President Donald Trump has said the following about surveillance:
“You look at the extent of surveillance. Me and so many other people, it’s terrible.”
You would think that if Trump feels this way about surveillance that he would be trying to curb the powers of the National Security Agency (NSA).
In an op-ed in the New York Times, the White House said that it supports a permanent re-authorization of Section 702, which allows surveillance of foreigners.
According to the op-ed:
“First, it does not permit the targeting of Americans. The authority expressly forbids intentional targeting of a United States person for surveillance. Electronic surveillance of Americans, or even foreigners inside the United States, requires an individual court order supported by probable cause.”
“Second, it does not permit backdoor targeting of Americans, whose communications with foreign persons can be incidentally captured in the process. National security officials may use search terms or identifiers associated with Americans, such as an email address, to query the information lawfully acquired using Section 702 authority.”
So, it targets foreigners, but it doesn’t target people? Right.
The piece was written by Tom Bossert, a homeland security advisor to the president. The piece is full of errors. It says that Section 702 would not be used to gather information about Americans when that is exactly what it is designed for – and what the FBI already uses it for.
Bossert also claims that the law has never been misused when, in fact, it has.
Back in April, a declassified opinion document from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court showed many violations of that law.
We need to stop Trump’s attempts to make this law permanent. It is a nasty precedent to set. Allowing surveillance of one group can lead to surveillance of everyone. We cannot let America turn into George Orwell’s 1984. Talk to your Congressional representatives today. Here is a petition as well.
Here is a quick summary of Section 702 (after the jump):
Featured image via Twitter.
