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<\/p>\nWith every camera focused on impeachment, Republicans and Democrats vote to continue invasive Patriot Act provisions.<\/p>\n
Authored by: BARBARA BOLAND | TheAmericanConservative.com<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
While cameras were trained on the impeachment hearings in the House, lawmakers slipped away last week to vote for a continuing resolution that, if passed by the Senate, will fund the government through December 20.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not all it will do. Democratic leaders added language that extends some of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act, tucked into a section of this must-pass bill titled \u201cOther Matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
It includes an extension of three Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorities until March 15, 2020, and section 215, which, as Edward Snowden exposed, the government uses to justify sweeping mass surveillance, warrantless search powers, and the call detail records (CDR) program.<\/p>\n
By sneaking this provision into a must-pass bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi forced liberal Democrats to choose between allowing these provisions to sunset or funding the government.<\/p>\n
Just as Democrats are decrying President Donald Trump\u2019s abuse of executive powers, they\u2019re busy giving his administration an extension of those same powers, said Justin Amash, a congressman from Michigan and former Republican, who added, \u201cit\u2019s surreal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amash submitted an amendment to strip the Patriot Act language from the budget bill, but Democrats on the Rules Committee blocked the amendment.<\/p>\n
The Patriot Act extension passed the House with nearly all Democrats voting in favor. If it clears the Senate and Trump signs it into law, Democrats will now be responsible for enabling warrantless surveillance against Americans.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday, Speaker Pelosi said the president has \u2018abused his power for his own personal, political benefit.\u2019 Today, she wants to extend the president\u2019s power to do warrantless surveillance of Americans,\u201d Amash wrote on Twitter.<\/p>\n
Both parties are equally hypocritical on this. Trump supporters crow about Director James Comey\u2019s FBI abusing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts in order to surveil the Trump campaign, while Democrats blame Republican President George W. Bush for the Patriot Act and decry executive power under Trump. Yet both teamed up to extend the administration\u2019s surveillance authority.<\/p>\n
They also extended the Call Data Records (CDR) program, which the National Security Agency (NSA) can\u2019t even demonstrate provides any value.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor privacy advocates, this is such an obvious choice,\u201d Jake Laperruque, senior counsel for the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, said in an interview with The American Conservative. Because the CDR program vacuums up all the phone call records of anyone within \u201ctwo hops\u201d of a \u201cspecific selection term,\u201d a few dozen FISA warrants can lead to the phone call records of millions of Americans.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s incredibly privacy invasive,\u201d said Laperruque. \u201cThere\u2019s tens of millions of phone records that are caught up in this. There\u2019s hundreds of thousands of Americans that are caught when they have a warrant for one person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Repealing the call records program should have been a no-brainer. Thanks to \u201ctechnical irregularities\u201d during collection, the NSA said it inadvertently received a huge amount of call data records. Then months later, another \u201covercollection\u201d incident caused it to delete every record it had collected and voluntarily stop the CDR program entirely.<\/p>\n
Senators Lindsey Graham and Dianne Feinstein were \u201cacting a few months ago like they\u2019re tough by contemplating eliminating the CDR program\u201d even though that\u2019s widely considered the lowest hanging fruit among a series of needed reforms, said Josh Withrow, legislative affairs manager for FreedomWorks, in an interview with The American Conservative.<\/p>\n
But that was before members of the Trump administration appeared before congressional committees and requested that the CDR authority \u201cthe NSA had voluntarily shut down\u201d be renewed anyway \u201cbecause it might be useful one day,\u201d India McKinney, director of Federal Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The American Conservative.<\/p>\n
We want to have that \u201ctool in our toolbox\u201d because it could be \u201cvaluable moving forward,\u201d an NSA official told the Senate Judiciary Committee.<\/p>\n
According to our intelligence agencies\u2019 liberal interpretation of section 215, the \u201cbusiness records\u201d provision could allow the government to collect intensely personal private information, like medical records, location data, or even possibly footage from an Amazon Ring doorbell camera, all without a warrant, Trump administration officials told Congress.<\/p>\n
Yet the funding bill, including the extension of surveillance powers, passed 231-192.<\/p>\n
Only 10 Democrats defied leadership to vote against the resolution, including \u201cthe Squad\u201d congresswomen Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, this episode illustrates how Congress continues to fail to perform its most basic duties. No doubt the vast majority of the members of the House tell their constituents that they are against warrantless surveillance and an unchecked executive. But how do they vote?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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