“Is Ken Klippenstein, or any other American dissenter on the watchlist?” the official asks rhetorically. “No, and there really is no legal way for such a person to even be surveilled, let alone watchlisted, without legal predicate” — that is, without evidence that that the person has committed, or is about to commit, a crime.

“You might think that ‘about to commit’ is a loophole, but up until NSPM-7, it wasn’t,” the intelligence official said. He went on to explain that a combination of post-Watergate reforms, Congressional actions after mass-surveillance and Snowden revelations, and the FBI’s own rules, had created a web of limits. 

“Until now,” he said.