House votes to renew NSA spying, rejects reform push

[avordvet]

Trump and Republicans are on a roll reinstituting the absolutely unconstitutional and blatantly unlawful Bush/Obama Spy apparatus within the borders of the United States.. Hmm, how about that you GOP lemmings.

House votes to renew NSA spying, rejects reform push

By Katie Bo Williams - 01/11/18 11:18 AM EST

In a victory for the Trump administration, the House on Thursday approved legislation to renew government surveillance powers while voting down new limits on how authorities can use the information that is collected.

Just a few hours before the vote, President Trump roiled the waters by sending out a tweet that appeared to contradict his own administration’s opposition to the changes, which were offered by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.).

That amendment failed by a vote of 233-183.

“ 'House votes on controversial FISA ACT today.' This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?” Trump tweeted.

The White House had said it supported the underlying surveillance bill but strongly opposed Amash’s amendment.

Trump later clarified that he “has personally directed the fix to the unmasking process since taking office and today’s vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land.”

After rejecting Amash’s amendment, the House passed an underlying bill backed by members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees that renewed the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program with just a few small changes.

thehill.com/homenews/house/368490-house-rejects-new-limits-on-government-surveillance-powers

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Congress Plotting to Cut a Hole in the 4th Amendment, Again

01/15/2018, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Hidden beneath the controversy stirred up last week by the publication of a book called “Fire and Fury,” a highly critical insider’s view of the Trump White House that the president has not only denounced on national television but also tried to prevent from being published and distributed, are the efforts of the Trump administration and congressional leadership to bypass the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

Here is the back story.

mises.org/wire/congress-plotting-cut-hole-4th-amendment-again

USA Or KGB? Bombshell Memo Details FISA Abuses So Serious It Could Bring Changes To The FBI/DOJ

Matt Vespa, Posted: Jan 19, 2018 9:00 AM

With shutdown theater in high gear, some stories get buried. The government runs out of money at midnight tonight, but there was another story that was trending on social media last night. The House Intelligence Committee voted to release a four-page memo on FISA abuses that have disturbed lawmakers to their core. Some were saying the actions described were akin to the KGB. The vote to release the memo to all members was along party lines, and House Republicans seem adamant that the information should be released to the public. The consequences of these abuses have some members of Congress commenting that deep, structural changes could be coming to the Department of Justice and the FBI (via Fox News):

townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2018/01/19/usa-or-kgb-bombshell-memo-details-fisa-abuses-so-serious-it-could-bring-changes-to-the-fbidoj-n2436715

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Paul Craig Roberts Slams The NSA: "It's A Blackmail Agency"

by Tyler Durden, Mon, 01/22/2018 - 23:15, Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

The main function of the National Security Administration is to collect the dirt on members of the house and senate, the staffs, principal contributors, and federal judges.

The dirt is used to enforce silence about the crimes of the security agencies.

The blackmail mechanism was put into gear the minute the news reported that the House Intelligence Committee had assembled proof that the FBI, DOJ, and DNC created Russiagate as a conspiracy to unseat President Trump. Members of Congress with nothing to hide demanded the evidence be released to the public.

Of course, it was to be expected that release of the facts would be denounced by Democrats, but Republicans, such as Rep. Mike Conaway (R, Texas), himself a member of the committee, joined in the effort to protect the Democrats and the corrupt FBI and DOJ from exposure. Hiding behind national security concerns, Conaway opposes revealing the classified information. “That’d be real dangerous,” he said.

As informed people know, 95% of the information that is classified is for purposes that have nothing to do with national security.

The House Intelligence Committee memo has no information in it related to any security except that of Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Hillary, Obama, Mueller, Rosenstein, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, the DNC, and the presstitute media.

The logical assumption is that every member of Congress opposed to informing the American public of the Russiagate conspiracy to unseat the President of the United States is being blackmailed by the security agencies who planned, organized, and implemented the conspiracy against the President of the United States and American democracy.

www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-22/paul-craig-roberts-slams-nsa-its-blackmail-agency

NSA erased surveillance data related to pending lawsuits: Report

by Diana Stancy Correll, Jan 19, 2018, 10:03 PM

Surveillance data the National Security Agency vowed to preserve related to pending lawsuits has been erased, and the agency did not take several precautions it told a federal court it would take to ensure the data did not get deleted, court filings reveal.

Court orders from 2007 have required the NSA to maintain the data related to certain surveillance efforts that were under scrutiny, after it was revealed President George W. Bush directed warrantless wiretapping among international communications following the 9/11 attacks. The NSA has provided updates to the court regarding how it has followed the orders.

But the NSA informed U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White that the agency did not keep content of internet communications seized from 2001 to 2007 under the Bush administration in a filing Thursday night, and in a submission last year, according to Politico. Additionally, the NSA said backup tapes were deleted in 2009, 2011, and 2016.

www.washingtonexaminer.com/nsa-erased-surveillance-data-related-to-pending-lawsuits-report/article/2646542

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NSA Destroys Evidence in Lawsuit Against Surveillance

by Michael Tennant, Monday, 22 January 2018

The National Security Agency (NSA), whose warrantless surveillance program was just reauthorized by Congress and President Donald Trump, recently confessed to having destroyed data it had been ordered to retain — and said it was retaining — in connection with lawsuits against the program, reported Politico.

On Thursday, the NSA filed a request with U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White for an extension of its deadline to comply with discovery requests in the longstanding lawsuits. Its reason: Despite the fact that the agency has been under court order to preserve records related to the program since 2007, much of the requested data can no longer be located.

The agency first admitted deleting the data in October, when its deputy director of capabilities, “Elizabeth B.,” filed a declaration with White, whose court is in Oakland, California. “The NSA sincerely regrets its failure to prevent the deletion of this data,” she wrote. “NSA senior management is fully aware of this failure, and the Agency is committed to taking swift action to respond to the loss of this data.”

The Thursday filing claims the data deletion was unintentional and occurred as part of an effort to make room for new data.

www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/28087-nsa-destroys-evidence-in-lawsuit-against-surveillance

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Getting rid of evidence detailing the NSA's treachery?

Because here's one thing that is a FACT: the U.S. Government would not build a very expensive NSA 'Repository' in Utah and just give up such a program... unless they've already replaced the illegal and unconstitutional program with something else.

NSA’s Most Contentious Surveillance Program Quietly Canceled, Says Top House Aide

Graeme Gallagher, 6:07 PM 03/05/2019

Set to expire at the end of this year, Luke Murry, the National Security Advisor to Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, spoke about the Trump administration’s lack of use with the program and cast doubt on the act’s renewal on a Lawfare podcast.

“The administration actually hasn’t been using it for the past six months because of problems with the way in which that information was collected and possibly collected on US citizens, [and] in the way that was transferred from private companies to the administration … I’m actually not certain that the administration will want to start that back up,” Murry said.

dailycaller.com/2019/03/05/nsa-program-canceled-six-months-ago/