A group of deep state actors including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and others urged Congress to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without reforms.
The group of 50 former national security officials wrote to members of Congress:
We, the undersigned former national security officials (Republicans, Democrats and independents), write to urge Congress to promptly reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for an additional eighteen months as proposed by the Trump administration.
“We cannot afford to let our Intelligence Community lose this tool that helps keep our nation safe, even for a day,” the letter continued.
The Trump administration has asked for a clean extension of the surveillance authority, although it remains unclear if a clean extension can pass through Congress. Section 702 is a surveillance authority meant to be used to spy on foreign adversaries; however, Americans’ private communications incidentally get surveilled without a warrant, contrary to the Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless surveillance.
The former national security officials argued that reforming surveillance practices by requiring a warrant to purchase Americans’ private data through third-party data brokers, what is known as the data broker loophole, is a separate matter for Congress.
“In short, we cannot afford to place Section 702 reauthorization at risk by entangling it with unrelated policy initiatives that warrant further — but separate — consideration,” the officials concluded.
Not everyone was convinced by this letter.
“Warrantless government spying on American citizens has been used by the deep state to target President Trump’s campaign and associates, members of Congress, and hardworking, law-abiding Americans alike. We should not rubber stamp such wide surveillance powers for the very agencies which have abused them without massive reforms,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) told Breitbart News in a written statement.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) is a sponsor of the Government Surveillance Reform Act, a bill that would reform Section 702 by requiring a warrant for searches of U.S. persons and closing the data broker loophole.
He shared a picture of a Politico article that shows the former national security officials’ claims during the run-up to the 2020 presidential election that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. Those officials included Clapper, Brennan, and others.
Davidson asked rhetorically, “Where have we heard this before?”
Davidson wrote in an op-ed on Thursday:
This is not limited to suspected criminals or national security threats — it can include ordinary, law-abiding citizens going about their routines. When the government can access this information in bulk, it gains the ability to reconstruct where you’ve been, who you’ve interacted with, and what you’ve done over extended periods of time. Developments with AI exacerbate these problems.
Clapper in 2019 denied lying to Congress when he falsely testified during the Obama administration that the government does not “wittingly” collect the telephone records of millions of Americans.
Others outside of Congress do not share the same enthusiasm as the former national security officials.
Patrick Eddington, a former CIA analyst and now civil liberties policy analyst at the Cato Institute, told Breitbart News in a written statement, “The individuals who signed the letter to House and Senate members are among those who have claimed — falsely — that the STELLAR WIND and PATRIOT ACT Section 215 metadata programs were ‘vital’ and ‘saved lives.’ Neither program ever stopped a terrorist attack on America. Mass electronic surveillance doesn’t stop attacks — but it does terrorize Americans and chill their speech as existing social science research has demonstrated.”
“It takes a special kind of audacity for a man who famously gave the ‘least untruthful’ answer to Congress to now sign on to a letter to lecture them on which surveillance loopholes are relevant to a privacy debate. According to the logic of this letter, the government’s nasty habit of buying your private data is wholly unrelated to their other nasty habit of abusing their power to spy on Americans,” James Czerniawski, the head of emerging technology policy at the Consumer Choice Center, told Breitbart News. “I’m sure the millions of Americans at home are comforted knowing that these individuals are perfectly happy knowing our Fourth Amendment rights are getting bypassed regardless. Americans have spoken loudly on this issue. They want reforms. The time to fix this program plagued with rampant and repeated abuse is now.”
Other lawmakers in Congress have called for a warrant requirement for Section 702 searches of American citizens and for barring the intelligence agencies from purchasing Americans’ communications.
“The Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale. Our intelligence apparatus should not be able to go around Constitutional protections by purchasing data from brokers,” Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) wrote. He named a warrant requirement as “one of the three things that need to be part of the conversation” around FISA reauthorization. “Intelligence agencies must operate within the Constitutional protections against warrantless searches against US citizens,” he said in a social media post:
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) wrote, “I won’t vote to let feds spy on you without a warrant. FISA 702 allows the government to search for your information in vast databases compiled while targeting foreigners.”
A spokesman for Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) said she would not vote to reauthorize Section 702 unless it also included voter ID verification measures:
