nunes the materials is bullshit: > **[Intelligence official who 'unmasked' Trump associates is 'very high up,'...](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/intelligence-official-who-unmasked-trump-associates-is-very-high-up-source-says)** > > The U.S. intelligence official who “unmasked,” or exposed, the names of multiple private citizens affiliated with the Trump team is someone “very well known, very high up, very senior in the intelligence world,” a source told Fox News on Friday. “Nunes has known about the unmasking controversy since January, when two sources in the intelligence community approached him. The sources told Nunes who was responsible and at least one of the Trump team names that was unmasked. They also gave him serial numbers of reports that documented the activity.” … "Nunes had asked intelligence agencies to see the reports in question, but was stonewalled. He eventually was able to view them, but there was only one safe place to see the documents without compromising the sources’ identities – the old executive office building on White House grounds, which has a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) required to view classified or top secret reports. The White House did not tell Nunes about the existence of the intelligence reports, but did help him gain access to the documents at his request, the source said." ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/752 "2017-04-01T21:02:53Z")
"…"Nunes had asked intelligence agencies to see the reports in question, but was stonewalled. He eventually was able to view them, but there was only one safe place to see the documents without compromising the sources’ identities – the old executive office building on White House grounds…" Ooh, sounds like such a thrilling movie! ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/753 "2017-04-01T21:05:44Z")
> [@bobot](#): > > "…"Nunes had asked intelligence agencies to see the reports in question, but was stonewalled. > > He eventually was able to view them, but there was only one safe place to see the documents without compromising the sources’ identities – the old executive office building on White House grounds…" > > Ooh, sounds like such a thrilling movie! And still one that relies only on the say so of an already unmasked unreliable narrator. And so is FOX, that Farkas bit is really bullshit as others reported. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/754 "2017-04-01T21:20:23Z")
> [@Okrahoma](#): > > And even with that “low level” Reuters still called those people “under surveillance”. Some of the other links I gave describe much higher “levels” of surveillance. None of the links described court-ordered surveillance of people, and they were still characterized by those news sources as “under surveillance”. Which article are you talking about? None of them seem to have anything at all to do with “if A and B are talking about C and D tells E about the A&B conversation; then C is being surveilled by D.” Your definition is beyond crazy; it is patently obvious it is only being made for partisan political purposes. ---
**Author:** ![Okrahoma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90db22/32.png) [@Okrahoma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Okrahoma)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/755 "2017-04-01T21:22:19Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Which article are you talking about? None of them seem to have anything at all to do with “if A and B are talking about C and D tells E about the A&B conversation; then C is being surveilled by D.” And if that was the case in the Nunes-revealed reports, I would agree. But it doesn’t seem to be. It seems to be about conversations where Trump or some of his people were actually one of the parties and were unmasked in the reports. If so - then yes, they were “under surveillance”. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/756 "2017-04-01T21:35:16Z")
> [@Okrahoma](#): > > And if that was the case in the Nunes-revealed reports, I would agree. But it doesn’t seem to be. It seems to be about conversations where Trump or some of his people were actually one of the parties and were unmasked in the reports. If so - then yes, they were “under surveillance”. Uh, I would think though that we are working with people that are telling us that those names that were allegedly unmasked were not supposed to be: in other words, the very fact that they were **were supposed to be masked** points to those people **as not supposed to be under surveillance**. This seems to me that we have agents that support Trump that decided to make their own narrative and like in the case of the emails in the Weiner laptop to push the authorities to do their bidding. Everything that I saw about the Weiner emails points to agents on the field that also spiced their reports so as to get people like Comey to react in a predictable way and influence the election. In this case I suspect that the agents have also used pumped accusations to get Nunes to dance just as they wanted him to do so as to prop up president Trump. ---
**Author:** ![Okrahoma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90db22/32.png) [@Okrahoma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Okrahoma)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/757 "2017-04-01T21:47:53Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Uh, I would think though that we are working with people that are telling us that those names that were allegedly unmasked were not supposed to be: in other words, the very fact that they were **were supposed to be masked** points to those people **as not supposed to be under surveillance**. This seems to me that we have agents that support Trump that decided to make their own narrative and like in the case of the emails in the Weiner laptop to push the authorities to do their bidding. > Everything that I saw about the Weiner emails points to agents on the field that also spiced their reports so as to get people like Comey to react in a predictable way and influence the election. In this case I suspect that the agents have also used pumped accusations to get Nunes to dance just as they wanted him to do so as to prop up president Trump. This conspiracy theory has nothing to do with whether Trump et al were “under surveillance” or not. Whether the unmasking was justified or not has nothing to do with whether “under surveillance” applies. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/758 "2017-04-01T21:55:03Z")
> [@Okrahoma](#): > > This conspiracy theory has nothing to do with whether Trump et al were “under surveillance” or not. Whether the unmasking was justified or not has nothing to do with whether “under surveillance” applies. You are missing the point spectacularly. The unreliable narrator has insisted that the names were supposed to be masked: IOW: people that were not under surveillance. Be my guest if you want to say that they were then under surveillance because then the point comes that Nunes and others lied about the unmasking. **Because the logic tell us that if you are correct, and they were under surveillance there would never be any need for unmasking**. If Trump and others in his admin were under surveillance then there would not had been any need whatsoever of doing any masking by the spy groups. The trouble is that the narrative from the unreliable ones like Nunes is telling us that the names **were** unmasked. Again the point I make here is that unmasking makes no sense unless they were indeed originally masked \*\*AKA not under surveillance. \*\* ---
**Author:** ![Okrahoma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90db22/32.png) [@Okrahoma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Okrahoma)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/759 "2017-04-01T22:00:07Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > You are missing the point spectacularly. The unreliable narrator has insisted that the names were supposed to be masked: IOW: people that were not under surveillance. No. You cannot “mask” or “unmask” people UNLESS they were “under surveillance” to begin with. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2017, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384/760 "2017-04-01T22:07:07Z")
> [@Okrahoma](#): > > No. You cannot “mask” or “unmask” people UNLESS they were “under surveillance” to begin with. Incidental collection is NOT surveillance. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384.md?page=37) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-accuses-obama-of-wiretapping-him/781384.md?page=39)