Congress May Vote This Week to Expand Surveillance Under Section 702 of FISA

DooKey

DooKey

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Congress is currently debating the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 and part of this renewal contains changes to Section 702 that could possibly expand warrantless surveillance of American citizens. Take a look at the language of the draft and consider whether or not you agree with what they want to do. Remember that Big Brother is watching.

Although its proponents seek to sell the bill as a reform measure, it contains no meaningful reforms to Section 702, and in several respects, it expands surveillance authorities and codifies the worst intelligence community practices rather than reforming them. As a result, this bill is worse than a clean reauthorization with a sunset.
 
I guess they figure if Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft can get away with their surveillance, then why not?

Of course, the obvious difference being the above mentioned will not break into your home and haul you away,.....yet.

This damn tin foil hat is getting a workout.
 
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I bet this will get rolled into the new net neutrality bs they're rolling out in congress.
 
Because this document is written in a form of additions and subtractions to the current law, you need to have both open in order to understand exactly what is or is not happening with these changes. Otherwise everything is essentially printed out of context.

I suppose I'll get started;

The first notable inclusion is adding a "section 5" titled "Queries" which adds all the text from the first page through line 23 of the seventh page, all pertaining to queries.

Section (f) follows the other sections which I'll list by Title

(a) Authorization, "the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence may authorize jointly, for a period of up to 1 year from the effective date of the authorization, the targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information.
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There are Limitations to this activity which is section (b); (I'll shorten them hopefully without cutting out anything important)

(b) LIMITATIONS.—An acquisition authorized under subsection
(a)—
(1) may not intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States;
(2) may not intentionally target a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States if the purpose of such acquisition is to target a particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United States;
(3) may not intentionally target a United States person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States;
(4) may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States; and
(5) shall be conducted in a manner consistent with the fourth amendment
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(c) CONDUCT OF ACQUISITION (This is how they actually gather the information without the actual details of how of course)

(d) TARGETING PROCEDURES (I bet you guys can figure this one out upon reading)

(e) MINIMIZATION PROCEDURES (This is what they are supposed to do in order to minimize the risks of violating our rights)

Now comes the new section (f) QUERIES which is what the first seven pages are about.

(A) REQUIREMENT TO ADOPT (They have to stick to the 4th Amendment)(B) RECORD OF UNITED STATES PERSON QUERY TERMS
.—The Attorney General, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, shall ensure that the procedures adopted under subparagraph (A) include a technical procedure whereby a record is kept of each United States person query term used for a query.
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Looks like the definition of a Query Term might be important;
The term ‘query’ means the use of one or more terms to retrieve the unminimized contents or noncontents located in electronic and data storage systems of communications of or concerning United States persons obtained through acquisitions authorized under sub-section (a).
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Looks like they got carried away and only wrote this definition as it concerns US Persons, but it's the search words used on the raw databases. Seems like they are required to keep a running record of all data base search terms so if they use our last name or something, it's got to be recorded that they searched that database to look us up.

Alright, at this point I am going to give it a rest, if any of you care enough then you can continue my work and the links I used are;

https://legcounsel.house.gov/Comps/Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Of 1978.pdf

and from this topic;
http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20180108/BILLS-115S139-RCP115- 53.pdf

I will continue to read through it and see if anything stands out.

EDITED:

Starting on Page 8 after the addition of the Queries section (f), is a bunch of changes, (Conforming Amendments), because they inserted (f) and everything after had to shift down so as an example the old (i)(3) is now (j)(3);
by striking ‘‘with subsection (i)(3)’’ and inserting ‘‘with sub-section (j)(3)
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I do notice though that these conforming amendments start out simple, but farther down they actually are replacing text so it will take a harder look to see if something serious is being slipped in here.

EDITED:

OK, I didn't find anything being snuck into the Conforming Amendments section above, now I am on Page 13 reading the additional Amendments; It starts out as more of the same, adjusting the document for the additions of the Queries section, (f).


EDITED: OK, this single line on Page 15 is messing me up, it makes it look like it's going to do something with Section 102 but then it jumps to changes in sections 706 instead. I think a clerk needs a break and this document is not finalized at all. I am going to color code what follows so you guys can see how I got turned around and know that although it's in effect, it's not an actual change that I see yet.

I'm now on Page 15, SEC. 102. USE AND DISCLOSURE PROVISIONS and need some time to find what this is linked to in the actual FISA Act.

OK, this Section 102 points to Section 102 of the FISA Act and isn't within the Section 702 area, Page 7 of the other document I linked for the entire FISA Act. Section 102 is the first section under;
AUTHORIZATION FOR ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE FOR FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE PURPOSES
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This is the basis for the entire FISA Act and the authority for it's activities;
Notwithstanding any other
law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize
electronic surveillance without a court order under this title to ac-
quire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year
if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that—
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There is more to it so it's probably worth reading if you care.


Any information concerning a United States person acquired under section 702 shall not be used in evidence against that United States person pursuant to paragraph (1) in any criminal proceeding unless—
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 You guys can read the unless parts.

OK, getting tired, the book is getting long, the rest is about other parts of the Act and not specificly Section 702 which is really just adding requirements for how information collected under section 702 is accessed or controlled. Since this was left out before, it's either a pretend good thing or an actual good thing. But it's not an expansion to anything that I can see.
 
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So I dug into some of the things that the author points to specifically about "abouts collection" and I can see her point. On the one hand, there wasn't much in the document controlling that kind of thing, so it looks like the government is rectifying that, they added a few pages about it. That's what she means when she says it's being codified,. I can see that if you think this kind of thing is a fishing license then having them specifically authorize it and lay down the rules for it isn't what you were looking for. But it does lay down the rules and the rules can then be addressed and changed. That is much harder to do when it's not specifically addressed.

It may not be what some people were hoping for, but it is a step in the right direction because now there is a handle you can grab onto.
 
Ah, the party of limited government, and states rights. You just need to ignore the parts where they just allowed feds to ignore states legalizing marijuana, or them giving the government more power to take away constitutional freedoms... I'm sure a handful of republican-lite neoliberals like Obama/Clinton will vote for this bill as well while libertarians and progressives vote against it unsuccessfully.
 
Chunder said:
Ah, the party of limited government, and states rights. You just need to ignore the parts where they just allowed feds to ignore states legalizing marijuana, or them giving the government more power to take away constitutional freedoms... I'm sure a handful of republican-lite neoliberals like Obama/Clinton will vote for this bill as well while libertarians and progressives vote against it unsuccessfully.
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So I take you that you don't see this as a good move clarifying what they can and can't do under the FISA Act of 1957 ?
 
Chunder said:
Ah, the party of limited government, and states rights. You just need to ignore the parts where they just allowed feds to ignore states legalizing marijuana, or them giving the government more power to take away constitutional freedoms... I'm sure a handful of republican-lite neoliberals like Obama/Clinton will vote for this bill as well while libertarians and progressives vote against it unsuccessfully.
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>A task force Sessions convened to study pot policy made no recommendations for upending the legal industry but instead encouraged Justice Department officials to keep reviewing the Obama administration’s more hands-off approach to marijuana enforcement, something Sessions promised to do since he took office.
 
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