FISA Abuse Memo

[TerryMiller]

The OP’s excerpt identifies Rep. Adam Schiff as a California Republican Congressman, he is most definitely a Democrat not a Republican.

Apparently, he was originally labeled as "R" in the article, but it has since been edited to reflect Schiff as a "D".

 

[rc508pir]

The OP’s excerpt identifies Rep. Adam "Shifty" Schiff as a California Republican Congressman, he is most definitely a Democrat not a Republican.

FIFY

 

[dennishoddy]

And yet it's Republicans who pushed the greatly-expanded FISA powers in the first place.

A pox on all of 'em!

They didn't pass it for the purposes of illegally investigating the opposition in a Presidential election. We do have this terrorism issue that is haunting the world these days IIRC.
Is your attempt to gloss over it tacit approval of the democratic party's illegal use of it to sway an election? Stinks doesn't it?
Lest not forget the Russian involvement in the democrat part of that election either.

 

[dennishoddy]

The OP’s excerpt identifies Rep. Adam Schiff as a California Republican Congressman, he is most definitely a pencil neck, not a Republican.

FIFY

 

[Dave70968]

They didn't pass it for the purposes of illegally investigating the opposition in a Presidential election. We do have this terrorism issue that is haunting the world these days IIRC.
Is your attempt to gloss over it tacit approval of the democratic party's illegal use of it to sway an election? Stinks doesn't it?
Lest not forget the Russian involvement in the democrat part of that election either.

"...this terrorism issue..."

Which explains why the DoJ under Pres. Bush was running seminars for law enforcement telling them how to use the USA PATRIOT Act, etc., for drug investigations and other non-terrorism cases, right?

I'm not "glossing over" anything, and I certainly don't approve of anybody's illegal use of those powers. I just think it's hypocritical for Republicans to whine about it now when they're the ones who wrote the legislation and they made it official policy to teach law enforcement how to use it for non-terror offenses.

9/11 was the security state's wet dream. It was 342 pages long and introduced in the House on 2 October, a scant 21 days after the attacks. Does anybody really believe that anybody was able to research all of the necessary references and write a bill that long in three weeks? Bull puckey; that bill--in parts, anyway--was written in advance, lying in wait for the right opportunity. "Never let a crisis go to waste," and all of that. Even assuming arguendo that it was all written after the attacks, it passed the Senate on 11 October and the House the next day; can anybody tell me with a straight fact that the members read, let alone truly understood, the full impact of the bill? Yeah, didn't think so.

So go on, tell me again how those saintly Republicans only intended for the surveillance state to be used to combat terrorism, and are just shocked--shocked, I say--to find it's being used for other purposes.

 

[dennishoddy]

"...this terrorism issue..."

Which explains why the DoJ under Pres. Bush was running seminars for law enforcement telling them how to use the USA PATRIOT Act, etc., for drug investigations and other non-terrorism cases, right?

I'm not "glossing over" anything, and I certainly don't approve of anybody's illegal use of those powers. I just think it's hypocritical for Republicans to whine about it now when they're the ones who wrote the legislation and they made it official policy to teach law enforcement how to use it for non-terror offenses.

9/11 was the security state's wet dream. It was 342 pages long and introduced in the House on 2 October, a scant 21 days after the attacks. Does anybody really believe that anybody was able to research all of the necessary references and write a bill that long in three weeks? Bull puckey; that bill--in parts, anyway--was written in advance, lying in wait for the right opportunity. "Never let a crisis go to waste," and all of that. Even assuming arguendo that it was all written after the attacks, it passed the Senate on 11 October and the House the next day; can anybody tell me with a straight fact that the members read, let alone truly understood, the full impact of the bill? Yeah, didn't think so.

So go on, tell me again how those saintly Republicans only intended for the surveillance state to be used to combat terrorism, and are just shocked--shocked, I say--to find it's being used for other purposes.

"So go on, tell me again how those saintly Republicans only intended for the surveillance state to be used to combat terrorism, and are just shocked--shocked, I say--to find it's being used for other purposes."
Can you detail any exact circumstance where the Republicans have violated it like the dimocrats have? Good Lord, this might be headed to collusion between the DOJ and the FBI when by all accounts and statements by both say they were not colluding, and recent emails that show they have. Explain that to me.

I need to see evidence/links about those classes you talked about. Not denying that it might have happened, but drugs have been used to fund terrorism have they not, and your references to non terrorism cases just for the record and FISA Warrants that were allegedly abused by the dims, soon to be proven true by all accounts in recent eyewitness accounts of abuses by the dims FBI and DOJ.
Isn't it amazing that the only people that have reviewed the FISA investigation reports are Republicans, and only the dims on the committee have reviewed it, with the general legislative body refusing to look at it, although I'm sure they have been fully briefed in violation of the law.
The scandal of the dimocrats just continues to deepen and I would be embarrassed to be associated with them.




