Church FISA < Patriot FISA

Has "national security" improved with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or have government abuses of power only increased? Maybe both?

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

Where COINTELPRO simply stood for “counterintelligence program,” USA-PATRIOT stands for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” That’s a mouthful, but, the acronym “USA-PATRIOT” is one for the ages. Whoever came up with it likely got several promotions. No July 4th loving American wouldn’t sign off on a government program titled USA-PATRIOT, especially in the wake of 9/11. That was the argument at the time at least, and thus, “the Patriot Act” was born. Just like any real baby, it has grown and transformed over time. It’s up to you to decide if it has bettered our nation.

The Patriot Act was established "to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.” How was this to be done? By drastically stripping away Constitutional barriers on law enforcement requests to search various records, including, but not limited to, telephone, e-mail and health records. The new law broadened the definition of terrorism to include acts of domestic terrorism, and under FISA it allowed for the FBI Director, or his designee, to require the "production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities” in their FISA application.

In Gaslighting Grifters it was noted that, “the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was one of the alleged “remedies” that came in the aftermath of the Church Committee’s findings. Through FISA, the NSA and FBI can go to the additionally secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in order to gain approval for wiretaps and other means and methods for gaining information or surveillance of Americans and foreign nationals.” Where the Church Committee intended FISA to be an additional check on government power, the Patriot Act (and therefore government rulers at the time) seized the fear stricken moment to twist FISA into a secret pandora’s box of information. The vast majority of FISA related material will never be revealed to the populace. In 2013, it was reported that the FISC approved 99.97% of all FISA applications which came before it. In 33 years, at that time in 2013, there had been over 33,900 requests made, of which only 11 were denied.

The vast majority of Americans will never know any details about the vast majority of FISA applications, much less what information is gained by the government from them. That’s because they are for your “national security” after all and therefore only a small amount of people have the requisite “need to know” and clearance to read them. However, it doesn’t take a mathematician to reasonably infer that, but for a minor rounding error, the US government has approved virtually 100% of the FISA’s since their inception in the late 1970’s. One of the rare FISA’s that we do know about is that of Carter Page. At the time, many people thought that the government’s incessant obsession with, and attacks on Donald Trump as a Russian asset were off base.

Those people were proven right; eventually. The FISA application to surveil Carter Page, who had left (or was forced to leave) the Trump campaign of which he had a short lived stint as an aide, had been approved in October 2016. The FBI used the “Steele dossier” as the basis for its FISA. The Steele dossier was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele for Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS is an opposition research firm that was paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee to produce the dossier. Steele was also an FBI Confidential Human Source (CHS). Through a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request done by Tom Fitton’s Judicial Watch, it was later learned from FBI documents that Steele had an anti-Trump bias going into this endeavor. Based on those documents, it does not appear that the FBI’s knowledge of that anti-Trump bias was ever shared with the FISC.

Then again, why would it be? After all, disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strozk, the lead investigator against Trump, and his mistress, former FBI attorney Lisa Page (no relation to Carter) were also anti-Trump. In one surfaced text message between Strozk and (Lisa) Page, he told her, “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s [McCabe] office — that there’s no way he [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40 . . .” What’s more is that the FBI “lost” five months worth of text messages between Strozk and Page during that critical time.

Additionally, it was also later revealed that, a now former, FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, altered an email to ensure that the FISA be renewed for a fourth time. In short, the FBI used the opposition research of one political party, the Democrats who were in power at the time, to convince a court to let them (the FBI) spy on the candidate of the other party without telling the court of the political link to the party in power, the political bias of the dossier’s author, and with a litany of government officials acting in bad faith by basing their “investigation” on their own personal biases; which they likely did because of their own hubris, thinking that since it was a FISA no one would ever know because of its secret nature.

But, hey, the FISC should be approving virtually 100% of FISA applications right, because “national security.” If you’ve been keeping up with the substack, we’ve scratched the surface on abuses by the NSA and FBI who primarily utilize FISA, as well as the CIA in FBI, Christmas Lie, “Federal Belly-button of the Industry,” Gaslighting Grifters, and COINTELPRO 2.023. Perhaps America and her political elite in those agencies and elected office will someday learn from history so they don’t repeat it…doesn’t seem like that is happening yet, however.

