Editorial
Senate kills limits on searches
The timing for the United States Senate’s vote last week to reauthorize the so-called USA Freedom Act, originally passed in 2013 to put some limits on Patriot Act-related searches, was impeccable.
The nation’s capital had just been rocked by yet another federal law-enforcement scandal — this one involving the Justice Department’s decision to drop “lying to the FBI” charges against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The Flynn case is a complicated and partisan mess and the subject for another day, but the Washington Post noted that the case collapsed “after senior political appointees in the Justice Department determined lower-level prosecutors and agents erred egregiously in the course of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.”
If that weren’t enough of a reason for Congress to look more closely at addressing the systemic misuse of federal prosecutorial powers, in March the department’s Inspector General released a memorandum about the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The applications in that case allegedly were filled with egregious errors and inadequately supported facts to justify spying on an American citizen.
Yet last week, the Senate fell one vote short of the 60 votes needed to pass an amendment that would have protected all Americans from warrantless and intrusive federal searches. The Senate did approve a useful measure to provide more independent advisers to secretive FISA courts, which are tasked with approving electronic surveillance and other federal investigations involving foreign intelligence.
Nevertheless, its refusal to approve the warrantless-search amendment authored by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, and Sen. Steve Daines, R Montana, leaves Americans open to unlimited searches of their webbrowsing and internet records. Fortunately, the entire bill goes back to the House of Representatives, where debates can continue.
The Page and Flynn cases weren’t directly related to the law, but as Reason’s Scott Shackford explained, “the discovery that the FBI played fast and loose with the truth when requesting these warrants from the FISA court, and the subsequent evidence that the FBI regularly does a terrible job of documenting its evidence when targeting any Americans for FISA surveillance, have created an opening for civil libertarians to call for stronger privacy protections.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a big enough opening. The treatment of Flynn and Page by federal law-enforcement authorities appears to have been abusive, but most Americans victimized by such actions have few resources and no connections to the president. Their cases don’t make the headlines nor figure into national political debates.
We’d like to see a broader and bipartisan coalition committed to reining in federal overreach, regardless of the politics of the defendant. The timing for the United States Senate’s vote last week to reauthorize the so-called USA Freedom Act, originally passed in 2013 to put some limits on Patriot Actrelated searches, was impeccable.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, led efforts to kill the search restrictions, but should have known better given his public outrage over the Flynn case. McConnell was upset at the FBI’s handling of the matter, but what will it take to convince him and other lawmakers that the problem isn’t one or two botched investigations — but that federal police agencies have insufficient checks and balances?
— Orange County Register, Media News Group