Free Republic

The FBI has illegally shared raw intelligence about Americans with unauthorized third parties and violated other constitutional privacy protections, according to newly declassified documents that undercut the bureau’s public assurances about how carefully it handles warrantless spy data to avoid abuses or leaks. In his final congressional testimony before he was fired by President Trump this month, then-FBI Director James Comey unequivocally told lawmakers his agency used sensitive espionage data gathered about Americans without a warrant only when it was “lawfully collected, carefully overseen and checked.” Once-top secret U.S. intelligence community memos reviewed by Circa tell a different story, citing...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) earlier this week revealed that another senator had told him that he was surveilled by the Obama administration. “I know one other senator who’s already confided to me that he was surveilled by the Obama administration, including his phone calls,” he told Fox News on Wednesday. “So when this all comes out, if there are political figures from the opposition party, it’s a story bigger than any of the allegations with regard to Russian collusion,” he said. Earlier this month, Paul announced that sources have told him that he has been surveilled by the Obama administration,...

WASHINGTON — Former FBI director James Comey seized and buried volumes of information that demonstrated a wide-ranging government surveillance operation targeting Donald Trump before he became president.Big League Politics has learned that Larry Klayman, attorney for former NSA and CIA contractor and whistleblower Dennis Montgomery, delivered to the FBI 47 hard drives and data amounting to more than 600 million pages of documentation on the surveillance scheme. Then-FBI director James Comey’s general counsel James Baker took the data into his possession, according to multiple sources. But despite possessing Montgomery’s bombshell whistleblower revelations, Comey never acted on or publicized the information.Additionally,...

It's reported that private security aide to Pres. Trump delivered a packet of letters firing Comey. No electronic. Sealed letter Director's Eyes Only (and presumably marked as such). Delivered in person to Mr. Comey's DC office, for him to receive (presumably). 1.)who opened packet & spilled this information prematurely, ignoring security (and exposing themselves in the process, to be "rolled up") disallowing courtesy intended by the President to the Director, to announce formally in due course and time & not find it out during a training/recruitment meeting in LA? 2.) As the enraged, incoherent lefties are still lashing out nonsensically,...

It is likely the firing of Comey has less to do with Hillary and more to do with surveillance and leaks of the Trump team, possibly including Trump himself. There was utter fear pervading Washington when it became obvious Trump would win the Republican nomination and possibly the election. He was threatening gutting agencies and closing down others. He was threatening the status quo. The media set out to destroy him. And there were others in government who felt the same way. Call it the Deep State or whatever, top level officials were more than concerned. Rules were bent especially...

Sen. Rand Paul, the former Republican presidential candidate and vocal champion of civil liberties, has received allegations that the Obama administration sought intercepted intelligence from the National Security Agency on him and other members of Congress and has asked President Donald Trump to conduct a formal investigation, Circa has learned. Paul quietly asked for the probe nearly a month ago in a letter to Trump that was obtained by Circa. "An anonymous source recently alleged to me that my name, as well as the names of other Members of Congress, were unmasked, queried or both, in intelligence reports of intercepts...

A former foreign policy adviser to President Trump’s election campaign says his phone may have been tapped in 2016, apparently implying that such action would support claims that Trump Tower was under surveillance. Carter Page, works near Trump Tower in New York and was a frequent visitor during the campaign. In a letter to the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday, he lays out a case for why he thinks he may have been swept up in any surveillance related to the Trump operation, the Guardian reported Thursday. “Having spoken in favor of some of Mr. Trump’s policies on...

“Who appointed you to the United States Supreme Court?” pointedly asked Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. He was grilling former acting attorney general Sally Yates about her refusal to enforce President Trump’s first executive order temporarily banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States until vetting procedures could be improved. The senator pressed on, noting that it is the courts that determine what is constitutional, adding, “In fact, aren’t most acts of Congress presumed to be constitutional?” Yates hesitantly responded, “They are presumed but they’re not always constitutional, and of course, I was not on the Supreme Court....

Civil-liberties nightmares about the Surveillance State are coming true, but – since the victims are former Donald Trump advisers – many of the usual civil-liberties defenders are strikingly silent ___ Congressional demands for personal and business information from several of Donald Trump’s campaign advisers demonstrate how the Russia-gate investigation continues to spill over into a new breed of McCarthyism infringing on civil liberties, including freedom of speech and freedom of association. The original thinking had been that congressional and other investigations would concentrate on specific concerns from alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, such as whether a Trump intermediary...

