Senator Wyden Again Tells Trump Administration It Owes The Public Access To A Section 702 Ruling

from the I-told-you-once-and-I-told-you-twice dept

Section 702 surveillance powers are still limping along, mostly unimpeded, despite on-again/off-again objections by federal politicians.

More active recently have been several GOP politicians. These representatives are newly opposed to clean reauthorization of Section 702 powers. This isn’t because they’ve come to realize the threat to Americans’ rights that warrantless access by the FBI (and others) Section 702 collections pose, but because they themselves have experienced the negative outcomes of this warrantless access.

To be perfectly clear, the GOP does not care that regular Americans are being subjected to warrantless surveillance by the FBI and its access to the NSA’s ostensibly foreign-facing collection. For those of us continually opposed to the FBI’s continuous abuse of its access, we’re willing to accept the help of any allies we can get, no matter how temporary that help might be.

Thanks to pissing off Republicans, Section 702 surveillance powers have been on the ropes for a few years now. Somehow, neither party (for the most part) could be bothered to generate meaningful reform in the wake of the Snowden leaks, but now that Trump’s boys are being bothered by the feds, it’s suddenly okay to threaten to pull the plug on Section 702.

There’s a push to make Section 702 whole again, despite these reform efforts. Whatever objections certain GOP members (with ties to the 2021 insurrection attempts) may be raising, the rest of the GOP still wants the power to spy on Americans it doesn’t like — a list that continues to grow as more Americans make it clear they don’t like this MAGA-infected version of the GOP.

The steady hand through all of this for years has been Senator Ron Wyden. Wyden has not only opposed clean reauthorizations of multiple government surveillance powers, but he’s also hinted at surveillance abuses by the US government that the US government is still unwilling to discuss publicly.

Most recently, the FISA Court gave its (limited) blessing to an extension of Section 702 surveillance powers, but only agreed to do so if the government took steps to curb the abuses it had routinely witnessed since… well, pretty much the inception of the Section 702 program.

The Trump administration made it clear it was not willing to make these concessions. And the FISA Court decided it didn’t need to publish its full decision because, presumably, the stupid American public would somehow manage to destroy national security just by reading it.

Wyden isn’t giving up. He’s demanding the full decision be released to — at the very least — the people charged with voting for reauthorization, if not the people these legislators represent.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the longest-serving member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called out the Trump Administration for ignoring a request by Senate Intelligence Committee leaders to declassify a surveillance court opinion by May 15.

Wyden secured a commitment from Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Vice-Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., to push for release of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court opinion about surveillance conducted under FISA Section 702.

“The executive branch has ignored a request from the chair and vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee for basic transparency about FISA surveillance. I’ll have more to say about this next week,” Wyden said. “It’s clear that this administration cannot be trusted with unfettered, warrantless surveillance of Americans. Every member of Congress should keep this in mind when we consider FISA 702 in a few weeks.”

All of this is true. The current administration cannot be trusted, not on this matter or pretty much anything else. The current administration also refuses to declassify an order by the FISA court that appears to have told Trump serious reform efforts are needed to keep Section 702 in compliance with the Constitution. Finally, every member of Congress voting on the reauthorization should have access to the full opinion. It’s supremely weird that they don’t, considering they have the power to flip the 702 switch off and on every few years.

If the administration can’t share it with its large cadre of MAGA enthusiasts, it obviously has something to hide. It suggests the Trump administration would rather have readily available, unconstitutional access to US persons’ communications than address the complaints of the small number of MAGA faithful who are angry about being subjected to domestic surveillance they always assumed would only be directed at their enemies.

Wyden is not only legally and ethically right to press this point, but he’s also opportunistically right to leverage GOP sentiment against domestic surveillance to secure a vote (or reform efforts) that will ultimately protect US citizens, no matter their personal political preferences.

Filed Under: fisa, ron wyden, section 702, section 702 reform, surveillance state, trump administration