FISA reauthorization & Section 702 warrantless surveillance

[Occam's Banana]

"As I see it now, I'm not so sure there's a difference between [Johnson] being in charge and the Democrats being in charge." -- Rand Paul

https://twitter.com/simonateba/statu...51486193631564

[Brian4Liberty]

FISA 702 Reauthorization Amendments: The Second Time is Not the Charm

In December 2023, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPCSI) unsuccessfully tried to expand the government’s authority under FISA 702 by permitting it to compel a broader swath of U.S. companies and persons to assist in such surveillance. We described that effort here. Ultimately, the HPSCI-sponsored bill (the FRRA) was pulled from the floor without receiving a vote.

HPSCI is back with a new effort, with the same goal—to overrule decisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR) interpreting the current statutory definition of “electronic communication service providers” (ECSPs) eligible to receive FISA 702 directives much more narrowly than the government wanted. Consistent with the plain statutory language, those decisions appear to have excluded from compelled assistance under FISA 702 non-communication service providers who lack direct access to communications streams but who merely have access to equipment on which communications are transmitted or stored.

As described in our prior blog post, the FRRA painted with too broad a brush and would have permitted the government to compel assistance not only from data centers, colocation providers, and business landlords, but also from operators and employees of shared workspaces, hotels where guests connect to the Internet, as well as from any third party involved in providing equipment, storage, or even cleaning services to such entities. It did so by dropping the requirement that the recipient of a FISA 702 directive be a “communication” service provider, by expressly making access to equipment alone enough for eligibility, and by adding the term “custodian” as a person that could be asked to provide assistance.

The new amendment is a marginal improvement over the last go-around, but it is still problematic. It is not a change that “narrowly updates the definition of electronic communication service provider under Section 702.” Like the FRRA, it: (1) drops the qualifier “communication” from the class of covered “service providers;” (2) makes access to communications-carrying equipment enough to establish eligibility; and (3) adds “custodian” to the list of individuals who can be forced to provide assistance. But unlike the FRRA, it then enumerates a list of business types that cannot be considered ECSPs, including public accommodations, dwellings, restaurants, and community facilities.

The new amendment would — notwithstanding these exclusions — still permit the government to compel the assistance of a wide range of additional entities and persons in conducting surveillance under FISA 702. The breadth of the new definition is obvious from the fact that the drafters felt compelled to exclude such ordinary places such as senior centers, hotels, and coffee shops. But for these specific exceptions, the scope of the new definition would cover them—and scores of businesses that did not receive a specific exemption remain within its purview.

And even with these specific exceptions, the definition would include, for example, the owners and operators of facilities that house equipment used to store or carry data, such as data centers and buildings owned by commercial landlords, who merely have access to communications equipment in their physical space. It could also include other persons with access to such facilities and equipment, including delivery personnel, cleaning contractors, and utility providers. It also means that any U.S. business could have its communications (if one side is foreign) tapped by a landlord with access to office wiring, or the data centers where their computers reside, even if it eliminates the possibility that the same surveillance could be conducted with the assistance of hotels, restaurants, or community centers. For a specific hypothetical example of how this surveillance could occur, see our prior blog post. That’s not a “narrow” change.

Does the new HPSCI amendment represent a significant expansion of the universe of 702 recipients? Absolutely. Like the FRRA, it would go a long way toward effectively restoring the broad assistance provision of FISA 702’s predecessor, the Protect America Act, which Congress specifically rejected when it originally enacted FISA 702 in 2008. While it would (relative to the FRRA) reduce the likelihood that individual U.S. persons’ communications could be collected by someone other than their communication service providers, it’s still a clear play for more access to communications among businesses that employ many U.S. persons.

Most problematically, it would expand the use of warrantless surveillance under FISA 702 into a variety of new contexts where there is a particularly high likelihood that the communications of U.S. citizens and other persons in the U.S. will be “inadvertently” acquired by the government. This amendment will expand the government’s use of FISA 702 to acquire communications. Congress should be fully aware of that when it considers this amendment.
...
https://www.zwillgen.com/law-enforce...ime-not-charm/

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/...70001832366107

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1779920066840055847

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/RepTimBurchett/s...33778976436347

[ClaytonB]

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1779920066840055847

It just struck me today that mass-surveillance is logically equivalent to King George's redcoats forcing American colonists to quarter them at bayonet-point:

...
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

...

