{"id":21364,"date":"2023-12-13T02:04:08","date_gmt":"2023-12-13T08:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=21364"},"modified":"2023-12-13T02:04:15","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T08:04:15","slug":"sen-mike-lee-slams-fig-leaf-proposals-that-would-extend-government-surveillance-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=21364","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Mike Lee slams \u2018fig leaf\u2019 proposals that would extend government surveillance tool"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Utah senator opposes an effort to extend FISA into next year without reforms and wants Congress to prohibit warrantless surveillance of Americans.<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Mike Lee said his congressional colleagues should bring a controversial government surveillance program into alignment with the Constitution and abandon \u201cfig leaf\u201d proposals that would enable intelligence agencies to gather even more of Americans\u2019 private information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for the collection of foreign communication without a warrant, is set to expire by the end of 2023 unless it is reauthorized. Dueling replacement packages for Section 702 are scheduled for floor votes in the House this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intelligence insiders say the far-reaching statute should be preserved in its current state to adequately prevent terrorist threats. But Lee says as it stands, Section 702 violates U.S. citizens\u2019 rights, and he fears the influence of national security agencies on Congress will result in a milquetoast makeover, or an amendment-free extension, of the law. A bipartisan<\/u><\/a> group<\/u><\/a> of lawmakers share the Utah senator\u2019s concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis stuff is not popular with the American people \u2014 not with liberals, not with conservatives, not with Democrats, not with Republicans,\u201d Lee, a Republican, told the Deseret News in an interview on Monday. \u201c(Intelligence agencies) know it\u2019s not popular so they want to come up with a fig leaf that appears to address the problem but that doesn\u2019t actually address it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After vacillating between different proposals last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., decided to embed a temporary FISA extension in the final version of the annual defense spending bill, which could pass the House and Senate as soon as this week<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congressional leadership argued the move was necessary to avoid a national security threat if lawmakers are unable to agree on Section 702 reforms before going home this weekend for the Christmas recess. But Lee questioned whether the tactic is an effort to obscure the vote on the surveillance tool, which has been abused in recent years to spy on Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTheir objective seems to be to separate out the debate from the merits of 702 from the problems associated with 702, and to put it onto something else,\u201d Lee said. \u201cThe fact that they\u2019re punting it forward without any modification right now, even for a few months, is troubling because it suggests that they\u2019ll try to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What FISA reforms is Congress considering?<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Johnson, however, has promised to put two different FISA reform proposals on the floor for a vote this week. One bill, coming from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, of the House Judiciary Committee, has gained bipartisan support among members of Congress and civil rights organizations. It seeks to reduce FISA\u2019s reach by requiring national security agencies to secure a warrant before they can access the private information of Americans who have been in communication with foreign nationals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee \u201cwholeheartedly\u201d supports Jordan\u2019s bill, which he says is \u201cvery similar\u201d to the Government Surveillance Reform Act<\/u><\/a> he introduced last month. Both pieces of legislation would prohibit so-called \u201cbackdoor searches\u201d where the FBI, or other intelligence agencies, search through the content of American citizens\u2019 conversations that were gathered incidentally through a Section 702 order for a foreign national.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The House Intelligence Committee, chaired by fellow Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner, has launched a coordinated attack against Jordan\u2019s reforms, arguing the judiciary chair\u2019s prohibition of warrantless searches will handicap a pillar of the country\u2019s national security apparatus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Lee, and several D.C. observers, including the progressive Brennan Center for Justice<\/u><\/a>, have noted that the intelligence committee\u2019s proposal does little to curtail the intelligence community it\u2019s meant to oversee. The bill would prohibit warrantless searches only in situations that rarely occur and would broaden the sources from which the government can collect private information to include wifi routers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot only does this not do anything meaningful to curtail warrantless domestic surveillance of American citizens, it actually expands the government\u2019s ability to do that,\u201d Lee explained. \u201cAnd I find that reprehensible, especially because I know that they know exactly what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How has the government misused FISA?<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, congressional oversight and FISA Court reviews have revealed hundreds of thousands of cases in which FISA was abused by government officials<\/u><\/a> to spy on the communications of U.S. citizens<\/u><\/a>. While there is an important, and constitutional, place for FISA surveillance of foreign enemies, Lee said, there is no excuse that justifies government agencies ignoring Americans\u2019 fourth amendment right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no legitimate reason I can think of why they need to be able to do a backdoor search of an American citizen\u2019s communications held in the FISA 702 database maintained by the NSA and that they have to do so without a warrant,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Directors of agencies like the FBI have claimed in congressional hearings that they have implemented policies to minimize the invasion of Americans\u2019 privacy and that a prohibition on warrantless searches in connection to Section 702 targets would slow or hinder their surveillance efforts. But that\u2019s a feature, not a bug, of Jordan\u2019s reforms, according to Lee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt does make their job more difficult. Substantially so. That\u2019s the whole point,\u201d Lee said. \u201cGovernments always resist reforms like this designed to protect the privacy of individual citizens. Why? Because It makes their job more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee rejects the line coming from the intelligence community that Americans are safer if national security officials can conduct surveillance on a limited number of U.S. citizens without a judge\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne could make the exact same argument about our domestic law enforcement capabilities \u2014 that we would all be safer if the government could spy on us without a warrant. And yet we do it, and our law enforcement system functions well,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deseret<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Utah senator opposes an effort to extend FISA into next year without reforms and wants Congress to prohibit warrantless surveillance of Americans. Sen. Mike Lee said his congressional colleagues should bring a controversial government surveillance program into alignment with the Constitution and abandon \u201cfig leaf\u201d proposals that would enable intelligence agencies to gather even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":21365,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1759,6785,1268,24977,1845,3506,1287,24549],"class_list":["post-21364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-bills","tag-citizens","tag-government","tag-mike-lee","tag-rights","tag-senator","tag-slam","tag-surveillance-programs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21366,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21364\/revisions\/21366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}