{"id":15877,"date":"2021-04-30T08:04:48","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T12:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=15877"},"modified":"2021-04-30T20:55:58","modified_gmt":"2021-05-01T00:55:58","slug":"fisa-and-the-still-too-secret-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/30\/fisa-and-the-still-too-secret-police\/","title":{"rendered":"FISA and the Still Too Secret Police"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

American Conservative, April 30, 2021<\/h3>\n

FISA and the Still Too Secret Police<\/span><\/a><\/h1>\n
\n

The FBI continues to lawlessly use counterintelligence powers against American citizens.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

by James Bovard <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The Deep State Referee just admitted that the FBI continues to commit uncounted violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). If you sought to report a crime<\/a> to the FBI, an FBI agent may have illegally surveilled your email. Even if you merely volunteered for the\u00a0 FBI \u201cCitizens Academy\u201d program, the FBI may have illegally tracked all your online activity.<\/p>\n

But the latest FBI offenses, like almost all prior FBI violations, are not a real problem, according to James Boasberg, presiding judge of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That court, among other purposes, is supposed to safeguard Americans\u2019 constitutional right to privacy under FISA. FISA was originally enacted to create a narrow niche for foreign intelligence investigations that could be conducted without a warrant from a regular federal court. But as time passed, FISA morphed into an uncontrolled yet officially sanctioned privacy-trampling monster. FISA judges unleash the nuclear bomb of searches, authorizing the FBI<\/a> \u201cto conduct, simultaneous telephone, microphone, cell phone, e-mail and computer surveillance of the U.S. person target\u2019s home, workplace and vehicles,\u201d as well as \u201cphysical searches of the target\u2019s residence, office, vehicles, computer, safe deposit box and U.S. mails.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2008, after the George W. Bush administration\u2019s pervasive illegal warrantless wiretaps were exposed, Congress responded by enacting FISA amendments that formally entitled the National Security Agency to vacuum up mass amounts of emails and other communication, a swath of which is provided to the FBI. In 2018, the FISA court slammed the FBI<\/a> for abusing that database with warrantless searches that violated Americans\u2019 rights. In lieu of obeying FISA, the FBI created a new Office of Internal Audit. Deja vu! Back in 2007, FBI agents were caught massively violating the Patriot Act by using National Security Letters to conduct thousands of illegal searches on Americans\u2019 personal data. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) declared that<\/a> an Inspector General report on the abusive searches \u201cconfirms the American people\u2019s worst fears about the Patriot Act.\u201d FBI chief Robert Mueller responded by creating a new Office of Integrity and Compliance<\/a> as \u201canother important step toward ensuring we fulfill our mission with an unswerving commitment to the rule of law.\u201d Be still my beating heart!<\/a><\/p>\n

The FBI\u2019s promise to repent after the 2018 report sufficed for the FISA court to permit the FBI to continue plowing through the personal data it received from NSA. Monday\u2019s disclosure\u2014a delayed release of a report by the court last November\u2014revealed that the FBI has conducted warrantless searches<\/a> of the data trove for \u201cdomestic terrorism,\u201d \u201cpublic corruption and bribery,\u201d \u201chealth care fraud,\u201d and other targets\u2014including people who notified the FBI of crimes and even repairmen entering FBI offices. As Spencer Ackerman wrote in the Daily Beast<\/a>, \u201cThe FBI continues to perform warrantless searches through the NSA\u2019s most sensitive databases for routine criminal investigations.\u201d That type of search \u201cpotentially jeopardizes an accused person\u2019s ability to have a fair trial since warrantlessly acquired information is supposed to be inadmissible. The FBI claimed to the court that none of the warrantlessly queried material \u2018was used in a criminal or civil proceeding,\u2019 but such usage at trial has happened before,\u201d Ackerman noted. Some illicit FBI searches involve vast dragnets. As the New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a>, an FBI agent in 2019 conducted a database search \u201cusing the identifiers of about 16,000 people, even though only seven of them had connections to an investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the report released Monday, Judge Boasberg lamented \u201capparent widespread violations\u201d of the legal restrictions for FBI searches. Regardless, Boasberg kept<\/a> the illicit search party going: \u201cThe Court is willing to again conclude that the . . . [FBI\u2019s] procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.\u201d \u201cWilling to again conclude\u201d sounds better than \u201cclose enough for constitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point, Americans know only the abuses that the FBI chose to disclose to FISA judges.<\/strong> We have no idea how many other perhaps worse abuses may have occurred. For a hundred years, the FBI has buttressed its power by keeping a lid on its crimes. Unfortunately, the FISA Court has become nothing but Deep State window dressing\u2014a facade giving the illusion that government is under the law. Consider Boasberg\u2019s recent ruling in the most brazen FISA abuse yet exposed. In December 2019, the Justice Department Inspector General reported that the FBI made \u201cfundamental errors<\/a>\u201d and persistently deceived the FISA court to authorize surveilling a 2016 Trump presidential campaign official. The I.G. report said the FBI \u201cdrew almost entirely\u201d from the Steele dossier to prove a \u201cwell-developed conspiracy\u201d between Russians and the Trump campaign even though it was \u201cunable to corroborate any of the specific substantive allegations against Carter Page\u201d in that dossier, which was later debunked.<\/p>\n

