Patriot,

As I discuss in my latest column - read it below - the U.S.
House, led by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), just passed a bill to
renew the warrantless mass surveillance program under FISA based
on false threats.

The government has never had any difficulty obtaining a warrant
when it needed one. The entire basis for violating the Fourth
Amendment to "keep us safe" is nonsensical.

But Speaker Johnson, citing unspecified (and unverifiable)
information presented to him by Deep State spooks in a closed
room, decided he'd seen all he needed to completely abandon his
previously held support for the Constitution.

Indeed, Mike Johnson personally got the FISA renewal through the
House every step along the way.

But the fight is not over. The FISA renewal bill is now on its
way to the U.S. Senate, which has to take it up this week before
Section 702 expires.

Read the column below, sign your directive to your senators
demanding they oppose renewal without real reform, and if
possible, please chip in a contribution to help C4L defeat this
violation of our freedom in the Senate.

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For Liberty,

Ron Paul

FISA Exchanges Real Liberty for Phantom Security

House Speaker Mike Johnson betrayed liberty and the Constitution
by making a full-court press to get a "clean" reauthorization of
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Act
through the House.

Section 702 authorizes warrantless surveillance of foreign
citizens. When the FISA Act was passed, surveillance state
boosters promised that 702 warrantless surveillance would never
be used against American citizens. However, intelligence agencies
have used a loophole in 702, allowing them to subject to
warrantless surveillance any American who communicated with a
non-US citizen who was a 702 target. Intelligence agencies could
then also conduct warrantless surveillance on any Americans who
communicated with the new American target. This Section 702
loophole has been used so often to subject Americans to
warrantless wiretapping that it has been referred to as the
surveillance state's crown jewel.

A bipartisan coalition of Republican and Democratic House members
worked to add a warrant requirement to the FISA bill. Speaker
Johnson agreed to allow a vote on the House floor on an amendment
requiring federal officials to get a warrant before subjecting
any American to surveillance. However, he publicly opposed the
amendment, as did President Biden. Prominent deep state
operatives, such as former Secretary of State and CIA Director
Mike Pompeo, also lobbied against the amendment.

The case against adding a warrant requirement to FISA consisted
of hysterical claims that forcing the surveillance state to obey
the Fourth Amendment would make Americans vulnerable to terrorist
attacks. Particularity, the claim was made that forcing national
security operatives to get a warrant before spying on US citizens
would cripple the ability to respond to a "ticking time bomb"
situation.

Those claims were debunked by the heroic Edward Snowden, who made
the American people aware of the extent of warrantless
surveillance. Snowden, who worked as a government contractor for
the National Security Agency (NSA), posted in a message on X
(formerly known as Twitter) that the warrant amendment would not
stop federal agencies from acting without a warrant in a "ticking
time bomb" situation.

A vote was held Friday afternoon on the amendment requiring a
warrant before Section 702 powers would be used to spy on
American citizens. Despite the fearmongering by Mike Pompeo and
others, as well as the opposition of both President Biden and
Speaker Johnson, the amendment failed to pass by only one vote.
The amendment would have passed had Speaker Johnson not cast a
rare floor vote (speakers usually do not vote on legislation)
against the amendment.

When the PATRIOT Act was rushed to the House floor in the fall of
2001 - weeks after 9-11 - and voted upon before members had a
chance to read it, only three Republicans voted against it. One
conservative representative told me he voted for it even though
he agreed with my opposition to the bill. He told me, "I can't go
back home and tell my constituents I voted agent the PATRIOT
Act!"

While the failure to pass the warrant amendment was dispiriting,
the fact that it failed by only one vote shows how much progress
we have made. It should thus inspire us to keep encouraging
Congress to refuse to take away real liberty in the name of
promises of phantom security.

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