Eighty-Six House Republicans Vote for Warrantless Surveillance of Americans

Eighty-six House Republicans on Friday voted against an amendment to require a warrant for surveillance of Americans’ communications.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) proposed an amendment to the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), a bill that would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Section 702 is a law that is meant to target foreign adversaries, but often surveils Americans’ private communications without a warrant.

The amendment tied at 212-212 in the House; a tie in the House means that the measure fails. Although Biggs’s amendment did receive support from a majority of Republicans, 86 House Republicans failed to support the proposal.

A warrant requirement is overwhelmingly backed by Americans. A YouGov poll commissioned by FreedomWorks and Demand Progress found that 76 percent of Americans support a warrant requirement, while only 12 percent oppose.

Only one member of House Republican leadership voted with the majority of the House Republican Conference on warrants requirements: House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN). Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) voted against the warrant requirement.

Johnson used to support closing the backdoor search loophole, or the ability to surveil Americans through Section 702, which is meant to target foreigners. However, he changed his mind after seeing a classified briefing after becoming Speaker.

They exempted themselves from the warrantless search

Seriously? I had thought that I could not become more disgusted with them, that they had hit bottom. But they have proved me wrong and my disgust only increases.

I can feel a Cromwellian urge to dismiss the Congress of Rumps.

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.
Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.
Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?
Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?
Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.
Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.
I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.
Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the name of God, go!

Oliver Cromwell's speech dissolving the Rump Parliament, delivered at London, England - April 20, 1653. From http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/dismissal_of_the_rump_parliament.htm

how is that even constitutional?

It is constitutional if performed against an alien outside the United States where the U.S. Constitution does not apply.

However, the agencies routinely use the power criminally against American citizens. It is beyond clear that the agencies cannot be trusted to restrict themselves to lawful use of the authority.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/fisa-section-702-civil-rights-abuses

November 2023
FISA Section 702: Civil Rights Abuses
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was enacted to make it easier for the government to address foreign terrorist threats. The law gives the government broad authority to surveil non-Americans located abroad, but targeting Americans is prohibited.
Unfortunately,intelligence agencies have used legal loopholes to turn Section 702 into a go-to domestic spying authority, using it to conduct hundreds of thousands of warrantless “backdoor” searches for Americans’ private communications every year.
Backdoor searches and other warrantless surveillance techniques raise both civil liberties and civil rights concerns because when intelligence and law enforcement officials can access Americans’ sensitive information without a warrant, they are more likely to rely on improper considerations such as conscious or unconscious biases or political beliefs.
Section 702 has been repeatedly subject to such abuse. Some recently publicly disclosed misuses of backdoor searches, which the FISA Court says may exclude “large numbers” of abuses, include:
Searches for 141 racial justice protestors and political activist groups that organized protests.
Searches based on a witness’s report that two men “of Middle Eastern descent” were loading cleaning supplies into a truck.
Searches for mosques that were intentionally mislabeled to avoid oversight.
Searches for Professor Xiaoxing Xi, an American academic who was wrongly accused of unlawfully sharing sensitive technology with scientists in China.
Searches for a state court judge who reported civil rights violations to the FBI.
Searches for immigrants, even with no indication they pose a risk to national security.
“Batch” searches that included current and former federal government officials, journalists, political commentators, and 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign.
Searches for a sitting Congressman, a US Senator, and a state senator.
Searches for a local political party.
Congress can help end these abuses by passing the Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2023, a comprehensive surveillance reform bill that requires government officials, absent an emergency, to obtain a probable-cause court order or the subject’s consent before searching for Americans’ communications or other sensitive data in foreign intelligence holdings obtained without a warrant.
Questions? Please contact Noah Chauvin at chauvinn@brennan.law.nyu.edu.

Any relationship to John Brennan?

Yes — John Brennan and the heads of other intelligence agencies. The Edward Snowden revelations led directly to the intelligence agencies, most notably the NSA. The article I linked and quoted cites hundreds of thousands of violations which I believe would be more accurate in the multi-millions.

The government has the capability to scoop up and record personal data from everybody. For example, for J6 the government collected phone and credit card data for everyone in the D.C. area. Of course, there was no probable cause to suspect that everyone in the D.C. area had committed a criminal offense. FISA warrants require no probable cause subpoena.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=207195207

With 3 'Hops,' NSA Gets Millions Of Phone Records
JULY 31, 2013 6:19 PM ET
By The Associated Press
[excerpt]
In the House earlier this month, lawmakers said they never intended to allow the NSA to build a database of every phone call in America, and they threatened to curtail the government's surveillance authority. "You've got a problem," Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told top intelligence officials weeks ago.
[...]
It hinges on what's known as "hop" or "chain" analysis. When the NSA identifies a suspect, it can look not just at his phone records, but also the records of everyone he calls, everyone who calls those people and everyone who calls those people.
If the average person called 40 unique people, three-hop analysis would allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist.

With a three-hop warrant for one relatively unknown person in Trump Tower, the government could actually surveil the entire Trump organization, including candidate Trump.

https://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/09/04/three_hops_gif_aclu_infographic_shows_how_nsa_s_surveillance_spreads_exponentially.html

The One GIF That Shows Just How Wide the NSA's Surveillance Net Really Is
By Will Oremus
Sept. 4 2013 6:30 PM
[excerpt]
The phrase “three hops,” which comes from NSA honcho John Inglis’ testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in July, means that the agency can look at the communications of the person it’s targeting, plus the communications of that person’s contacts (one hop), plus the communications of those people’s contacts (two hops), plus the communications of those people’s contacts (three hops). Each hop widens the net exponentially, so that if the average person has 40 contacts, a single terrorism suspect could theoretically lead to records being collected on 2.5 million people. Take into account that the NSA may have thousands, tens of thousands, or even upwards of 117,000 “active surveillance targets,” and the map turns red in a big hurry. Like, almost entirely red.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/

NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
Published: June 6, 2013, Updated July 10, 2013

https://www.foxnews.com/media/brennan-admits-there-were-mistakes-made-in-fisa-applications-suggests-fbi-was-overly-aggressive

Brennan admits 'there were mistakes made' in FISA applications, suggests FBI was 'overly aggressive'
By Joseph Wulfsohn
Fox News
Published December 18, 2019 3:46am EST
Former CIA Director John Brennan, an outspoken critic of President Trump, acknowledged Tuesday that "there were mistakes made" in the highly controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application process during the Russia investigation as reported by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Appearing on MSNBC, Brennan was asked by host Chris Hayes about "abuses" uncovered by Horowitz, who claimed he found 17 significant errors in the renewed FISA applications into former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, while Horowitz was a member of the Obama administration.
"Well clearly, there were mistakes made based on the inspector general's reports," Brennan responded. "And I know that a lot of people attribute it to either to incompetence or politicization. Well, I might just attribute it to, these were FBI agents who were doing their level best to try to prevent Russia interference in the election."
He continued, "They were probably overly aggressive, they didn't pay careful enough attention to some of the details, they may have ignored some aspects of the work that was uncovered. But I think the IG was very clear that politicization did not seem to creep into any aspect of their work either at the initiation of the investigation or throughout."
[snip]

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