A former FBI assistant general counsel, Kevin Clinesmith, admitted to falsifying key evidence to secure the FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. As a Wall Street Journal<\/em> editorial noted<\/a>, Clinesmith \u201cchanged an email confirming Mr. Page had been a CIA source to one that said the exact opposite, explicitly adding the words \u2018not a source\u2019 before he forwarded it.\u201d A federal prosecutor declared that the \u201cresulting harm is immeasurable\u201d from Clinesmith\u2019s action. But at the sentencing hearing, Boasberg gushed with sympathy, noting that Clinesmith<\/a> \u201cwent from being an obscure government lawyer to standing in the eye of a media hurricane\u2026 Mr. Clinesmith has lost his job in government service\u2014what has given his life much of its meaning.\u201d Scorning the federal prosecutor\u2019s recommendation for jail time, Boasberg gave Clinesmith a wrist slap\u2014400 hours of community service and 12 months of probation.<\/p>\n

The FBI FISA frauds profoundly disrupted American politics for years and the din of belatedly debunked accusations of Trump colluding with Russia swayed plenty of votes in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election. But for the chief FISA judge, nothing matters except the plight of an FBI employee who lost his job after gross misconduct. This is the stark baseline Americans should remember when politicians, political appointees, and judges promise to protect them from future FBI abuses. The FISA court has been craven, almost beyond ridicule, perennially. Perhaps Boasberg was simply codifying a prerogative the FISA court previously awarded upon FBI officials. In 2005, after a deluge of false FBI claims in FISA warrants, FISA Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly proposed requiring FBI agents to swear to the accuracy of the information they presented. That never happened because it could have \u201cslowed such investigations drastically,\u201d the Washington Post<\/em> reported<\/a>. So, FBI agents continue to lie with impunity to the judges.<\/p>\n

The FISA court has gone from pretending that FBI violations don\u2019t occur to pretending that violations don\u2019t matter. Practically the only remaining task is for the FISA court to cease pretending Americans have any constitutional right to privacy<\/strong>. But if a sweeping new domestic terrorism law is passed, perhaps even that formal acknowledgement will be unnecessary. Beginning in 2006, the court rubber-stamped FBI requests that bizarrely claimed that the telephone records of all Americans were \u201crelevant\u201d to a terrorism investigation<\/a> under the Patriot Act, thereby enabling NSA data seizures later denounced by a federal judge<\/a> as \u201calmost Orwellian.\u201d FISA could become a peril to far more Americans if Congress formally creates a new domestic terrorism offense and a new category for expanding FISA searches.<\/p>\n

The backlash from Democrats after the January 6 clash at the Capitol showcased the demand for federal crackdowns on extremists who doubted Biden\u2019s election, disparaged federal prerogatives, or otherwise earned congressional ire. If a domestic terrorism law is passed, the FBI will feel as little constrained by the details of the statute as it does about FISA\u2019s technicalities. Will FBI agents conducting warrantless searches rely on the same harebrained standard<\/a> the NSA used to target Americans: \u201csomeone searching the web for suspicious stuff\u201d?\u00a0 Unfortunately, unless an FBI whistleblower with the same courage as former NSA analyst Edward Snowden steps forward, we may never know the extent of FBI abuses.<\/p>\n

James Bovard<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Lost Rights<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Attention Deficit Democracy<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/em>Public Policy Hooligan<\/a>. He is also a\u00a0<\/em>USA Today\u00a0columnist. Follow him on Twitter\u00a0<\/em>@JimBovard<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American Conservative, April 30, 2021 FISA and the Still Too Secret Police The FBI continues to lawlessly use counterintelligence powers against American citizens. by James Bovard The Deep State Referee just admitted that the FBI continues to commit uncounted violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). If you sought to report a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2124,2791,15,47,270,137,2794,38,2792,2793,30],"class_list":["post-15877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-biden","tag-boasberg","tag-congress","tag-fbi","tag-fisa","tag-george-w-bush","tag-kevin-clinesmith","tag-obama","tag-richard-durbin","tag-steele-dossier","tag-surveillance"],"yoast_head":"\nFISA and the Still Too Secret Police - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"FBI continues to ravage Americans' privacy by illegally abusing FISA search powers. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15877"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15883,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15877\/revisions\/15883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}