[said:]
Rice has not commented on the report. It would likely be legal for Rice to request the unmasking—“The standard for senior officials to learn the names of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that it must have some foreign intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything,” Lake notes.
As Lake notes, nothing he—or anyone else—has uncovered lends credence to President Trump’s outlandish and unsupported claim that Obama ordered surveillance of him at Trump Tower prior to the election. Nor does the new story suggest any illegal behavior on Rice’s part. As with each step in the story, this one offers only a small sliver of information. Many experts seem to think the Bloomberg View story does not imply anything improper or unusual. Others withheld judgment, saying there’s simply not enough information to judge.
“In a situation where there’s incidental collection and it appears that they’re discussing U.S. incoming or current officials, it would not be unusual for a national security adviser to try to understand what it is this foreign government is trying to do to manipulate their position against the U.S.,” said Nada Bakos, a former CIA analyst and national-security commentator. “That’s how the game is played.”
Key words are “incidental surveillance”. That means no direct surveillance hence no reason for their names to be unmasked. She would of course have the legal right to do it but it would be the same as them catching a part of a ordinary persons conversation with Bernie Sanders and then she asks them to unmask both of those names even though they had nothing to do with what they were looking for, hence the term incidental, which is what the conversation would have been.
LOL