I'm not happy with the spying on foreigners, but sounds like it could be used as an excuse to spy on Americans.Biden Admin Seeking Reauthorization for FISA Warrantless Surveillance of Foreigners
The Biden administration wants to reauthorize a key legal passage allowing US intelligence agencies to spy on foreigners without seeking a warrant - even when they interact with Americans.
Only “incidentally”? What a relief.... Congress passed FISA in 1978 in the wake of the Church Committee and other investigations that had revealed the essentially unchecked behavior of US intelligence services since the 1940s, including especially the CIA. The law was intended to systematize and legalize surveillance processes by forcing them through a secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).Section 702 was created in 2008 as part of a broader expansion of FISA, and allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct searches of foreigners' communications without a warrant. It “incidentally” also surveils Americans with whom those foreigners interact, according to US intel agencies.
282,500 per month...According to the report, the FBI queried Section 702 data an estimated 3.39 million times between December 1, 2020, and November 30, 2021. It noted that the FBI had previously been found to be abusing the FISA process in 2018.Abuse of FISC and of Section 702 has long been exposed by whistleblowers, but so have US intelligence reports themselves. One report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) published in April 2022 showed extensive evidence of the FBI searching through data acquired under the act without first seeking FISC authorization, which must accompany a search for explicit information.
9,288 per day
Busy busy snoops.
Republicans have strongly objected to Section 702, noting that the FBI abused the FISC as part of the Russiagate investigation in which Democrats and pro-Hillary Clinton parts of the state claimed that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was aided by the Russian government. With the GOP in control of the US House of Representatives, reauthorizing Section 702 will be easier said than done.“The fact that Section 702 surveillance regularly results in the collection and search of innocent Americans’ communications is an intended and inherent part of the system,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a pro-privacy group, said in a blog post. “That means the government casts a spying net that routinely catches the communications of law-abiding Americans, who are protected by the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections.”
Most of that has been debunked by Durham's utter failures. Besides, the RepuQs are just as technofascist as the Dems. They'll make some noise, "win" some minor changes or unrelated concessions that they can brag about, then vote for the reauthorization en masse.
Always our favorite AG.Ahead of the impending battle, DNI Avril Haines and Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a joint letter to Congress arguing for its renewal, and other top Justice Department officials have made similar appeals to the major conservative think tanks.
