Eyes on FISA
Of course Donald Trump got it wrong in commanding his cultish House Freedom Caucus followers to vote against continuing the Foreign Intelligence Service Act Section 702 permitting U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct warrantless communications collection for targets abroad, like Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.
On his Truth Social megaphone he ordered his MAGA acolytes to kill FISA as he is still angry that his 2016 campaign was spied on by the feds because Russian agents were trying to infiltrate it, but that surveillance wasn’t under 702 and the FBI did obtain court warrants. Nonetheless, the measure was defeated on Wednesday, further weakening weak Speaker Mike Johnson.
By Friday, some common sense and order was restored and Johnson got the bill passed, but with a two-year extension, instead of the typical five years. Johnson then flew to Mar-a-Lago to stand next to the big boss as they jointly spouted some nonsense about preventing nonexistent electoral fraud.
There is a real debate to be had on wiretaps, balancing civil liberty and national security. But Truth Social and panicked floor votes isn’t the place for that debate.
There are myriad and complicated threats to the United States emerging around the world, and that the information era has facilitated the recruitment and coordination among those who seek to do the country harm.
Security services require some authority and flexibility to investigate these efforts quickly and dynamically, just as intelligence agencies elsewhere do. That leaves us at a place where there are complex conversations needed about the proper scope and purpose of the powers we’ve delegated to our security apparatus; Americans are owed this conversation, not an automatic thumbs up to expansive powers that three-letter agencies have shown themselves to abuse.
As much as the “foreign” part of the act’s title is used as cover to hand-wave these questions away as pertaining to nondescript foreigners, the truth is that many of the communications swept up and archived involve U.S. citizens and other people on American soil.
FISA courts too often have operated as little more than rubber stamps, and when the FBI laments that a need to seek warrants would make its job more difficult and time-consuming, we can’t help but point out that this is literally the point of due process protections.
They constrain security activities, because this country was founded on the premise that our civil liberties cannot be subjugated to security. While understanding that, we must temper it with the reality that piling on the bureaucracy can make intelligence miss the forest for the trees, as it did prior to 9/11. Let 702’s defenders lay out the case and the evidence that these powers are necessary.
Trump obviously doesn’t care about the nuances of striking the balance between liberty and security, nor does he appear to understand the structure of the program. He’s angry that FISA authorities were one of the tools used to hold him to account, and his toadies are running with the political bone.
We hope that below the stupidity and posturing, our federal representatives can have a real conversation about the benefits and dangers of FISA, and come to a measured decision that protects the interests of all constituents. But with this Congress, that seems sadly as likely as a FISA court denial.