'FBI violated American citizens' 4A rights 278,000 times': Bureau blasted over attempt to put gloss on Section 702

The FBI is attempting to rehabilitate the public image of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as Congress has until April 19 to reauthorize it. The bureau recently posted a video to X that features FBI Director Christopher Wray attempting to put a gloss on Section 702 as part of this monthslong campaign.

The bureau's timely propaganda did not escape the attention of critics on X, where the post received a community note that read, "The FBI violated American citizens' 4A rights 278,000 times with illegal, unauthorized FISA 702 searches."

Among the critics was Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who wrote, "FBI just got called out in a community note on X. Congress — take note. FISA 702 has been used for warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of times. Yet FBI demands 702 be reauthorized by April 19 WITHOUT a warrant requirement for searches of U.S. citizens."

"Many in Congress will want to reauthorize FISA 702 — which is set to expire April 19th — either without modification or (more likely) with fake reforms that fail to impose a warrant requirement for searches directed at Americans," added the senator.

Section 702 is a provision of FISA enacted by Congress in 2008 that enables the state to spy on foreign nationals located outside the U.S. with the compelled aid of electronic communication service providers.

This was the law exploited by the FBI to spy on members of the Trump campaign in 2016 without probable cause.

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Congress enacted Section 702 in order to "address a collection gap that resulted from the evolution of technology in the years after FISA was passed in 1978."

"Many terrorists and other foreign adversaries were using email accounts serviced by U.S. companies," claimed the ODNI. "Because of this change in communications technology, the government had to seek individual court orders, based on a finding of probable cause, to obtain the communications of non-U.S. persons located abroad."

Supposedly, going through the courts proved too costly "because of the resources required and because the government couldn't always meet the probable cause standard, which was designed to protect U.S. persons and persons in the U.S."

While 702 targets must be foreign nationals believed to be outside the U.S., the FBI readily admits that "such targets may send an email or have a phone call with a U.S. person."

As a consequence, multitudes of American citizens have been subjected to warrantless surveillance and have had their phone calls, text messages, emails, and other communications tapped and stored.

Blaze News previously reported that during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in June 2023, the FBI admitted there had been at least 278,000 "unintentional" back-door search queries of the 702 database for the private communications of Americans between 2020 and 2021 alone.

Among those Americans caught up in the warrantless searches were Jan. 6 protesters, 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, and BLM protesters.

The Hill reported that long after the FBI ran numerous searches of people suspected of partaking in the Jan. 6 protests, the Department of Justice concluded the bureau had not met the standard required for such a search.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate at the June 2023 hearing, "Your institution is the one that, according to the court, the FISA court, ran 278,000 unwarranted — probably illegal — queries on Americans, right? That was your institution, correct?"

Wray sang praises to Section 702 when testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in December and did so again before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on March 11.

In his March 11 testimony, Wray stated, "The FISA Court itself most recently found 98% compliance and commented on the reforms working. The most recent Justice Department report found the reforms working, 99% compliance. And so, I think legislation that ensures those reforms stay in place but also preserves the agility and the utility of the tools, what we need to be able to protect the American people."

The FBI's March 25 social post containing an excerpt from Wray's testimony was not well-received.

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) wrote, "The FBI was correctly called out in a community note for lying about its unconstitutional, warrantless surveillance of Americans. Congress must eliminate FISA abuse and protect the American people's privacy."

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) tweeted, "The FBI has been corrected in community notes and rightfully so."

FBI whistlelower Steve Friend reiterated that the FBI "violated constitutional rights and abused FISA Section 702 over 278,000 times in a single year."

Sen. Lee emphasized that he and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin (D) have introduced a bill that would reauthorize 702 but in a fashion that would supposedly safeguard American privacy and liberties.

Their so-called Security and Freedom Enhancement Act would require intelligence agencies to obtain a FISA Title I order or a warrant prior to accessing the contents of Americans' communications collected under Section 702.

"While only foreigners overseas may be targeted, the program sweeps in massive amounts of Americans' communications, which may be searched without a warrant. Even after implementing compliance measures, the FBI still conducted more than 200,000 warrantless searches of Americans' communications in just one year — more than 500 warrantless searches per day," said Durbin.

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We were Couped:
Responsibility2nd,
Since Nov 8, 2005Responsibility2nd

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The Great American Coup d’état.

Coup d’état, also called coup, the sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group. The chief prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements.
Unlike a revolution, which is usually achieved by large numbers of people working for basic social, economic, and political change, a coup is a change in power from the top that merely results in the abrupt replacement of leading government personnel.

A coup rarely alters a nation’s fundamental social and economic policies, nor does it significantly redistribute power among competing political groups. Among the earliest modern coups were those in which Napoleon overthrew the Directory on November 9, 1799 (18 Brumaire), and in which Louis Napoleon dissolved the assembly of France’s Second Republic in 1851. Coups were a regular occurrence in various Latin American nations in the 19th and 20th centuries and in Africa after the countries there gained independence in the 1960s.