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us

...

I do not consent to my phone spying on me, nor does any rational American. Our private companies, local and State governments do not consent to having their infrastructure used by the Federal government for the purposes of mass surveillance, except perhaps for a few jurisdictions which have been bribed with Federal money, or some companies which are not actually private but are mere fronts for the Federal agencies. While this "digital quartering of troops" is invisible, it is nonetheless real. The phone in my pocket may as well be an FBI agent sitting on my couch, writing down every word I speak. No consent was ever given for this invasion of my home, which is my private property. It is in direct violation of the 4th Amendment which is, as the name of the Constitution implies, constitutional. If the Federal government wishes to nakedly contradict its own Constitution, this is a de facto and de jure act of existential self-dissolution. Whereas King George's own government could not be dissolved by the American colonists, the Federal government can be dissolved outright by We The People, that is, by a cooperative act of the State legislatures.

The Federal government itself has no remedy against such an act, which is why it has worked ceaselessly for these past 200 years, harnessing resources of an unimaginable magnitude, to the end of securing the seeming consent of the several State governments to the limitless rape and plunder of the American public through the betrayal of the Judases among us. The Federal government, no less than King George, has refused correction in its mad course of tyranny which is existentially opposed to its very own raison d'etre. A ceaseless stream of warnings has been sent from all but a minority of the States who are fully bought-in to the DC tyranny, explaining to the plutocrats there that they must change course or hazard utter ruination. Yet they refuse to change course even in the face of clear and concise explication of their errors, offered in humility and conscientious deference to their conditional authority. In this, they are more deranged than King George, and their tyranny more repugnant since that monarch was merely pursuing the ordinary business of government as he was used to conducting it throughout the British empire, however tyrannically, whereas the Federal government has as its sole reason for being the securing of our rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, among others.

We have had a civil war before and it failed to accomplish anything except the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of our best and brightest. We have tried arguments for secession and they have failed. But it is a mistake to suppose that these failures imply that the States are somehow the kept prisoners of the government in DC. Rather, the authority both to establish as well as to dissolve and re-establish a federal government, explicitly resides with We The People, and with us alone. This authority is expressed through those men among us whom we freely choose to represent us for this purpose. This is not a novel doctrine, nor can it be commented on in any way, shape or form by the Supreme Court since it is an existential question which resides beyond the scope of the Supreme Court who can only reasonably comment on matters within the jurisdiction of an existing federal government, not one which has been dissolved, nor even whether it can be dissolved. For this reason, it is nonsensical to wait for the matter to be resolved or ruled upon by the Supreme Court, whether Yay or Nay. Instead, WTP must simply come to a quorum on the question of whether the government in DC has indeed devolved into abject tyranny and whether its time has come to be abolished completely, and re-founded "on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to [us] shall seem most likely to effect [our] Safety and Happiness." The Constitution has not failed, it has been hijacked. We need only dissolve the Constitution in order to banish the hijackers and re-establish our once-happy Republic on its first footing, adding any new protections which we have learned in these two centuries are required in order to bolster against any fresh infiltration by tyrants and traitors...

[Occam's Banana]

CLIP from SYSTEM UPDATE #256:

Stunning Reversal: House Speaker Mike Johnson Enables Warrantless Spying on Americans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAX48mPHXPU
{Glenn Greenwald | 15 April 2024}

[ClaytonB]

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/...04190619578504


A Paul-Massie alliance fight FISA’s renewal. They’re running out of time.
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/pol...287797440.html
{David Catanese | 18 April 2024}

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul formed a noisy alliance with Rep. Thomas Massie this week that scrambled Congress’ plans to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without additional privacy protections for Americans and threatened the six-month tenure of the Republican speaker of the House.

The libertarian duo scored a substantive victory in the House on Wednesday when the chamber passed legislation that would force federal agencies to obtain a court order to buy the online data of U.S. citizens from service providers.

