Patriot,
The Deep State has their back up against the wall.
Another bombshell dropped late last week on the unconstitutional warrantless surveillance law the Deep State has used to illegally spy on millions of American citizens for years.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was supposedly intended for spying on foreigners to thwart terrorist threats, but as documents have proven and whistleblowers have testified, the FBI used it to conduct hundreds of thousands of illegal, warrantless searches of Americans’ private data.
And now, the government’s official Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board just released a report spotlighting the systemic abuses of Section 702 and unanimously calling for reforms in how federal agencies can use this data, with some members of the board calling for even stronger changes.
According to the report:
The Board explains that although Section 702 targets can only be non-U.S. persons,
through incidental collection the government acquires a substantial amount of U.S. persons’ communications as well.
While the term may make this collection sound insignificant, and we do not yet know the scope of incidental collection, it should not be understood as occurring infrequently or as an inconsequential part of the Section 702 program. [...]
The Board points out that once collected, subject to certain restrictions, U.S. person information may be queried, analyzed, disseminated in intelligence reports, retained, and used as evidence against the U.S. person in criminal proceedings. [...]
The Board assesses that U.S. person queries present some of the most serious privacy and civil liberties harms. Except in the very limited circumstances covered by Section 702(f)(2) for certain FBI queries, government personnel are not required by Section 702 to make any showing of suspicion that the U.S. person is engaged in any form of wrongdoing prior to using a query term associated with that specific U.S. person.
Nor does Section 702 require analysts or agents to seek approval from any judicial authority or other independent entity outside their agency. Americans’ communications captured through surveillance can include discussions of political and religious views, personal financial information, mental and physical health information, and other sensitive data.
Moreover, ordinary Americans may be in contact with Section 702 targets for business or personal reasons even if the Americans have no connection to, or reason to suspect, any wrongdoing by their foreign contacts and even when the government has no reason to believe the target has violated any U.S. law or engaged in any wrongdoing.
While the term may make this collection sound insignificant, and we do not yet know the scope of incidental collection, it should not be understood as occurring infrequently or as an inconsequential part of the Section 702 program. [...]
The Board points out that once collected, subject to certain restrictions, U.S. person information may be queried, analyzed, disseminated in intelligence reports, retained, and used as evidence against the U.S. person in criminal proceedings. [...]
The Board assesses that U.S. person queries present some of the most serious privacy and civil liberties harms. Except in the very limited circumstances covered by Section 702(f)(2) for certain FBI queries, government personnel are not required by Section 702 to make any showing of suspicion that the U.S. person is engaged in any form of wrongdoing prior to using a query term associated with that specific U.S. person.
Nor does Section 702 require analysts or agents to seek approval from any judicial authority or other independent entity outside their agency. Americans’ communications captured through surveillance can include discussions of political and religious views, personal financial information, mental and physical health information, and other sensitive data.
Moreover, ordinary Americans may be in contact with Section 702 targets for business or personal reasons even if the Americans have no connection to, or reason to suspect, any wrongdoing by their foreign contacts and even when the government has no reason to believe the target has violated any U.S. law or engaged in any wrongdoing.
In other words, it’s been exactly as we’ve said all along.
Section 702 has been abused to illegally spy on law-abiding Americans without a warrant and even use that unconstitutionally collected data in criminal proceedings against them.
The report recommended requiring Deep State agencies to get approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) every time they would query the Section 702 database for information on Americans.
But this falls woefully short. They didn’t even recommend getting a warrant, only a “reasonably likely” standard of approval – not probable cause, as the Constitution requires. So the FISC would just be a rubber stamp.
But the bureaucrats on this board don’t get to decide. Section 702 will expire soon, unless Congress votes to extend it.
Tell Congress: No Bogus Reform: Leave Section 702 of FISA to expire!
The fact is, the Deep State is hell-bent on collecting every American’s emails, phone records, text messages, Internet searches, instant messages, online purchases, and social media posts.
Clearly, unmistakably, illegal searches aren’t an aberration of policy. They are the policy.
They’ve concocted bogus investigations against politicians, against pro-life and anti-war activists, and even persecuted parents concerned about what’s going on in our schools.
And as whistleblowers have testified, all of this came at the expense of the legitimate work fighting things like sex traffickers and terrorists.
They don’t even follow the few flimsy restrictions they currently have. As admitted in the news, the NSA “deliberately ignored restrictions on their authority to spy on Americans, including a sitting Member of Congress, multiple times in the past decade.”
This is an outrage, and Congress needs to hear our outrage.
This has to stop, and we the people must DEMAND it stop.
Take a moment right now to send your lawmakers an e-postcard DEMANDING they refuse to re-authorize Section 702 and LEAVE IT TO DIE!
And if you can, please also make a contribution of $100, $50, $25, $10, or whatever you can afford to help us inform and mobilize more patriots for this fight.
For Liberty,
John McCardell
Executive Director
Campaign for Liberty
P.S. Section 702 of FISA – which allowed the massive collection of innocent Americans’ emails, texts, phone calls, and online chats to continue – is set to expire at the end of this year.
But the Deep State has their backs against the wall right now.
While the Biden administration and the bureaucrats at the various 3-letter agencies say they must have the authority to spy on Americans without a warrant, some have pushed back.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said earlier this year Section 702 renewal was “dead on arrival” without significant changes.
At this point, you and I simply cannot trust the Deep State.
If you and I turn up enough heat on Congress to stop reauthorization, I’m convinced we can bring the statists’ domestic spying programs to a crashing halt.
That’s why I’m counting on you to please send your STOP THE SURVEILLANCE STATE e-postcard and make a contribution of $10, $25, $50, $100, or more TODAY!
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If you would like to make a donation by mail, please send your check to Campaign for Liberty, PO Box 104, Lake Jackson TX 77566 or you can call 703-865-7162.
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