Adam Schiff - perpetuator of Russia collusion lies

Rep. Adam Schiff was removed from the Intelligence Committee this week. Adam Schiff, the former chair of the committee, and one of the few US Representatives who was privy to highly classified information, has been lying to the public about that information for years. Schiff claimed Hunter Biden laptop stories “come from the Kremlin.” False. Schiff claimed there was “plenty of evidence” regarding Russian collusion in the Trump campaign. False again, as briefly described above. Yet he consistently alluded to his secret knowledge as the x-factor in his statements. Since his removal, he used the CCP compromised Tik Tok to make a video asking for donations and tweeted that “he will always defend our democracy.” Lying despots are incapable of defending democracy.

Back to the Patriot Act, since FISA abuse is merely one aspect of it. The ACLU concludes that the Patriot Act accomplished its prerogative of punishing terrorist acts and enhancing law enforcement tools by changing the surveillance laws in the US and granting unchecked power to the FBI and other governmental agencies:

“Most of the changes to surveillance law made by the Patriot Act were part of a longstanding law enforcement wish list that had been previously rejected by Congress, in some cases repeatedly.  Congress reversed course because it was bullied into it by the Bush Administration in the frightening weeks after the September 11 attack.” It’s a tale as old as time, sacrifice freedom for “safety.” That is much easier to do when stoking the flames of fear. The communist scare in the early Hoover years, civil rights in the latter part of his tenure, as talked about in COINTELPRO 2.023, post 9/11, or even the COVID-19 era amongst many other examples come to mind as times when many, maybe even most, people were eager to trade whatever they had for the notion of government “safety.”

The ACLU continues by stating, “One of the most significant provisions of the Patriot Act makes it far easier for the authorities to gain access to records of citizens' activities being held by a third party.  At a time when computerization is leading to the creation of more and more such records, Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the FBI to force anyone at all - including doctors, libraries, bookstores, universities, and Internet service providers - to turn over records on their clients or customers.” The ACLU’s guide to the Patriot Act provides an exceptional, condensed version of the types of power the government seized when implementing the act, including:

“The FBI does not even have to show a reasonable suspicion that the records are related to criminal activity, much less the requirement for "probable cause" that is listed in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.  All the government needs to do is make the broad assertion that the request is related to an ongoing terrorism or foreign intelligence investigation.”

“Surveillance orders can be based in part on a person's First Amendment activities, such as the books they read, the Web sites they visit, or a letter to the editor they have written.”

“Violates the Fourth Amendment, which says the government cannot conduct a search without obtaining a warrant and showing probable cause to believe that the person has committed or will commit a crime.”   

“Violates the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech by prohibiting the recipients of search orders from telling others about those orders, even where there is no real need for secrecy.” 

“Violates the First Amendment by effectively authorizing the FBI to launch investigations of American citizens in part for exercising their freedom of speech.”

“The Patriot Act, however, unconstitutionally amends the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to allow the government to conduct searches without notifying the subjects, at least until long after the search has been executed.  This means that the government can enter a house, apartment or office with a search warrant when the occupants are away, search through their property, take photographs, and in some cases even seize property - and not tell them until later.”

“Under the Patriot Act, the FBI can secretly conduct a physical search or wiretap on American citizens to obtain evidence of crime without proving probable cause, as the Fourth Amendment explicitly requires.

A 1978 law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) created an exception to the Fourth Amendment's requirement for probable cause when the purpose of a wiretap or search was to gather foreign intelligence.  The rationale was that since the search was not conducted for the purpose of gathering evidence to put someone on trial, the standards could be loosened.  In a stark demonstration of why it can be dangerous to create exceptions to fundamental rights, however, the Patriot Act expanded this once-narrow exception to cover wiretaps and searches that DO collect evidence for regular domestic criminal cases.  FISA previously allowed searches only if the primary purpose was to gather foreign intelligence.  But the Patriot Act changes the law to allow searches when "a significant purpose" is intelligence.  That lets the government circumvent the Constitution's probable cause requirement even when its main goal is ordinary law enforcement.”

 COINTELPRO, USA-PATRIOT, the FBI, the government, always find a way to increase their control by playing on the collective fear of the people; and they do it “legally” often times with passage of laws like the Patriot Act that now exists in perpetuity. Add to that, retaliation against anyone who might speak out. Take retired FBI agent and whistleblower Bassem Youssef’s story for example. He is an Egyptian immigrant who came here at age 13 or so. As an adult he was recruited into the FBI.

He whistleblew about discriminatory practices by the FBI in 2002 and how those practices were undermining the nation’s counterterrorism efforts. The DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility found that the FBI illegally retaliated against Youssef because he had made protected disclosures to the Director of the FBI and a Member of Congress. Youssef later oversaw the FBI’s warrantless phone surveillance program (Section 215 of the Patriot Act mentioned above) and whistleblew about major problems with that program to then Director James Comey in 2014. No action was taken by the FBI.