The Bipartisan Love of Domestic Surveillance

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) section 702 was enacted as part of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. This section ostensibly allows the U.S. government to conduct surveillance on foreign targets, yet the system is used continually by the NSA, FBI and others to collect on American citizens without justification, without a warrant and without any connection to a crime.

Similar to the infant FBI in its J. Edgar Hoover days, the criminal activities carried out by government angents include backdoor searches, dragnet bulk election, unmasking and targeting lists which all open the door for a flood of abuses. Since the 2008 amendments this has been allowed to continue with bipartisan support from Congress. Repeated abuse, lies and cover-ups have continually come before the FISA court. NSA continued to demonstrate a criminal disregard for the law until it was forced to abandon (allegedly) it’s unconstitutional bulk collection. Yet the FBI continues with similar abuse. In fact for over a decade, the federal government has NOT ONCE been in compliance with either the law or the Constitution.

All of this abuse was confirmed by three FISA court opinions released by the Director of National Intelligence.
1.https://www.intel.gov/assets/documents/702%20Documents/declassified/2018_Cert_FISC_Opin_18Oct18.pdf

2.https://www.intel.gov/assets/documents/702%20Documents/declassified/2018_Cert_FISCR_Opinion_12Jul19.pdf
3.https://www.intel.gov/assets/documents/702%20Documents/declassified/2018_Cert_FISC_Opinion_04Sep19.pdf

In this opinion it was reported that the FBI had conducted over 3.1 million queries (in just one system) on U.S. persons’ collected under FISA 702 without proper justification. The FISA court in this case declared that these actions violated the fourth amendment, yet predictably the court still refused to require warrants. Instead the court said agents “which have no understanding of the legal requirements” must document their reasons for violating the Constitution. Perhaps, that way the overseers that show up every two years and look at a handful of these inquiries might have something to read while they go through the motions of rubber-stamping the crimes committed by the FBI.

House Republicans have confirmed in their most recent vote that they still support the criminal activity of the FBI; they have NO regard for the rule of law; and have NO respect for the people they represent. How can the House GOP make a show of complaining about the treatment of J6 protestors while simultaneously affirming the gestapo apparatus responsible? Now the bill goes to the Senate. It is likely that the democrat-controlled Senate will be in lock-step with the Republican-controlled House since they serve the same masters who profit from the surveillance state and war machine.