Some folks don’t understand unmasking. It’s totally understandable. The NSA intercepts all of our phone calls. Then, if there is a target they are watching from another country on the other end of the phone or there is actionable intelligence, they mask the name of the (cont)

US person on the other end of the call, in order to preserve their constitutional rights. But once that report they generate from the call is dispersed, if the person receiving the report requests, the agency will “unmask” the US person to give greater context to the report.

There’s a lot more here in terms of actions taken at the very end of the Obama admin to make the rules for u masking MUCH more lax, and allow a much more widespread application of the principle, but in essence the people on the list said “hey, we need to see who (cont)

this foreigner is talking to. Could you please unmask their name so we can understand better”.