Types of Coups d’Etat

As described by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in his 1968 book Political Order in Changing Societies, there are three generally recognized types of coups:

The breakthrough coup: In this most-common type of takeover, an opposing group of civilian or military organizers overthrows the seated government and installs themselves as the nation’s new leaders. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, in which Russian Communists led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the tsarist regime, is an example of a breakthrough coup.

The guardian coup: Typically justified as being for the “broader good of the nation,” the guardian coup occurs when one elite group seizes power from another elite group. For example, an army general overthrows a king or president. Some consider the 2013 overthrow of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as part of the Arab Spring to have been a guardian coup.
The veto coup: In a veto coup, the military steps in to prevent radical political change. The failed 2016 coup conducted by a faction of the Turkish military in an attempt to prevent what it considered Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s assault on secularism could be considered a veto coup.

Wikipedia lists some 13 examples of coups here in the US. Number 13 is a complete lie and does not tell the truth of the Biden overthrow. But that’s what makes for a great coup; the state run media lying to the public.

Wikipedia also speaks about a Soft Coup. Or a nonviolent revolution. AKA a bloodless coup.

But is that what has happened here in America? Nope. Look at the violence and bloodshed

Types of Coups d’Etat

As described by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in his 1968 book Political Order in Changing Societies, there are three generally recognized types of coups:

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, in which Russian Communists led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the tsarist regime, is an example of a breakthrough coup.
The guardian coup: Typically justified as being for the “broader good of the nation,” the guardian coup occurs when one elite group seizes power from another elite group. For example, an army general overthrows a king or president. Some consider the 2013 overthrow of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as part of the Arab Spring to have been a guardian coup.

The veto coup: In a veto coup, the military steps in to prevent radical political change. The failed 2016 coup conducted by a faction of the Turkish military in an attempt to prevent what it considered Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s assault on secularism could be considered a veto coup.

Wikipedia also speaks about a Soft Coup. Or a nonviolent revolution. AKA a bloodless coup. But is that what has happened here in America? Nope. Look at the violence and bloodshed Antifa and BLM has caused in our American cities and see how clearly violence has played a part in the overthrow of our American government.

And then there are Predictors. Event and issues that lead up to a coup. One predictor not listed but which played a very large role in the 2020 coup was the manmade crisis caused by the manmade Covid 19 virus. The manipulation by our enemies to overthrow a legal election using panic over Covid was ingenious.

But there are other components that liberals used in overthrowing America. Lets list them:

1. State Run Media. There is no doubt that the news media and social media are but tools of the Democrats to spread disinformation and lies.

2. Fraudulent Election. There is also no doubt the election on November 3, 2020 was stolen by millions of votes.

3. Collusion with a foreign military power. The Biden’s (Hunter and Joe)collusion with China and other governments played a key role in how and why the election went the way it did.

4. Riots and insurrections. From Minneapolis to Portland to many other cities, we saw government allowed actions of violence and sedition in the streets.

5. A puppet regime. Look at many South American or African overthrows and you will often see a weak leader that is totally controlled by another powerful entity. Joe Biden is the perfect example of a puppet.

6. Goverment Agencies. The FBI is but one of many agencies that have been complicit in undermining the Constitution and was but another part of the coup. The events on 1/6 were completely orchestrated by the FBI using Antifa agents as provocateurs.

7. Troops in the Capitol. How can any coup d’etat be sucessful without a powerful military force to back it up? Pelosi and the democrats show of force - 25,000 troops at the Capitol - was another essential element of how the US was overthrown.

8. Political Prisoners. Yep. We have them also. Months after the events on 1/6 the FBI has rounded up and jailed hundreds of political prisoners with no bail and no trial. The Kangaroo Court verdict and the massively unfair sentence of Derek Chauvin is also an indication of how a Banana Republic sends innocent people to jail simply because they are on the wrong side of politics in this country.

9. Suppression of Civil Rights. The right to vote is a fundamental freedom. The liberals stealing millions of votes in effect removed our right to vote. We also had the right to free speech removed. Facebook, Twitter, Google and other media sites are very public ways to express our freedoms. The very idea that they routinely and capriciously remove and cancel conservative POV’s is unconstitutional. And what about the authoritative and illegal lockdowns we endured. The USSR would have been proud of that.

More Info on how this coup was successful
An American Coup
New English Review ^ | Jan 2021 | Daniel Mallock

It’s a Coup. Just Say It!
American Thinker ^ | Jay Valentine

American Coup
Frontpage Mag ^ | Nov 9, 2020 | Daniel Greenfield

The election coup plot, explained
American Thinker ^ | November 5, 2020 | Thomas Lifson

The Deep State’s Stealthy, Subversive, Silent Coup to Ensure Nothing Changes: No doubt about it, the coup d’etat was successful.
Rutherford Institute ^ | 01/20/2021 | John Whitehead

You Have Been Couped
The Gates of Vienna ^ | January 15, 2021 | H. Numan

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