Good day all. One of the most abused laws on the books is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA. Theoretically, it allows the government to spy in foreign nationals and property owned by foreign nationals inside the United States. It’s not supposed to be used against American citizens.
One part of FISA that has to be renewed annually is section 702. On June 13th, at 11:59 pm EST, that authorization ended and hasn’t been renewed. Here are the details from the New York Post:
The US intelligence community’s warrantless surveillance powers expired Friday night, one day after House lawmakers – including 19 Republicans – rejected a short-term extension of the program.
The three-week extension of the government’s spying authority, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), failed a House vote Thursday amid concerns over President Trump’s appointment of federal housing regulator Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence and the potential abuse of the program — setting the stage for its expiration at 11:59 p.m. Friday.
It’s unclear when congressional lawmakers will look to revive the program. House members began a scheduled 10-day recess at the end of Thursday.
The problem with renewing this section is that it has been abused almost from it’s inception. This abuse really took off under the Garland DoJ and the Wray FBI. This blew up in their faces when a court order released records of thousands of violations. According to The Hill:
The FBI repeatedly misused a surveillance tool in searching for foreign intelligence to use in cases pertaining to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and 2020 racial justice protests, according to an April 2022 court order publicly released Friday.
The order, which was released by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, is significantly redacted but reveals thousands of violations of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the federal government to collect communications between certain targeted foreign individuals outside the U.S.
One of the targets was President Trump. The Biden Maladministration was looking to utterly destroy President Trump and the Make America Great Again coalition by, literally, any means necessary. I did a little research on who appointed the judges to the bench. (The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court appoints judges to the FISA court) Only one was appointed by President Trump and he was appointed to the court in 2024. The rest? A nice mix of COBB judges. (Clinton Obama Bush and Bush) Two of the names I recognize as judges who have been quite obvious in their contempt for President Trump.
Returning to the New York Post story:
The law enables the US government to surveil non-Americans abroad without first going before a judge to get a warrant. However, that surveillance often sweeps up communications of American citizens in the process. The controversial spy power was reformed in 2024, but some critics want additional changes.
The problem has been the applications to the FISA judges. You have a number of cases where the applicants flat out lied to the court. When this was discovered, very little was done to deal with the issue. What should have happened is that the ones doing the lying should have been indicted and tried. Then you have the problem with the judges. A lot of them just rubber stamp the applications instead of doing their due diligence.
The lapse is not expected to immediately impact the ability of the US to gather foreign intelligence.
The government can still obtain warrants to conduct electronic surveillance and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court certified in March that Section 702 powers could remain in effect for another year.
“Everything that’s already been authorized and certified is already in motion, and current FISA authorizations will continue unaffected, at least through March 17, 2027,” House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said earlier this week, arguing that “government surveillance activities will continue unchanged” after Friday.
Raskin huh? I wouldn’t trust that slimy lying weasel as far as I can throw a Ford class carrier.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), however, said the lapse would put the government in “uncharted territory.”
“Once this authorization expires, the clock starts ticking,” Crawford said Wednesday. “The implications get worse every single day. While the 702 database would remain available to search, the data in that database will become increasingly out of date.”
Crawford noted that phone and internet service providers may refuse to comply with government requests for data after Section 702 expires.
How about they just go and get a regular warrant? You know, fill out the appropriate affidavits, go to a federal judge, (Not one of those pretend Magistrate judges), and get approval? You know, like they normally would.
Now there is some benefit to the FISA Section 702 laws. They have broken up terrorist attacks. The problem is the abuse of the FISA warrants that occurred during the declaration of Lawfare against President Trump and other Americans that the Democrats considered to be their enemies.
The Democrats blocking this aren’t interested in making any corrections, or they would have proposed them. For them it’s all about getting points in their “War on America, Donald Trump and anyone who wants to Make America Great Again.” For them, they flat out don’t care who gets killed by their actions. (As long as it isn’t them of course)
The program has been credited with providing the US with intelligence used to kill al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022 and thwart a terrorist attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Austria in 2024.
There was a planned terrorist attack on a Taylor Swift concert? Now I’m not one of her fans, but I know damn well that her fans, the so called “Swifties,” are fanatics. If something were to happen to her and some of her fans at a concert, and it led back to either the Democrats or Republicans playing games, That political Party would be destroyed.
While there are Republicans who think that FISA and Section 702 are a problem, they don’t actually want anyone hurt. They understand that just blocking it, (For most of them. There are morons in the GOP as well), is not a way to protect the Constitution. They want some changes that more closely follow the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Democrats. If they can’t use it to go after their enemies, then burn it to the ground and then blame everyone else.
I’m in the “It needs careful review and reform” camp. I don’t have a problem with spying on the communications of foreign nationals outside of the United States. We do need a way to better deal with what to do when the calls and communications of Americans are picked up. Frankly, I’m not qualified on how to best figure this out. How about you people?
Thatisall
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