Controversial FISA bill heads to Senate, making it easier to spy on Americans

The House voted last week in favor of reauthorizing the surveillance bill that has been exploited by the FBI hundreds of thousands of times to spy on American citizens.

Blaze News previously noted that it was this legislation that elements of the intelligence community exploited to spy on members of the Trump campaign in 2016 without probable cause. It was also used to violate — without warrant — the privacy of multitudes of Jan. 6 protesters, congressional campaign donors, and BLM demonstrators.

Among the 273 lawmakers who recently supported renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to the great satisfaction of the Biden White House, were Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and other such nominal Republicans. Turner suggested that a failure to renew the government’s well-abused spying ability “will make us go blind.”

It appears many in Congress were blind — perhaps willfully so — to a seed of immense consequence that Turner and Democratic Rep. Jim Himes (Conn.) sowed in the reauthorization bill, which the U.S. Senate is now all but guaranteed to approve.

Section 702 allows the government to spy on foreign nationals outside the U.S. with the compelled aid of electronic communication service providers. Supporters of Section 702 like Turner routinely stress that it is a critically important means of keeping tabs on Hamas terrorists, Chinese communist agents, and other foes.

The trouble is that American citizens contacted by a foreign national over email, social media, or the phone can have their communications tapped, searched, and stored without a warrant.

This alone is enough to warrant the criticism 702 has received from opponents like Republican Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio). However, lawmakers have somehow made the 702 headed for reauthorization even worse.

Edward Snowden dusted off his whistle in exile this week, warning Monday, “The NSA is just DAYS from taking over the internet, and it’s not on the front page of any newspaper — because no one has noticed.”

The whistleblower referenced what critics call the “everyone is a spy” provision in the surveillance bill, which Turner and Himes championed.

Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, provided a penetrating explanation of the provision in a series of tweets earlier this week, characterizing it ultimately as the “biggest expansion of domestic surveillance since the Patriot Act.”

“Under current law, the government can compel ‘electronic communications services providers’ that have direct access to communications to assist the NSA in conducting Section 702 surveillance,” wrote Goitein. “In practice, that means companies like Verizon and Google must turn over the communications of the targets of Section 702 surveillance.”

Goitein noted that the House approved an amendment the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence offered to the reauthorization bill, which it ultimately passed. This amendment alters the definition of “electronic communications surveillance provider.”

“If the bill becomes law, any company or individual that provides ANY service whatsoever may be forced to assist in NSA surveillance, as long as they have access to equipment on which communications are transmitted or stored — such as routers, servers, cell towers, etc.,” wrote Goitein.

In other words, it won’t just be giants like Verizon and Google the NSA will rope into helping it peer into the lives of American citizens, but rather any business that provides wireless internet services to its customers, from dentists’ officers to gyms.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the few lawmakers sounding the alarm about this provision, confirmed that “if you have access to any communications, the government can force you to help it spy. That means anyone with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a wifi router, a phone, or a computer.”

“If this provision is enacted, the government could deputize any one of these people against their will, and force them to become an agent for Big Brother,” Wyden said in a statement. “This could all happen without any oversight. The FISA Court won’t know about it. Congress won’t know about it.”

While plumbers, technicians, engineers, and various other professionals could be compelled into the service of the surveillance state, Snowden noted those in the tech space are especially at risk, emphasizing, “If you work at a US tech firm, this bill could transform your whole company into a spy machine.”

Wyden, clearly desperate to motivate his Democratic peers to kill the bill, noted that their indifference in this vote might cost them bigly if President Donald Trump wins in November — even though Trump has implored lawmakers to “KILL FISA.”

Across the aisle there are a handful of Republicans distrustful of conferring more surveillance powers on a government exceedingly prone to error who have similarly signaled they’ll fight the bill in the Senate.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a longtime critic of Section 702, noted Tuesday, “If you find yourself voting for the House-passed bill expanding FISA and reauthorizing 702 without a warrant requirement … [y]ou might have been deceived. Or maybe you’re deceiving others.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told Larry Kudlow this week that some of his fellow Republicans have expressed an interest in doing “a whitewash on FISA and let[ting] them continue to have all the power in the world to spy on Americans.”

“I will not let them do it easily, and I am doing to do all I can to make sure there is a debate on FISA because I don’t think our intelligence agencies should be allowed to spy on Americans without a warrant,” said Paul.

The internet freedom group Demand Progress framed the vote Thursday as a choice of whether or not to equip future presidents with “a knife to ram through the back of democracy.”

“These KGB-style powers pose an existential threat to our civil liberties,” added the group. “The Senate must block this provision.”