The Republicans are only

 

[DRC458]

can anybody tell me with a straight fact that the members read, let alone truly understood, the full impact of the bill?

I think that's probably true of almost every piece of legislation they pass. I don't know how they could possibly read and fully comprehend every bill they consider.

 

[Glocktogo]

"So go on, tell me again how those saintly Republicans only intended for the surveillance state to be used to combat terrorism, and are just shocked--shocked, I say--to find it's being used for other purposes."
Can you detail any exact circumstance where the Republicans have violated it like the dimocrats have? Good Lord, this might be headed to collusion between the DOJ and the FBI when by all accounts and statements by both say they were not colluding, and recent emails that show they have. Explain that to me.

I need to see evidence/links about those classes you talked about. Not denying that it might have happened, but drugs have been used to fund terrorism have they not, and your references to non terrorism cases just for the record and FISA Warrants that were allegedly abused by the dims, soon to be proven true by all accounts in recent eyewitness accounts of abuses by the dims FBI and DOJ.
Isn't it amazing that the only people that have reviewed the FISA investigation reports are Republicans, and only the dims on the committee have reviewed it, with the general legislative body refusing to look at it, although I'm sure they have been fully briefed in violation of the law.
The scandal of the dimocrats just continues to deepen and I would be embarrassed to be associated with them.

The Republicans are only

He's 100% correct about the "parallel construction" problem. DoJ utilized the NSA and other intelligence agencies to circumvent the 4th Amendment in strictly criminal cases that had no ties to terrorism whatsoever. That was happening under Bush as well as Obama.

When stuff like that happens, we all lose.

 

[dennishoddy]

He's 100% correct about the "parallel construction" problem. DoJ utilized the NSA and other intelligence agencies to circumvent the 4th Amendment in strictly criminal cases that had no ties to terrorism whatsoever. That was happening under Bush as well as Obama.

When stuff like that happens, we all lose.

I wasn’t aware of those incidents. Learned something new.

 

[Dave70968]

I can't find specific examples offhand, but I do see news stories, including claims that the DoJ's own reports to Congress acknowledge the use of USA PATRIOT Act provisions for non-terror offenses, to wit:

But a new Justice Department report, given to members of Congress this month, also cites more than a dozen cases that are not directly related to terrorism in which federal authorities have used their expanded power to investigate individuals, initiate wiretaps and other surveillance, or seize millions in tainted assets.

For instance, the ability to secure nationwide warrants to obtain e-mail and electronic evidence ''has proved invaluable in several sensitive nonterrorism investigations,'' including the tracking of an unidentified fugitive and an investigation into a computer hacker who stole a company's trade secrets, the report said.

Justice Department officials said the cases cited in the report represent only a small sampling of the many hundreds of nonterrorism cases pursued under the law.
...
A guide to a Justice Department employee seminar last year on financial crimes, for instance, said: ''We all know that the USA Patriot Act provided weapons for the war on terrorism. But do you know how it affects the war on crime as well?''

Elliot Mincberg, legal director for People for the American Way, a liberal group that has been critical of Mr. Ashcroft, said the Justice Department's public assertions had struck him as misleading and perhaps dishonest.

''What the Justice Department has really done,'' he said, ''is to get things put into the law that have been on prosecutors' wish lists for years. They've used terrorism as a guise to expand law enforcement powers in areas that are totally unrelated to terrorism.''

A study in January by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded that while the number of terrorism investigations at the Justice Department soared after the Sept. 11 attacks, 75 percent of the convictions that the department classified as ''international terrorism'' were wrongly labeled. Many dealt with more common crimes like document forgery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/u...to-pursue-crimes-from-drugs-to-swindling.html [emphasis mine; also note that this story is from September 2003, so those "many hundreds" of nonterrorism cases are in a fairly short period of time]

Another:

The government's numbers are also severely inflated. The ""400 convictions"" claim overstates actual number of convictions and omits a number of key facts related to these numbers. A list obtained by the Justice Department defines only 361 cases defined as terrorism investigations from September 11, 2001 to September 2004.[8] 31 of the entries on the list were blacked out. Only 39 of these individuals were convicted of crimes related to terrorism. The median sentence for these crimes was 11 months. This figure indicates that the crime that the government equated with terrorism was not serious. A study conducted by TRAC at Syracuse University notes that ""despite the three-and-a-half-fold increase in terrorism convictions, the number who were sentenced to five years or more in prison has not grown at all from pre-9/11 levels.""[9] The convictions were more commonly for charges of passport violations, fraud, false statements, and conspiracy.[10] Moreover, the median prison time for a serious offense, such as providing material support to a terrorist organization was only 4 months.[11]

https://www.aclu.org/other/myths-and-realities-about-patriot-act [article from 2004]