Massie, a Northern Kentucky Republican, was joined by Rep. James Comer in supporting the “Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act” while Lexington Rep. Andy Barr opposed the restriction, voting “no” without an explanation.

The total vote muddled usual party lines, tallying 219-199 with 1 voting “present.”

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy heaped praise on Paul, saying, “Today, the good guys won.”

Then came a new day and a new body co-led by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who belittled “chicken littles on the left” who decried the government’s authority to spy.

“The reality is, we’re out of time,” said Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a proponent of swift reauthorization of FISA’s Section 702, the program that provides 60% of the intelligence included in the president’s daily briefing.

With Section 702 of FISA set to expire at midnight Friday, the Senate barrel ahead toward passage without forcing law enforcement to obtain a warrant in order to tap the data of Americans.

FISA was designed to provide more tools to intelligence officers to eavesdrop on foreigners. But the wide net inevitably captures Americans who may be unwittingly communicating with someone being surveilled.

When House Speaker Mike Johnson broke a tie vote in the House to kill the inclusion of a warrant in FISA’s reauthorization, it triggered Paul to take the unlikely step to call for the ouster of a leader of his party from the lower chamber, endorsing Massie’s announcement he would co-sponsor a motion to vacate.

“Speaker Johnson and the uniparty are united behind their laundry list of bad ideas. From borrowing $95 billion from China to send it to other countries to killing a FISA warrant requirement – they’re ticking all the boxes to put America last,” Paul said.

Paul said he would force the Senate debate amendments to FISA, but it was unclear how many votes would be allowed as debate continued on the floor into Thursday evening.

It was Massie who helped reorient the debate last week during his aggressive probe of the law during a House Rules Committee hearing.

“Massie’s questioning in Rules [Committee] of [Rep. Mike] Turner is brilliant and he deserves a lot of recognition for what he did there, because he was strong, he hit the points he needed to hit and really got Turner on the ropes at times,” said Jason Pye, a senior policy adviser to Freedomworks, a libertarian-leaning advocacy group in Washington.

But it appears unlikely Paul will have the same impact in the Senate, which voted 67-32 on Thursday afternoon to proceed with the bill on the floor. Paul joined 17 Republicans, 13 Democrats and independent Bernie Sanders in opposing expediting consideration of the controversial spy law.

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1781536215793025043
to: https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1781536229021847767

//

[Matt Collins]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnkmXwuCbSc

[Matt Collins]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m0rqROutwM

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/jordainc/status/1778568392376488278


[...]

https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/stat...05755560247330

https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1783292431355572379

[Occam's Banana]

THREAD: Pro-Palestine / Anti-Israel protests at Columbia, elsewhere

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1783975732495970536

[PAF]

https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1783292431355572379

He needs to get the date right - it was 2018 that Trump could have publicly bucked against it. And then he can fast forward to today, and all those complicit in worsening it even further.

Hey Biden, how's Operation Warp Sp... I mean, Project NextGen going?

[Occam's Banana]

He needs to get the date right - it was 2018 that Trump could have publicly bucked against it. [...]

I don't think he was referring to FISA. I suspect he was talking about Roe v. Wade, which, after 50 years, was overturned two years ago - and which was originally justified, in part, on the basis of a "right to privacy".

The point remains the same, though: Joe Biden is a mealy-mouthed weasel who doesn't really give a $#@! about any "right to privacy", except when he thinks pretending he does will score him some points. (And by "he", of course, I mean "his handlers" - I doubt Joe Biden thinks much of anything anymore, except "what's for dinner?" and "how long till bedtime?".)

[PAF]

I don't think he was referring to FISA. I suspect he was talking about Roe v. Wade, which, after 50 years, was overturned two years ago - and which was originally justified, in part, on the basis of a "right to privacy".

Makes better sense now... I was referencing the FISA thread.

The point remains the same, though: Joe Biden is a mealy-mouthed weasel who doesn't really give a $#@! about any "right to privacy", except when he thinks pretending he does will score him some points. (And by "he", of course, I mean "his handlers" - I doubt Joe Biden thinks much of anything anymore, except "what's for dinner?" and "how long till bedtime?".)

And how long he can mumble or not say anything, concentrating on making it to the toilet in time. Or having his diaper changed.