Replies

Mike Lee
@BasedMikeLee

1. FBI Director Christopher Wray just told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Congress (1) MUST reauthorize FISA 702, and (2) MUST NOT impose a requirement that FBI obtain a search warrant before conducting “backdoor searches” of American citizens through the 702 database.

2. I asked Wray about specific instances in which FBI personnel have abused the rights of Americans under FISA 702.

He insisted that those things are in the past and won’t happen again now that FBI has adopted new procedures.

3. The claim that FBI has fixed this—by changing its own internal procedures and adopted new policies—is completely unpersuasive.

I’ve heard the same thing from FBI directors in three different presidential administrations. This has not changed in the 13 years I’ve been on this.

4. When the FBI is allowed to police itself, and need not go to court to get a warrant based on evidence establishing probably cause—like every other law-enforcement agency in America—it abuses its power under FISA.

5. When Wray insists that a warrant requirement would just be too difficult for FBI to comply with, that isn’t surprising. Literally every government that has ever been required to obtain a search warrant—after previously not being required to do so—has raised similar concerns.

6. The Constitution itself adds to the government’s burden’s—that’s the whole point of it.

The Fourth Amendment is no exception to that.

7. The Constitution restrains government power because unchecked government power, once it sets in, is exceedingly difficult for citizens to counteract.

8. Director Wray told me, when I asked him about specific instances in which 702 has been abused by FBI, that the new procedures would prevent the abuses in question. Probably false. At least two of the examples I raised, which occurred AFTER the new procedures were adopted.

9. And those weren’t minor exceptions. One of them involved a query of a U.S. senator. Another involved a state court judge who had complained about civil rights abuses by the FBI. Both occurred after FBI adopted the new procedures.

10. There have undoubtedly been many others. But I asked him specifically about those instances, both of which occurred *after* FBI adopted its new, supposedly fool-proof reforms.

11. Also, the FISA court comments Wray relied on in making that absurd claim that all problems had been fixed by new policies weren’t nearly as glowing as he described them. In fact, they acknowledged ongoing problems.

12. Then there’s this. Please watch the video.

https://twitter.com/SenMikeLee/status/1732086278772908465

https://twitter.com/BasedMikeLee/status/1732088908362440998