U.S. House Vote Narrowly Allows Rampant Abuses of Warrantless Spying Authority to Continue
cdt.org
(WASHINGTON) — Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a two-year extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), a controversial warrantless spying authority, and in an extremely narrow tie vote, rejected critical reforms to stop rampant abuse of the law that has been documented in recent years. FISA 702 warrantless […]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/15271710

Not a good result. The good amendment to add a warrant requirement failed on a tie vote; bad amendments to expand the scope of warrantless wiretapping passed. Next step: a Senate vote.

  • The Nexus of Privacy@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
    0·
    7 months ago

    From the article:

    FISA 702 warrantless surveillance purports to target only foreign subjects, but in practice sweeps in a huge amount of Americans’ communications. This allows intelligence agencies to exploit a backdoor search loophole: the FBI, CIA, and NSA conduct “U.S. person queries” of FISA 702 records to deliberately pull up Americans’ private messages, all without a warrant or any court approval. This loophole has led to systemic abuse, involving thousands of improper queries each year, including those directed at protesters, campaign donors, journalists, lawmakers, and — in one case — the online dating matches of an analyst.

    • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
      01·
      7 months ago

      OK. There are no laws against the NSA picking up.foreign communications. In fact, that’s the reason they exist. So they monitor a phone call originating from Moscow, say, of a person they find of interest. All of a sudden, that guy makes a call to someone in the US. Should the NSA simply hang up and not find out what it’s all about due to a lack of warrant? Also, the technology doesn’t make that immediately possible.

      The courts have decided that text messages, as well as mobile tracking, do not need lawful warrants. Usually you don’t apply for a warrant when you don’t need one.

      BTW, phone records are actually operating company business records. You don’t own them.