OPINION:
Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act is up for an eight-year extension.
And it’s high time to curb this government power.
This is the section of U.S. law that allows feds to spy on Internet and telephone communications absent any open court warrant, so long as the surveillance is deemed necessary for the protection of national security.
The communications are supposed to target only non-U.S. citizens who are on non-U.S. lands. And the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence regards it as a “key anti-terror tool” with built-in “layers of oversight by all three branches of government.”
But really, Section 702 is a clear bypass of the Constitution.
Feds assure their targets are all non-citizens. But they’re not. The National Security Agency, for example, could very well rope in the communications of American citizens who’ve been in contact with foreign officials — and unbeknownst to the American citizens, store these communications for up to five years. Where? Why?
That’s for the government to know, the citizen to wonder.
You think the FISA courts that were set up to supposedly protect the rights of American citizens from overreach from federal intelligence agencies have time to review each and every NSA operation and check for constitutional compliance? Hardly.
Even if the courts did, we’d never know. These FISA courts are secret; they’re not exactly open for citizen attendance and watchdogging. It’s a “trust me, I’m from the government” style of governing, that’s for sure.
On top of that, the NSA itself has already admitted Section 702 has become a monster to control.
Look at this, from FCW, written in September: “[C]ivil liberty organizations and some lawmakers have long argued that the provision can and does regularly sweep up millions of communications of American citizens while allowing for ’backdoor’ searches that can violate the Fourth Amendment. In April, the National Security Agency announced it would no longer use Section 702 to justify mass collection of email and metadata from foreign targets that pass through parts of the Internet owned by American companies. The agency acknowledged it could not comply with procedures to protect the constitutional privacy rights of American citizens.”
That’s significant. And it’s why Congress has been, for some time, calling for a more thorough accounting from intel on how Section 702 has been used, why it’s been used — and whether it should be continue to be used in its current form.
“Intelligence agency leaders are waging an all-out public relations campaign in support of their favored surveillance activity, Section 702,” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said in a statement, the Observer reported. “But at the same time … officials are refusing to tell Americans how the government interprets this authority to sweep up and search their phone calls, emails and other communications, all without a warrant.”
Exactly. Paul has brought forth legislation with Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden to limit the scope of Section 702 so that it’s not quite so trouncing of constitutional rights. Republicans and Democrats in the House have done similarly, with the introduction of a USA Rights Act.
And as Paul noted, the resistance has begun. Law enforcement and intel folk say Section 702 protects America’s national security.
But one has to wonder: At what cost?
The Constitution was designed to put citizens’ rights as the priority; the government’s role as the protector. Any system that flips that — any program that puts the government at the helm of deciding what’s constitutional and what’s not, and in a manner that’s secret and behind closed doors — is a threat to civil rights and a free society. Section 702 is just that — a devil’s deal that’s not worth the constitution dings.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.