Watchman: “If Congress Cannot Yank in the Reins on the FBI and NSA After Millions of Confirmed Violations of Americans’ Rights, Only a Fool Would Expect Congress to Ever Give a Damn About the Constitution.” Much Less God’s People. House Speaker Johnson is a Disgrace.

SRH:

ENEMY

en’-e-mi (‘oyebh, tsar, tsar; echthros):

“Enemy,” “enemies,” are frequent words in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word most often so translated is ‘oyebh, meaning perhaps literally, “one who hates”; very frequent in the Psalms, eg. 3:7; 6:10; 7:05; 8:02; 9:3, 1; 13:2, where the cry is often for deliverance from enemies. Another word for “enemy,” found chiefly in the poetical books, is tsar, or tsar, “distresser,” “straitener” (Numbers 10:9 Job 16:9 Psalm 27:2, 12, the Revised Version (British and American) “adversary,” etc.); also tsarar (Esther 3:10 Psalm 8:2; Psalm 10:5 the King James Version, etc.). Other words are `ar, “one awake” (1 Samuel 28:16 the King James Version; Daniel 4:19 the King James Version); sane’, perhaps, “to be sharp or bite” (Exodus 1:10 Proverbs 25:21; Proverbs 27:6); sharar, “to watch” (Psalm 5:8; Psalm 27:11), and qum, “to stand up,” or “withstand” (Exodus 32:25).

In the New Testament echthros, “enemy,” “opponent,” is the only word translated “enemy” (Matthew 5:43, 14 Mark 12:36 Luke 1:71, 74, etc.; Romans 5:10; Romans 11:28, etc.), once with anthropos (“a man”), joined to echthros (Matthew 13:28).

Thanks in large part to former President Donald Trump, intelligence community abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) have moved from being a niche issue for lawmakers with libertarian leanings to a priority among the Republican Party base.

Republicans have the opportunity to completely repeal the law, or at the very least drastically alter it, but they have been unable to come to an agreement on how to strike a compromise between national security and individual American rights for months.

“Reforming a fundamentally flawed statute does not mean making 56 insignificant changes to it. RISAA won’t do anything to stop the government from repeatedly abusing Section 702 to eavesdrop on Americans unless there is a major amendment.

Longtime D.C. journalist Jim Bovard, who specialized in civil liberties and privacy rights, said, “Any member of Congress who supports extending FISA without radical reforms should receive a ‘Deep State-approved’ logo to burnish for their reelection campaign.”

The legislation is a steaming piece of excrement, say privacy hawks, with no substantive wording protecting individual rights, save for a carve-out granted to members of Congress, which compels the FBI to notify and obtain permission from Congress before spying on them.

Furthermore, others argue that the RISAA effectively turns abuses of surveillance into legal requirements.

The government may intercept communications from foreign nationals if they are suspected of having something to do with national security under Section 702 of the FISA Act. Even in cases when the target was conversing with or about Americans, the communications can still be obtained.

“Speaker of the House Mike Johnson claims that RISAA reflects a compromise,” the Brennan Center for Justice, Freedomworks, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center said in a joint statement. “In reality, this bill is not a ‘compromise,’ and its 56 ‘reforms’ codify the unacceptable status quo.”

Regarding privacy rights, the law has also sparked a division within the Republican Party. As Reagan Reese of the HNW observes:

The warrant requirement in particular has caused a rift between the GOP’s two main factions. Hawks of national security who support the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have become more vocal in their opposition to the mandate and other measures that prioritize privacy. Judiciary Committee allies are emphasizing that FISA cannot be used as a means of surveilling Americans, as was the case during the Trump campaign. -HNewsWire.

FreedomWorks reports that “Of the 56 RISAA “reforms” Speaker Johnson highlights, at least 13 either codify existing practice and procedures, meaning they make no changes to the warrantless surveillance status quo, or they actively weaken existing protections.”

“In my opinion, [RISAA goes too far].” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) , “I think that these are a lot of papered-over reforms that the FBI was doing internally or were claiming that they’re doing internally.”

“RISAA falls short in defending Americans against unlawful government eavesdropping. House Republicans shouldn’t support any FISA reauthorization that does not include a warrant requirement because it is a phony reform.Rep. Mike Lee also told the site, “Speaker Johnson and the GOP majority have a real opportunity to end this madness, and they should take it.”

In 2018, the leadership of the House, which included @SpeakerJohnson and @RepJeffries, voted in favor of requiring FISA 702 warrants.

They are now both against the need for a warrant.

Why are the Intel Brothers able to direct the actions of the House leadership? hGsh7LeMs6 at t.co

Mike Lee April 9, 2024 (@BasedMikeLee)

DC reporter Jim Bovard told the Caller: “Any member of Congress who supports extending FISA without radical reforms should receive a ‘Deep State-approved’ logo to burnish for their reelection campaign,” stating, “If Congress cannot yank in the reins on the FBI and NSA after millions of confirmed violations of Americans’ rights, only a fool would expect Congress to ever give a damn about the Constitution.”

On X, Elizabeeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote: “Dig deeper.”

A clause in the Section 702 reauthorization measure (RISAA) that the House is set to discuss this week has the potential to permanently reauthorize this severely defective authority—without a single reform.

This is the method. As of right now, Title VII of FISA has a sunset date of April 19. In addition to Section 702, Title VII contains further provisions (Sections 703, 704, and 705) that offer essential safeguards for Americans residing abroad.

The sunset clause of RISAA is divided into two parts. The first modifies the FISA sunset date for Title VII to be five years from the passage date of RISAA. Assuming that RISAA is enacted and signed into law on April 19, 2029, Title VII would sunset on that day. Everything is going OK so far.

The sunset provision’s second part, however, reads as follows: “[FISA] is amended so that Section 702 reads as it reads on the day before the date of enactment of [RISAA], effective five years after the date of enactment.”

Stated otherwise, Section 702 will return to its pre-RISAA state on the sunset date. The RISAA modification this week will remove the real reforms that are now absent, leaving Section 702 unaltered.

The issue is that Section 702 cannot both expire and change back to its original form at the same time. There is a contradiction between those two directives. What rationale will the FISA Court offer for this apparent inconsistency?

(Note that moving the sunset date back to April 19, 2024 under Section 702 wouldn’t automatically solve the issue. Section 403(b) has the sunset clause; it is not found in Section 702.

I fear that the most likely response is that the FISA Court will interpret the first section as establishing a sunset for Title VII, which would be a general rule. The second clause will be interpreted to create an exception to the general rule: only the RISAA-made modifications to Section 702—and not Section 702 itself—would sunset.

Thus, the essential safeguards for Americans provided by Sections 703, 704, and 705, as well as any modifications to Section 702 made possible by RISAA, will expire. All that will remain is a permanent renewal of Section 702 in its current, highly hazardous form.

There may be more approaches to reconcile these conflicting clauses. However, I have little faith that the FISA Court would rule in a way that best serves the interests of protecting Americans’ liberties from what is, at best, a very shoddy piece of legislative drafting.

It is forbidden for the House to approve any measure that would allow for the permanent renewal of Section 702, much less one that would do so without any changes. Either this RISAA provision be fixed, or the bill should be rejected.

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