The FISA Question No One is Asking.

I am intrigued by the absence of a question.  In all of this FISA discussion, there has been much ado about whether or not the security benefits of the program exceed the loss of personal liberties that an abuse of the system might entail.  There are smart and sincere people on both sides of the issue and each bring very good concerns to the fore.

The ticklish area of FISA, as I understand it, is not when the DOJ/FBI want to monitor the phone conversations and other communications of non-US citizens; it is when a US citizen gets caught up in the surveillance web by communicating with a non-citizen.  This is when we get into the sticky wickets of unmasking individual identities, expanding surveillance based on conversational content, and broadening out the scope of Big Brother’s peepshow tendencies. 

The proponents of FISA set forth that the danger of this intrusive, and possibly abusive, overreach is effectively eliminated by the need for the snooping party to obtain a warrant from a FISA judge in order to include a US citizen in the effort.  And, as I understand it, the threshold for obtaining this warrant is very high; requiring essentially the evidence of clear wrongdoing in the legal environments.  If one is to believe what the FISA proponents espouse, the program has been quite effective, perhaps to the point of being essential, to this nation’s anti-terrorism efforts.  If one is to believe the FISA opponents, the system is overly broad, too susceptible to abuse by unprincipled participants on the administrative end, and is a weapon too powerful to be placed in the hands of government.

Don’t miss the next post!  Follow on Twitter @centerlineright.  If you enjoy the blog, pass it on to your friends.

In the current episode that is unfolding, it seems obvious that there were some bad characters in the DOJ/FBI that abused their FISA privileges in an effort to further their preferred agenda and possibly influence the past presidential election.  The paper trail that is now being slowly exposed may one day reveal exactly where the system failed and how it was subjected to such misuse by these people.  But for the present, is it not alarming that the system remains in place, as it was before and during said abuse, and is clearly open to continued abuse of this nature?   Shouldn’t we find it troubling that both Parties have just recently extended the program without much transparency or public discussion?  Isn’t it just a bit disconcerting to find out through the accounts of the current FISAGate episode exactly how vulnerable each and every one of us is to the Orwellian desires of our government?  And for me, here is the clincher.  Here is the one question I am truly anxious to hear the answer to….

The system was supposed to have adequate safeguards built in to protect US citizens from unlawful violations of civil liberties.  It is reasonable to accept that for all of the safeguards that might be in place, it is impossible to guarantee the integrity and honor of the individuals who administer the program.  But even in the (hopefully) rare occurrence where an individual or a group of individuals figure out a scheme to use the FISA program in an abusive fashion, there is always the ultimate firewall; there is the pure and sacrosanct, beyond suspicion, almighty and all-knowing FISA Judge, without whose consent a warrant cannot be approved and the spying on a US citizen cannot occur.   This, claims the FISA proponents, is why we can afford to surrender a significant portion of our personal freedom in order to obtain additional security from those who would harm us as a nation and as a people.  But if this firewall of imperial FISA Judges is so damn smart…and so damn pure…and so damn ethical…and so damn reliable, then how in the devil did a bunch of yahoos like Sidney Blumenthal, Cody Shearer, Christopher Steele, James Clapper, John Brennan, Sally Yates, Rod Rosenstein, James Comey, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Ben Rhodes get multiple FISA warrants issued based on transparently thin and partisan suppositions?  Who are these Judges and where did they come from?