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Electronic Surveillance Under Scrutiny as Trump Targets Left Wing Groups as “Domestic Terrorists”
SpyTalk: “FEW NATIONAL SECURITY DEBATES HAVE RILED UP AMERICANS more than the permission Congress has given the government to eavesdrop on their private emails and phone calls. The legislation that gave these intrusive powers to the likes of the NSA and the FBI is up for renewal later this spring, and signs are that it will face a bumpy road to passage by Congress. The issue has taken on additional freight because President Trump has ordered the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Treasury and the IRS to explicitly target left wing groups for investigation, labelling them “domestic terrorists.” An authority that had its beginnings in retooling legislation for the war on terror, Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA) was one of the many policies that traded liberty for security. Now, in its fourth major vote on renewal, uncertainty surrounds its future—as many argue it should.
A little history is in order here. In 1978, following revelations that the National Security Agency had illegally eavesdropped on civil rights and antiwar activists, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which required the government to get warrants from a new, secret federal court to electronically monitor people in the U.S. who were suspected of being agents of foreign powers. Fast forward to the shocking al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. In a panic, the George W. Bush administration summarily tossed aside FISA guardrails in the name of national security.
In a secret program code-named Stellar Wind and authorized by President Bush, the NSA conducted warrantless surveillance of the electronic communications of Americans. Once the existence of Stellar Wind was revealed, top law enforcement officials, including Deputy Attorney General James Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller, concerned that it was illegal, threatened to resign unless the program was replaced with a lawful substitute…”