Spy agencies’ focus on China could snare Chinese Americans

As U.S. intelligence agencies ramp up their efforts against China, top officials acknowledge they may also end up collecting more phone calls and emails from Chinese Americans, raising new concerns about spying affecting civil liberties.

A new report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence makes several recommendations, including expanding unconscious bias training and reiterating internally that federal law bans targeting someone solely due to their ethnicity.

U.S. intelligence agencies are under constant pressure to better understand China's decision-making on issues including nuclear weapons,geopolitics and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic , and have responded with new centers and programs focusing on Beijing. While there's bipartisan support for a tougher U.S. approach to China, civil rights groups and advocates are concerned about the disparate effect of enhanced surveillance on people of Chinese descent.

As one example, people who speak to relatives or contacts in China could be more likely to have their communications swept up, though intelligence agencies can't quantify how often due in part to civil liberties concerns.

There's a long history of U.S. government discrimination against groups of citizens in the name of national security.

Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps during World War II, Black leaders were spied upon during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and mosques were surveilled after the Sept. 11 attacks. Chinese Americans have faced discrimination going back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first law to explicitly ban immigration from a specific ethnic community.

Aryani Ong, co-founder of the advocacy group Asian American Federal Employees for Non...