FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate is pushing agency employees to continue using the FISA Section 702 surveillance program to target American citizens. The controversial program was at the center of a heated Congressional debate earlier this year when the FISA program came up for reauthorization. Despite the objections of conservatives and some progressive lawmakers, the foreign salience program and its controversial Section 702 were eventually reauthorized by Congress.
“To continue to demonstrate why tools like this are essential to our mission, we need to use them, while also holding ourselves accountable for doing so properly and in compliance with legal requirements,” Abbate wrote to FBI employees. He added: “I urge everyone to continue to look for ways to appropriately use US person queries to advance the mission, with the added confidence that this new pre-approval requirement will help ensure that those queries are fully compliant with the law.”
The email has drawn pushback from lawmakers on Capitol Hill over its concerning nature and the appearance that Abbate is pushing FBI agents to spy on American citizens. “The deputy director’s email seems to show that the FBI is actively pushing for more surveillance of Americans, not out of necessity but as a default,” Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told Wired. She continued: “This directly contradicts earlier assertions from the FBI during the debate over Section 702’s reauthorization.”
Section 702, established by Congress in 2008, was designed to surveil threats from various hostile actors engaged in cybercrime, drug trafficking, terrorism, and arms proliferation. The program allows government agencies to work with American companies to spy on and intercept communications between Americans without a search warrant. The only controlling requirement is that one of the participants in communication must reasonably be believed to be a noncitizen located outside the United States. Full Article @ National Pulse
US lawmakers introduce surveillance reforms intended to curb FBI spying
WASHINGTON, Nov 7 (Reuters) - A bipartisan team of U.S. lawmakers has introduced new legislation intended to curb the FBI's sweeping surveillance powers, saying the bill helps close the loopholes that allow officials to seize Americans' data without a warrant.
The bill follows more than a decade of debate over post-Sept. 11, 2001, surveillance powers that allow domestic law enforcement to warrantlessly scan the vast mountains of data gathered by America's foreign surveillance apparatus. - Full Article @ Reuters
More Proof of FBI Abuse Sparks Calls for Congress to Stop Warrantless Spying
"Government self-policing will never be an adequate substitute for the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement," said one expert as U.S. lawmakers consider whether to reauthorize or reform Section 702. Full Article @ Common Dreams
The Government Really Is Spying On You — And It’s Legal
Consumer data has become a lucrative commodity, and the US government is buying.
The freakout moment that set journalist Byron Tau on a five-year quest to expose the sprawling U.S. data surveillance state occurred over a “wine-soaked dinner” back in 2018 with a source he cannot name.
The tipster told Tau the government was buying up reams of consumer data — information scraped from cellphones, social media profiles, internet ad exchanges and other open sources — and deploying it for often-clandestine purposes like law enforcement and national security in the U.S. and abroad. The places you go, the websites you visit, the opinions you post — all collected and legally sold to federal agencies.
In his new book, Means of Control, Tau details everything he’s learned since that dinner: An opaque network of government contractors is peddling troves of data, a legal but shadowy use of American citizens’ information that troubles even some of the officials involved. And attempts by Congress to pass privacy protections fit for the digital era have largely stalled, though reforms to a major surveillance program are now being debated. Full Article @ Politico
Corruption, Nepotism, Malfeasance and Chicanery of Democratic Politicians
Show me a prominent Democrat, and chances are there's a suppressed scandal in their History. Show me a prominent Democrat that is 'scandal-free' and chances are they're newbies who just haven't been caught yet.
Americans are fond of ridiculing foreign regimes as inherently corrupt banana republics, and coconut kingdoms where graft is the rule of thumb. Wake up America, people who live in glass houses should definitely not throw stones.
