[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Archives

Commentary: Speaker Mike Johnson’s ‘Personal Conservatism’ Betrays the Conservative Movement

April 16, 2024 Michigan Star Staff

The election of Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana to Speaker of the House has thrown into stark relief the difference between what one might call “personal conservatives” and those of us who consider ourselves to be part of the conservative movement, or movement conservatives.

There’s no doubt that Speaker Johnson lives his life according to a set of conservative principles: He’s a church-going man known for his personal rectitude; he married his wife in a “covenant marriage;” as a lawyer he advocated a constitutional “textualist” approach to his cases; he spent many years actively involved in advancing the Right-to-Life; he opposes same sex marriages, and in 2015 he took one of his daughters to a purity ball.

Amendment in GOP-House’s FISA Renewal Bill for Warrant Requirement Fails in Tie Vote, 212-212

April 12, 2024 Just the News

A bipartisan warrant requirement amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act section 702 renewal bill failed to pass in a tie vote of 212-212 on the House floor on Friday. The amendment would have prohibited “warrantless searches of U.S. person communications in the FISA 702 database, with exceptions for imminent threats to life or bodily harm, consent searches, or known cybersecurity threat signatures.”

FISA Renewal Deadline Fast Approaching amid Bipartisan Call for Ending Warrantless Surveillance

March 28, 2024March 27, 2024 Just the News

Mike Lee and Dick Durban in front of FISA court (composite image)

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) renewal deadline is fast approaching as conservative lawmakers and some Democrats continue their push for ending warrantless surveillance.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including conservative and progressive legislators, have called for reforming section 702 of FISA ahead of the April 19 deadline.

Congress Votes to Extend FBI Warrantless Surveillance Tool Without Reforming It

December 15, 2023December 14, 2023 Michigan Star Staff

Congress voted Thursday to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) with no reforms as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA.

Section 702 of FISA is a tool that intelligence officials have allegedly abused as it enables them to surveil Americans without obtaining a warrant. After the Senate passed FISA through the NDAA on Wednesday and failed to get sufficient support to eliminate the four-month extension, the House of Representatives finalized it in a vote on Thursday.

Top Biden Intel Nominee Calls Warrantless Surveillance Tool Used to Spy on Americans ‘Irreplaceable’

July 14, 2023 Michigan Star Staff

President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead top intelligence agencies described a tool used to surveil Americans without a warrant as vital at his confirmation hearing Wednesday.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh characterized Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a tool that has been abused to spy on Americans, as “extensively used” and “irreplaceable” in his testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Biden nominated Haugh to head both Cyber Command and the National Security Agency (NSA) in May, according to Politico.

From January 6 Informants to FISA Abuses, FBI Boss Had Few Answers to Congress’ Most Pressing Questions

July 13, 2023 Just the News

FBI Director Christopher Wray declined to answer direct questions from lawmakers on several hot-button issues at a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing.

The performance on Wednesday generated frustration on both sides of the political aisle, and a rebuke from FBI alumni.

Bipartisan Effort to Reform FISA, End Abuses Could be Iced by GOP Outrage of Durham Report Findings

July 4, 2023 Just the News

Congressional Democrats have joined in bipartisan effort to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amid abuses but GOP outrage over the findings in the Durham Report, including recent calls to impeach Attorney General Merrick Garland over such matters, has likely hurt such efforts.

Congressional reauthorization of FISA is due in December, with particular focus on Section 702 of the law, which permits the government to conduct targeted surveillance on foreign people outside the U.S., with the assistance of electronic communication service providers, to acquire foreign intelligence information.

DOJ Inspector General Has No Answer to How Many in Government Can Spy on Americans Through ‘Backdoor’ Searches

April 27, 2023 Michigan Star Staff

Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz could not answer how many people in the federal government can use the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on Americans through backdoor searches when Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz asked him at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Thursday.

FISA Section 702 enables intelligence agencies to carry out targeted surveillance of foreigners outside the U.S., but they have improperly used it on Americans. There were 3.4 million backdoor searches in 2021, according to an Office of the Director of National Intelligence 2022 Transparency report.

Commentary: Is the Justice Department Blackmailing President Joe Biden?

January 15, 2023January 14, 2023 Admin

by Robert Romano In 2016, the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, Hillary Clinton, had an FBI investigation because she was storing classified information on her private server for the convenience of reading her classified emails on a smartphone. Details of the investigation came out throughout the campaign, resulting in former…

Commentary: The 2023 Congress’ Opportunity to Stop the FBI’s Spying on Americans

May 31, 2022May 30, 2022 Admin

The 18-member U.S. intelligence community (IC) has released the Annual Statistical Transparency Report Regarding the Intelligence Community’s Use of National Security Surveillance Authorities. One of the few to pay attention was historian Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and an affiliated scholar at the University of California’s Hastings School of Law.

This government document, the ninth such report to be made public, “provides statistics and contextual information concerning how the Intelligence Community uses the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and certain other national security authorities to accomplish its mission.”

The law authorizes the U.S. government to engage in mass surveillance of foreign targets. As Guariglia discovered, FISA is “still being abused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to spy on Americans without a warrant.” This abuse takes place under Section 702, an amendment to FISA.

NSA Inspector General ‘Concerned’ About Surveillance of Americans’ Communication Devices

February 2, 2022February 1, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

On Monday, the office of the Inspector General at the National Security Agency (NSA) released a report showing that the agency failed to follow basic internal guidelines and court-ordered procedures in its surveillance of American citizens’ communications.

According to CNN, the report showed that the agency abused a loophole in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). While Section 702 allows the government to collect such communications of foreign citizens on foreign soil without a warrant, it prohibits the government from doing so with American citizens. The loophole allows the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to use this section to collect American communications without a warrant if they believe “a query is reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information.”

The inspector general’s report “revealed a number of concerns involving [U.S. person] identifiers used as query terms against FISA Section 702 data.” Furthermore, some of these NSA queries “did not always follow NSA procedural and policy requirements.” Among other discrepancies, information gathered on “selectors,” or particular search terms in an investigation, were not properly documented; in addition, the NSA’s internal query tools designed to automatically prevent the processing of queries involving any Americans associated with the selectors ultimately failed to do so, thus allowing Americans to be investigated and monitored.

Peter Strzok Defends FBI Against FISA Abuse Allegations, Says Agents Were ‘Overworked’

September 7, 2020September 6, 2020 Michigan Star Staff

Former FBI official Peter Strzok defended the bureau’s surveillance of former Trump aide Carter Page in an interview aired Sunday, attributing failures found in a government watchdog report to agents being “overworked.”

“I don’t think at all that it’s anything improper. You get people who are overworked, who make mistakes — and don’t get me wrong, inexcusable mistakes,” Strzok said in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning.”

FBI Agents Pushed for a FISA to Investigate Foreign Government Targeting Hillary Clinton

August 24, 2020August 24, 2020 Michigan Star Staff

by Chuck Ross FBI agents in 2015 sought authorization to surveil foreign government operatives who sought to influence Hillary Clinton, but ultimately settled for a defensive briefing given to lawyers for the Democratic presidential candidate, according to documents released on Sunday. One FBI agent involved in the investigation asked…