FISA Is A Catastrophic Failure, And Should Be Allowed To Die

Except...our government is fanatical about spying on us, and there is no way that a temporary pause in their ability to spy on Americans will survive. That pause is for purely political reasons, as the House simply doesn't like President Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Once that little pissing match is cleared up, they will go back to merrily supporting warrantless searches and surveillance of Americans.

Oh, they have their cute little legal subterfuges that protect them...we Americans are swept up in that surveillance by accident! Really! It's true! Our government claims, without a hint of irony or sarcasm, that when Americans are spied upon without a warrant, it is merely coincident to the surveillance of a foreign national, and they respect our God-given natural rights to safety from government intrusion.

US intelligence community's foreign spying powers expire after lawmakers reject FISA extension

The law enables the US government to surveil non-Americans abroad without first going before a judge to get a warrant.

However, that surveillance often sweeps up communications of American citizens in the process. The controversial spy power was reformed in 2024, but some critics want additional changes.

Except that after FISA was passed in 1978, spying on Americans seems to have increased! Here is a small sample of the dozens of programs that our government used or uses to spy on us.

Pre-1978

• COINTELPRO
  
• Operation CHAOS
  
• Project RESISTANCE
  
• Operation MERRIMAC
  
• MINARET
  
• SHAMROCK
  
• Post-1978
  
• CARNIVORE
  
• PRISM
  
• Section 215
  
• Total Information Awareness (TIA)
  
• Stellar Wind
  
• Hemisphere Project
  
• Section 702
  
• Main Core
  

Most of the Bill Of Rights address these affronts to our freedom and liberty, yet our government cavalierly disregards those rights, claiming the always convenient, "National Security Imperative," or whatever phrase is in fashion to describe the destruction of our freedoms.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

He said that in 1776, and it applies today. Government should serve us, not the other way around. And...government should also fear us as a free people. The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees that, and today we see shocking examples of countries whose citizens have become subjects exactly because their governments no longer fear them.

This is not a call to arms; this is simply a recognition that we must defend all of our rights, no matter how trivial-seeming or unlikely. Most of us will never be swept up in the surveillance of a foreigner, and most of us will never be surveilled coincident with an investigation. Except...we can never know that with certainty unless we fight back against the rapidly encroaching totalitarianism of our government.

Yes, that sounds melodramatic...just like the wholesale arrest and detention of hundreds of peaceful demonstrators after January 6th, 2021 sounded like a conspiracy-theorist's fever dream.

posted by CBD at 12:00 PM

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