(Ken Silva, Headline USA) It looks like the U.S. security state is taking to heart the old adage that one should “never let a good crisis go to waste.”
In an editorial last week, former deep state spook and current CNN hack Carrie Cordero claimed the need to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which currently allows for the warrantless surveillance of Americans.
Unless reauthorized by Congress, Section 702 will expire at the end of the year. House legislators are seeking to reform the section by requiring warrants to spy on Americans, but doing so would “degrade” the National Security Agency’s ability to track groups like Hamas, Cordero claimed.
“The catalyst for the section’s original enactment was counterterrorism, and it has been an essential counterterrorism tool for 15 years,” Cadero said.
“Hamas, Hezbollah and their state-sponsor, Iran, are wholly appropriate foreign intelligence targets, and Section 702 authority should not be degraded while threats from these actors have escalated to the degree of starting a new war in the Middle East.”
Cadero’s statement is, of course, absurd on its face. As noted by the Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability, Section 702 failed to detect Hamas’s attack.
“While U.S. intelligence detected rising activity in Gaza, it did not detect the threat that resulted in the killing of more than 1,400 Israelis and at least 30 Americans,” PPSA said Tuesday.
PPSA further blasted Cadero for painting Section 702 reformers as being willing to “degrade” an authority that counters some of the worst regimes in the world. Legislators such as Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, don’t want to eliminate Section 702; they simply want to require agencies to obtain a warrant before using it on Americans.
“So how, then, could reforms to Section 702 “degrade” this important and useful authority?” PPSA asked rhetorically.
“There can be only one meaning to this phrase. Somehow, protecting the rights of American citizens against intrusive and unconstitutional spying would ‘degrade’ Section 702.”
The FISA authorization has come close to sunsetting before—notably in 2020—when lawmakers up for re-election suddenly began upping their rhetoric against government surveillance and FBI corruption.
However, it was re-authorized at the last minute with the caveat that major reforms would be a top priority. Since then, it has come to light that the FBI continued to conduct unlawful FISA queries—which, as of June, were estimated to number around 278,000.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said in a recent blog post that if Congress again renews Section 702 without major changes, then “we have become a nation of chumps.”
FISA reform has been one of the rare issues of bipartisan agreement in Congress. In the House Judiciary Committee, both chairman Jordan and ranking member Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., agree in principle that the FBI should need a warrant to search Americans’ data under FISA.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