From the same story:

The statute authorizing the use of ""national security letters"" as amended by the Patriot Act 505(a) contains no judicial oversight. The statute allows the government to compel the production of financial records, credit reports, and telephone, Internet, and other communications or transactional records. The letters can be issued simply on the FBI's own assertion that they are needed for an investigation, and also contain an automatic and permanent nondisclosure requirement. In the most controversial portions of the Patriot Act that require judicial oversight, the judge wields a rubber-stamp. For example, Section 215 requires the FBI to apply to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain an order for the production of business records. The FBI must only specify that the records pertain to a foreign intelligence investigation, a vague and broad concept. The judge is required to issue the order after the FBI makes this specification, making the judicial review a mere formality than actual oversight.

Fourth Amendment? How quaint!

Another story:

First, the numbers: Law enforcement made 47 sneak-and-peek searches nationwide from September 2001 to April 2003. The 2010 report reveals 3,970 total requests were processed. Within three years that number jumped to 11,129. That's an increase of over 7,000 requests. Exactly what privacy advocates argued in 2001 is happening: sneak and peak warrants are not just being used in exceptional circumstances—which was their original intent—but as an everyday investigative tool.

Second, the uses: Out of the 3,970 total requests from October 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010, 3,034 were for narcotics cases and only 37 for terrorism cases (about .9%). Since then, the numbers get worse. The 2011 report reveals a total of 6,775 requests. 5,093 were used for drugs, while only 31 (or .5%) were used for terrorism cases. The 2012 report follows a similar pattern: Only .6%, or 58 requests, dealt with terrorism cases. The 2013 report confirms the incredibly low numbers. Out of 11,129 reports only 51, or .5%, of requests were used for terrorism. The majority of requests were overwhelmingly for narcotics cases, which tapped out at 9,401 requests.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/...ent-uses-authority-meant-terrorism-other-uses [emphasis mine; 2014 story]

See also:

"We were strictly told this would be for criminal terrorism cases, and were also told that we didn't need a use limitation in the bill, i.e. a clause that says you can only use this for terrorism cases, because law enforcement wasn't going to abuse it," Mark Jaycox, legislative analyst for the EFF, told VICE News. "Privacy advocates were questioned when we countered their argument, but the newest reports vindicate our arguments."

Of the 11,129 delayed-notification search warrants requested in the US in 2013, only 51 were for terrorism investigations, the EFF analysis shows. That's 0.5 percent. For narcotics cases, officials last year requested 9,401 sneak and peek warrants, or 84 percent of the total.

"Exactly what privacy advocates argued in 2001 is happening: sneak and peek warrants are not just being used in exceptional circumstances — which was their original intent — but as an everyday investigative tool," the report says.

https://news.vice.com/article/law-e...-patriot-act-power-but-not-to-bust-terrorists [emphasis mine; 2014 story referencing EFF report above]

Or this one:

A North Carolina county prosecutor charged a man accused of running a methamphetamine lab with breaking a new state law barring the manufacture of chemical weapons. If convicted, Martin Dwayne Miller could get 12 years to life in prison for a crime that usually brings about six months.

Prosecutor Jerry Wilson says he isn't abusing the law, which defines chemical weapons of mass destruction as "any substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury" and contains toxic chemicals.

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/510054330/Patriot-Act-targeting-common-criminals.html
I'm not going to argue that running a meth lab is a good thing, but "manufacturer of chemical weapons?" Are we really putting meth on the same legal plane as ricin or sarin gas? C'mon, let's at least pretend to be going after actual terrorists. As to the law, sodium hypochlorite is toxic, but I don't see anybody bringing charges for not only manufacturing, but actively marketing the sale of NaClO solution (you'll find it in the laundry aisle; it's called "bleach"). Even water is toxic in sufficient concentration! Talk about a grossly overbroad law, having only the barest wisp of a nexus to terrorism.

As to the seminars to local law enforcement, again, I distinctly remember when they were in the news, but that's been a decade or more ago (under the Bush Administration), so finding those stories is a little tougher now. Here's one story on the topic:

"Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. "They say they want the Patriot Act to fight terrorism, then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/terror-laws-used-vs-common-crimes/ [September 2003 story]

See also: Walter Brasch's America's Unpatriotic Acts, p. 75-76. The claims have footnotes for support, but I can't chase them down as the notes pages aren't included in the excerpt on Google:
https://books.google.com/books?id=N...efense Attorneys PATRIOT Act seminars&f=false