Well, this is interesting. Last week, a report circulated which indicated “the Obama administration conducted more than 35,000 searches on NSA intercepts seeking information about Americans during the divisive 2016 election year.” Obviously, the biggest fish caught in the “incidental surveillance” net was President Donald Trump. The former administration has been claiming that Trump was never targeted, he was just surveilled due to associations with others.

The plight of the unredacted: Calling on Judicial Watch: Detailed research is needed on how NSA intelligence with the unredacted names of thousands of US citizens during the 2016 election campaign may have been put to use. Follow-up is needed to see what happened to thousands of citizens whose names were distributed throughout government agencies under the orders of the President Barack Hussein Obama administration—in effect giving them the power of harassment.

The National Security Agency vacuumed up more than 151 million records about Americans’ phone calls last year via a new system that Congress created to end the agency’s once-secret program that collected domestic calling records in bulk, a report disclosed Tuesday. The National Security Agency took in the 151 million records despite obtaining court orders to use the system on only 42 terrorism suspects in 2016, along with a few left over from late 2015, the report said. According to the report, the National Security Agency distributed 3,914 reports last year containing information about Americans gathered via the warrantless surveillance...

The U.S. National Security Agency collected more than 151 million records of Americans' phone calls last year, even after Congress limited its ability to collect bulk phone records, according to an annual report issued on Tuesday by the top U.S. intelligence officer. The report said the names of 1,934 "U.S. persons" were "unmasked" last year in response to specific requests, compared with 2,232 in 2015, but it did not identify who requested the names or on what grounds. The report from the office of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was the first measure of the effects of the 2015...

During his final year in office, President Barack Obama's team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election. In all, government officials conducted 30,355 searches in 2016 seeking information about Americans in NSA intercept metadata, which include telephone numbers and email addresses. The government in 2016 also scoured the actual contents of NSA intercepted calls and emails for 5,288 Americans, an increase of 13 percent over the prior year and a massive...

During his final year in office, President Obama's team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election. 2 of 26 The data, made available this week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, provides the clearest evidence to date of how information accidentally collected by the NSA overseas about Americans was subsequently searched and disseminated after President Obama loosened privacy protections to make such sharing easier in 2011 in the...

The U.S. NSA has halted a form of surveillance that allowed it to collect without a warrant the digital communications of Americans that mentioned a foreign intelligence target, the spy agency confirmed on Friday, Reuters reports. Via Reuters: The decision to stop the once-secret activity, which collected messages sent to or received from people believed to be living overseas, arrives as a sudden and unexpected triumph for privacy advocates who were long critical of the program, which U.S. officials had defended as both lawful and important to national security. The halt is among the most substantial changes to U.S. surveillance...

DOJ 2008 rules limit supplying politically sensitive information to the White House, a review of guidelines for domestic FBI intel investigations has found. The central focus of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence probe into putative Russian election meddling as a cover to disseminate unauthorized disclosures of sensitive US intel communications intercepts. The prohibitions may explain why the FBI still has not responded to a House request for documents about how the White House was able to “unmask” the names of Americans incidentally spied on during an apparently contrived Obama admin "foreign electronic intelligence operation" timed to run during...

A long list of individuals and organizations subjected to surveillance by the Obama Administration was cited by former National Security Adviser Susan Rice as "proof I did nothing wrong." The list included Former U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif), Pro-Israel lobbyists, FBI contractor and whistleblower Shamai Leibowitz, Tea-party groups, WikiLeaks, New York Times reporter James Risen, NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, Fox News reporter James Rosen, CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson, former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Fox News reporter Mike Levine, ATF Special Agent John Dodson, former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, Associated Press reporters, Benghazi whistleblowers, President Obama's vice chair of...

After leaving the presidency, Barack Obama has been spotted using his favorite iPad to take photos of his wife while on a David Geffen-owned megayacht in Tahiti. But this may be no ordinary iPad. A government watchdog speculates that he may have taken the Top Secret version out of the Oval Office, a big no-no.

The CIA and FBI have pivoted from their Russian narrative as they admit that perhaps a traitor on the inside leaked docs to Wikileaks rather than the ‘Russians hacked and leaked’. Pompeo recently stated: “It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: A non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”