FISA-702 authorization expires on April 19th. That’s the authorization for warrantless spying that is supposed to be limited to foreign nationals residing outside the United States. However, in indisputable fact, access to the NSA database in question is routinely used to spy on Americans, particularly those who do not agree with the policies of the current government. Of course, this is unconstitutional but they do it anyway.
This is an outgrowth of the Patriot Act. The country must be protected at all costs, they said. However, such access to spying on people creates power. Those in power relish the idea of continuing to have such power and to grow such power.
Thankfully, President Trump understands how the FISA system is used as the main tool of the intelligence community (IC) to retain power. Trump was a victim of this power during his 2016 presidential campaign. This power was arrayed against him during his presidency. And clearly has continued to this day
Without the legal use of 702 authority – and if the IC was held to account for the violations therein – all of the power could shift dramatically in the DC system.
Tucker Carlson has done a broadcast on this very issue. The commentary about HPSCI Chairman Mike Turner is hits the nail on the head. The analysis of Speaker Mike Johnson’s agenda also appears to be quite accurate.
We know from their own documents that a boatload of illegal searches (up to 9,999) were done on Republican primary candidates from November 2015 through May 2016.
Moving forward to today, let’s be reminded that during Joe Biden’s first year at the White House, there were over 1.1 million “illegal database searches.” How were such searches exploited? By whom were those searches made?
As Sundance has told us:
IG Horowitz also admitted that somewhere north of 10,000 federal employees have access to conduct these searches of the NSA database; a database which contains the electronic data of every single American, including emails, text messages, social media posts, instant messages, direct messages, phone calls, geolocation identifiers, purchases by electronic funds, banking records and any keystroke any American person puts into any electronic device for any reason.
And Congress is debating this? We have an all encompassing surveillance system that the Gestapo, the East German Stasi and the KGB would have drooled over. What has happened to the Fourth Amendment?
Senator Frank Church (D-ID) on Meet the Press 1975:
If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
FISA among other things was the result of the Church Committee.
We are now controlled by those who run the IC agencies. Only 19 votes by Republican Freedom Caucus has stymied the re-authorization for the moment.
UPDATE: Re-authorization for two years took place on Friday.