Our intelligence agencies have broad discretion that impacts innocent citizens. What do you think about this?

From The Federalist. Intelligence agencies, with the help of the current regime, market Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to Congress as a means to keep Americans safe from foreign threats. Instead, as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee demonstrated on Tuesday, it’s become a proven loophole that lets verifiably corrupt bureaucrats spy on Americans.

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Nearly two decades after its inception, Section 702 has easily become the security apparatus’ favorite excuse to conduct backdoor, warrantless surveillance on American citizens. The FBI’s infamous and illegal targeting of 2016 Trump campaign adviser Carter Page is one of the most prominent examples of this trend. …

Power Grab

If anything was made abundantly clear during the course of the hours-long hearing, the last thing bureaucrats responsible for decades of power abuses want to see is the policy that harbors those abuses to die. The high-level FBI, CIA, DOJ, DNI, and NSA witnesses spent most of their testimonies begging Congress to keep Section 702 intact.

Without Section 702, specifically, NSA Deputy Director George Barnes claimed, “our ability to preserve the nation’s security would be significantly impaired.” …

Rumblings amongst the establishment wings of the Republican party similarly suggest that some legislators may seek a straight reauthorization of FISA in its current iteration. Among those publicly against assertions that the only way to fix Section 702 is by eliminating it are some of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s closest allies.

Sen. Lindsey Graham opened his line of questioning by trying to sell Americans, who hold a deep distrust of the DOJ and FBI following its partisan actions in recent years, on the idea that foreign adversaries like ISIS, China, and Russia will be unchecked if Congress meddles with Section 702.

“I guess what I’m trying to tell my constituents back home [is] the threats to the country are growing; they’re not lessening,” the South Carolina Republican said. …

Democrats like Durbin and Sen. Mazie Hirono agreed that Section 702 at least needs to be remarkably reformed before getting Congress’ approval.

“I will only support the reauthorization of section 702 if there are significant, significant reforms,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin said.

During the hearing, Deputy Director FBI Paul Abbate claimed his agency already began rolling out reforms such as a “three-strike rule” that will carry “rapidly escalating consequences” for those agents who supposedly initiate queries, a process that gives officials warrantless access to data collected under FISA, “unintentionally.”

Some of the intelligence bureaucrats claimed to be open to even more reforms, but that’s contradicted by several of their actions. Months before the hearing, witness Assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen of the DOJ’s National Security Division lobbied for the rubber stamping of Section 702 without any changes. …

Congress Cannot Keep Enabling Corruption

Even if Olsen’s mind opened up to the possibility of reforms, no self-respecting congressman should approve modifications that they know, when attached to Section 702 in previous years, never took root.

Congress attempted to introduce FISA reforms dedicated to advancing “the protection of individual privacy and civil liberties” in 2015. A recently declassified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion from 2022 confirmed that those were practically worthless because the FBI was still able to use Section 702 to justify what the FISC called a “pattern of conducting broad, suspicionless queries.” …

[The] government initiated hundreds of thousands of breaches of Americans’ private information, data, and messages without consent or consequence. Based on that number, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin estimated that “billions” more “communications are collected and stored on government databases” each year under the same rationale.

As Republican Sen. Mike Lee pointed out on Twitter during the hearing, “That’s unconstitutional!” …

⚠️ FISA SECTION 702: "Year after year we hear of instances of non-compliance including the disclosure, just last month, that the FBI illegally surveilled 19,000 donors to a Congressional campaign." @SenMikeLee #ampFW pic.twitter.com/neu6mLcg15

— FreedomWorks (@FreedomWorks) June 13, 2023

“Reforms” have been tried and ultimately failed, which is why some Republicans are harnessing FISA as one of the many ways they could rein in the wayward security state. …

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(Excerpt from The Federalist. Photo Credit: Canva)