The fight brewing in Congress over how to reauthorize a key surveillance tool

Nearly a decade ago, FBI agents arrested a 24-year-old legal permanent resident from Afghanistan in the U.S. who was charged with conspiracy to bomb the New York City subway system.

A tool approved by Congress in 2008 helped federal officials catch this man, Najibullah Zazi, and prevent him from carrying out his plot. That tool is set to expire Dec. 31, and a debate has been brewing among lawmakers about where a reauthorization should fit on the spectrum of balancing broad surveillance powers and protecting individuals' privacy.

To unravel the 2009 plot, officials relied on the authority provided by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's (FISA) Section 702. They used it to expose an email address used by an al Qaeda courier in Pakistan, which revealed communications with an unknown person located in the U.S. who was seeking advice on how to build explosives. The National Security Agency (NSA) passed the information along to the FBI, which identified the man as Zazi. After he and his co-conspirators were arrested, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent executive branch agency, said that, "Without the initial tip-off about Zazi and his plans, which came about by monitoring an overseas foreigner under Section 702, the subway bombing plot might have...succeeded."

Congress is now wrestling with how to modify the program, last renewed in 2012, and dubbed the "crown jewels of the intelligence community" by former FBI Director James Comey. Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed that the government has used this capability to collect data, which has intersected with Americans' communications.

> As far as I can tell most of these tools are useless

For terrorists, yes. Not for spying on citizens (and candidates/campaigns).

Before even considering reauthorizing, congress should demand
* full details on FISA requests in 2016
* full details on unmasking requests
* full details on surveillance of candidates and their staff.
* some other things congress has asked without adequate responses

“Intelligence” agencies have already said they “don’t have records”, “can’t track”, “lost information”, etc in a number of areas. If true, the first step is to fix their systems to allow auditing of future uses/misuses and to detect/prevent misuse as much as possible. If the explanations and excuses are not true, people need to be fired and jailed.

Unless congress can provide oversight with something better than answers in “the least most untruthful manner”, agencies should not have have capabilities that border on “unconstitutional” (someone/Clapper should be in jail). There are cases where extra-constitutional powers may be appropriate (i.e. knowing a nuclear bomb WILL go off “somewhere in the US” today). But that use needs to be completely transparent to the peoples’ representatives (a few members of congress in real time and all/most of congress at a later time) and very limited.

Some of us are willing to suffer the risk to maintain a free society. We see the abuses as the greater threat.

We are not willing to surrender essential liberty for the siren call of safety.

And we know everyone in the business wants us to. That’s the plan.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.