Tag Archives: FISA Reauthorization

Biggest Nunes Memo Revelations Have Little To Do With Its Content, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on February 4, 2018 | Leave a comment

Republican Congressman Thomas Massie had the $64 question: “who made the decision to withhold evidence of FISA abuse until after Congress voted to renew FISA program?” The issue was analyzed in “Bad People Lied to a Kangaroo Court,” and its more important than the issues raised by the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum. Caitlin Johnstone’s take, at consortiumnews.com:

The most important revelations of the Nunes Memo relate not to its content, but the political establishment’s response to its release, argues Caitlin Johnstone.

It’s fitting that the ever-tightening repetitive loops of America’s increasingly schizophrenic partisan warfare finally hit peak shrillness and skyrocketed into a white noise singularity on Groundhog Day. Right now, we’re right about at the part of the movie where Bill Murray is driving over a cliff in a pickup truck with a large rodent behind the wheel.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on March 22, 2017, in Washington, DC.
Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

If you only just started paying attention to U.S. politics in 2017 what I’m about to tell you will blow your mind, so you might want to sit down for this: believe it or not, there was once a time when both of America’s mainstream political parties weren’t screeching every single day that there was news about to break any minute now which would obliterate the other party forever. No Russiagate, no Nunes memo, no Rachel Maddow red yarn graphs, no Sean Hannity “tick tock,” no nothing. People screaming that the end is nigh and it’s all about to come crashing down were relegated to street corners and the occasional Infowars appearance, not practicing mainstream political punditry for multimillion dollar salaries on MSNBC and Fox News.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that Americans are starting to look critically at the power dynamics in their country, but the partisan filters they’ve pulled over their eyes are causing mass confusion and delusion. Now everyone who questions the CIA is a Russian agent and the term “deep state” suddenly means “literally anyone who doesn’t like Donald Trump.” Your take on the contents of the Nunes memo will put you in one of two radically different political dimensions depending on which mainstream cult you’ve subscribed to, and it will cause you to completely miss the point of the entire ordeal.

To continue reading: Biggest Nunes Memo Revelations Have Little To Do With Its Content

 

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Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Investigations, Media, Politics

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With the Shutdown Over, the Government Can Go Back To Suppressing Your Rights, by Brian Saady

Posted on February 2, 2018 | 1 comment

President Trump signed a reauthorization of the law under which he and his campaign were spied on, probably illegally. From Brian Saady at antiwar.com:

In a bipartisan manner, Congress recently passed the FISA Reauthorization Act of 2017. On January 19th, President Trump signed this bill into law.

That bill extended the controversial Section 702 program that allows the NSA to conduct warrantless surveillance of non-U.S. citizens or residents. This program clearly benefits our intelligence agencies in matters of national security. However, millions of Americans’ private information is also collected in this program.

The private information of anyone in the U.S. who communicates with someone outside of the country could potentially be stored in this massive database. How expansive is this program? The Washington Post reviewed a sample of communications from the Edward Snowden leaks and found that 9 out of 10 people in the database were not surveillance targets. Nearly half of these people were American citizens or residents and their private information was swept up in this net.

This isn’t just a matter of preserving privacy. Once information enters this program, all conventional constitutional law goes to the wayside. The FBI has access to this program to do “backdoor searches” for any crime without a warrant. That information can be passed along to whichever law enforcement agencies the FBI deems necessary. Furthermore, this isn’t a minor program that applies to a few people. There were an estimated 106,469 targets in 2016.

Even former CIA and NSA director, Michael Hayden, has admitted that the FBI’s access to this information without a warrant is a “no-fooling legitimate issue.” Hence, a small but bipartisan group within Congress supported the USA RIGHTS Act that would have maintained national security intelligence without sacrificing Americans’ basic freedoms. The bill would have required a warrant for FBI access to US citizens’ communications.

A group of five Senators, notably Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY), filibustered the FISA Reauthorization Act of 2017 in hopes of redirecting support for the USA Rights Act. Unfortunately, their effort was nullified when Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) cast the deciding vote that ended the filibuster. She was one of 18 Democrats who voted in kind.

Bear in mind, the Democrats have consistently criticized President Trump’s authoritarian ways, yet their support for this bill contradicted all of their pleas for responsible leadership. Moreover, this filibuster was nullified on January 16th, the day after the birthday of Martin Luther King, one of the foremost victims of federal government persecution.

To continue reading: With the Shutdown Over, the Government Can Go Back To Suppressing Your Rights

 

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Intelligence, Privacy, Surveillance

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