Senator Rand Paul Explains the Danger of Secret FISA Courts and Proposes Reform


The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that established a secret court that enabled the deep state to spy on Trump during his campaign had three provisions, including roving wiretaps, lone-wolf surveillance, and production of business records, were due to expire, but received a 77-day extension. Senator Rand Paul says he will offer an amendment to the law within two months that will exempt Americans from being targeted by the FISA court and their warrants. However, within the government, the political will to restrict the power of spying on Americans is weak. -GEG




FISA Court Slams FBI for Its “Errors and Omissions” in Trump Adviser Carter Page Spying Application

Rosemary Collyer, presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court, the secret court that approves orders to conduct surveillance on suspected foreign terrorists or spies, rebuked the FBI for submitting false documents to her court and making arguments based on lies. She ordered the FBI to file a report by Jan. 10 on how it intends to remedy those mistakes. Kimberley Strassel of The Wall Street Journal tweeted, “It’s great that the FISA court slammed the FBI and acknowledged the obvious–that deceiving a surveillance court is a grave thing. But the follow-on order is pathetic, as it is essentially: Please tell us how you intend to do better. Really?” -GEG

In October 2018 Representative Mark Meadows sent a letter to to U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer. She is chief judge of FISA Court. Over a year ago Mark Meadows encouraged Collyer to investigate the FISA abuses that took place under President Obama’s FBI. In particular Meadows asked Judge Collyer to act on the abuses by love birds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

 

Readers of The Gateway Pundit for the past three years knew about this abuse of power by the FBI and the Obama DOJ to spy on the Trump campaign and administration.

last week DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz finally released his report documenting Obama administration abuse of the FISA Court.

On Tuesday Rosemary Collyer, presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court, rebuked the FBI under Director Chris Wray for the abuse of the FISA Court.

NBC News reported:

The secret court that approves orders to conduct surveillance on suspected foreign terrorists or spies issued a highly unusual public rebuke to the FBI on Tuesday, ordering the agency to say how it intends to correct the errors revealed last week by the Justice Department inspector general.

Rosemary Collyer, presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court, said the inspector general’s report “calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.” She ordered the FBI to file a report by Jan. 10 on how it intends to remedy those mistakes.

In his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Inspector General Michael Horowitz expressed misgivings about the FBI’s errors and omissions in its requests for judicial approval to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

“We are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI,” Horowitz said.

Read full article here…




‘Quiet Skies’ Is a New Secret Federal Marshals Program to Spy on Ordinary Americans Who Travel by Plane

A new federal program profiles and surveils ordinary US citizen travelers who otherwise have no legitimate reason for being profiled.  Law abiding citizens could be subjected to being followed by a team of armed US Air Marshals, taking minute-by-minute notes whether or not they engage in such threatening behavior as sleeping on the plane, using a phone, going to the bathroom or talking to other passengers.  The biggest irony, as several Air Marshals observed, is that that potentially illegal program which infringes on the privacy and constitutional rights of US citizens, is also being paid for by those very same US citizens. Just like with the NSA.

If you’re a law abiding US citizen, a team of armed undercover US Air Marshals could be following you on your next flight, taking minute-by-minute notes whether or not you engage in such threatening behavior as sleeping on the plane, using a phone, going to the bathroom or talking to other passengers.

The Boston Globe has revealed a new federal program that profiles and surveils ordinary US citizen travelers who otherwise have no legitimate reason for being profiled. The secret program, called “Quiet Skies”, was set up to monitor US citizens with no prior record and who don’t result in red flags being raised at the airport. The people surveiled and followed in this program are, according to a TSA memo cited by the Globe article, “not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base”.

In essence, the program gives the TSA the option to monitor and track whoever it likes for any reason whatsoever, effectively granting TSA agents a green light to violate anyone’s personal privacy even as the legal and constitutional implications of such profiling remain unknown. And, understandably, internal pushback against the relatively new program  has emerged as some Federal Air Marshals have noted that it is a drain on resources and is way too time consuming and costly.

Further, concerns have been raised by legal experts, like Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, who said that “if this was about foreign citizens, the government would have considerable power. But if it’s US citizens — US citizens don’t lose their rights simply because they are in an airplane at 30,000 feet.”

Predictably, the TSA defended the program to the Boston Globe when asked and declined to note for the article whether or not the program has been successful in stopping any threats. In fact, it wouldn’t even confirm that the program existed. But documents provided to the Boston Globe by FSA sources confirm that this highly controversial program does, in fact, exist.

So if you’re not on any terrorist watch list and you are not under investigation by the Federal Government, what exactly do armed Air Marshals look for when a “small team of them” watches you as you fly or home to visit relatives for the holidays?

Amazingly, the red flag “triggers” for in depth surveillance involve behaviors that essentially all passengers are susceptible to, such as:

  • whether or not passengers fidget
  • whether or not they are using a computer on the flight
  • whether or not they stare off into space
  • face touching
  • exaggerated emotions
  • whether or not a subject has lost or gained weight from the information provided to authorities
  • whether or not the subject has facial hair, tattoos, piercings,
  • whether not they slept during the flight
  • whether not they use the bathroom on the flight
  • how they were picked up when they arrive.

The full “behavior checklist”, uploaded on the Boston Globe website,  is both astonishing and frightening.

Read full article here…




22 House Intel Members Withheld FISA Memo Passed Vote to Expand NSA Powers


Judge Napolitano accused the 22 House Intel members of delaying the release of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) memo to keep 500 Congressmen in the dark about domestic spying abuses. He contends that Congress would not have voted to expand the FISA program, as it did seven days earlier, if the memo had been released prior to the vote.  He concludes that the intelligence community, which is supposed to be regulated by Congress, actually is controlling Congress. -GEG 

Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano claimed that House members delayed the release of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) memo because they wanted to expand FISA powers and were afraid the political fallout from the memo would have killed the bill.

“Ignorant of the hot potato on which the House Intelligence Committee had been sitting, Congress recently passed and President Donald Trump signed a vast expansion of spying authorities,” Napolitano wrote in a Wednesday op-ed. “The FISA expansion would never have passed the Senate had the House Intelligence Committee memo and the data on which it is based come to light seven days sooner than it did.”

“Why should 22 members of a House committee keep their 500-plus congressional colleagues in the dark about domestic spying abuses while those colleagues were debating the very subject matter of domestic spying and voting to expand the power of those who have abused it?” Napolitano added.

Napolitano thinks the culture of the intelligence community has taken a dark turn and has exerted its authority over America’s elected officials.

“The NSA shows its might to the legislators who supposedly regulate it. In reality, the NSA regulates them,” Napolitano wrote. “This is but one facet of the deep state — the unseen parts of the government that are not authorized by the Constitution and that never change, no matter which party controls the legislative or executive branch. This time, they almost blew it. If just one conscientious senator had changed her or his vote on the FISA expansion — had that senator known of the NSA and FBI abuses of FISA concealed by the House Intelligence Committee — the expansion would have failed.”
Read full article here…