FISA 702 Surveillance Authority Expires Because Donald Trump Tried To Tie It To A Voting Bill He Couldn’t Pass

from the stop-your-spying dept

On Friday, the government’s Section 702 surveillance authority lapsed! It may be temporary, but it’s still an important milestone.

Section 702 was one of the surveillance programs Ed Snowden exposed in 2013 — and even after the exposure, the NSA has continued abusing it to spy on Americans.

It’s the tool that lets the NSA collect communications to and from foreign “targets” — including any American on the other end of those communications, who the NSA is technically not supposed to surveil. It used to be worse. It used to include any communications “about” those targets (which made it very broad) but that was stripped out a few years ago, thankfully. Still, a ton of communications are collected under this program, including communications by and to Americans. The NSA then keeps all those communications, and so-called “backdoor searches” allowed the FBI to query those communications, meaning that even though the NSA has no authority to spy on Americans, the tool is used all the time to spy on Americans.

There was a brief period when Republicans were against it, when they thought that Democrats were using the authority to spy on them, but they quickly seemed to forget that once Trump was back in power, because of course they did.

Every single time it comes up for renewal, Congress dithers and frets, and we hear from the authoritarians in the government (across both parties) about how absolutely necessary it is to keep you safe from terrorists. That’s never been true. They never present any actual evidence for that claim. Just a lot of “trust us or you’ll be sorry.” And every time it comes up for renewal, and reformers push for a discussion on stopping its abuses, we’re told “no time for that, we must renew it, and we can debate reforms afterwards.” But no debate ever comes. They just wait until the next renewal, and we go through the same dance all over again.

But on Friday… the 702 authority expired. And the world hasn’t ended. Amusingly, this is almost entirely Trump’s own doing. It started with his decision to put Bill Pulte (who has zero experience in intelligence and is most famous for abusing his authority to go after Trump’s enemies) as the acting Director of National Intelligence. That caused Democrats to realize that if Pulte was abusing his position as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency to investigate anyone he pleased, imagine what shenanigans he’d pull off with 702 powers. And so they blocked any further discussion on 702, and even got a few Republicans to go along with them. Hell, even Senate Majority Leader John Thune worried about how Pulte would “weaponize” 702.

Meanwhile, Trump (apparently thinking he has more support than he actually does) tried to tie his bogus election interference SAVE America Act to 702 renewal.

That’s Trump posting to his personal emo blog Truth Social:

A few Dumocrats are against FISA, with or without Bill Pulte going to DNI, as Acting. What kind of deal is that. Besides, I’m against FISA if it doesn’t come with The Save America Act (Full version!) firmly attached to it. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Except the SAVE America Act, which serves no purpose other than to suppress voting, just doesn’t have the votes. So tying it to FISA renewal, which was already on shaky grounds, means they don’t have the votes for either.

The self-proclaimed ultimate dealmaker managed to kill the surveillance program his allies love by overplaying a weak hand. The intel community’s sky-is-falling routine has been exposed as the theater it’s always been. Congress should leave this one expired.

Filed Under: 702 reform, backdoor searches, donald trump, fbi, nsa, save act, section 702, surveillance