• About
  • Books
  • Contact
  • Education Resources

PERRIN LOVETT

~ Deo Vindice

PERRIN LOVETT

Tag Archives: FISA

Lest You Have Any Doubts

11 Wednesday Dec 2019

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Comments Off on Lest You Have Any Doubts

Tags

criminals, FBI, FISA, government, lawlessness, spying, tyranny

About the staggering criminal corruption that is Washington, DC, re-read the IG report. Charlie Savage makes some excellent observations that have nothing to do with Trump.

When a long-awaited inspector general report about the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation became public this week, partisans across the political spectrum mined it to argue about whether President Trump falsely smeared the F.B.I. or was its victim. But the report was also important for reasons that had nothing to do with Mr. Trump.

At more than 400 pages, the study amounted to the most searching look ever at the government’s secretive system for carrying out national-security surveillance on American soil. And what the report showed was not pretty.

While clearing the F.B.I. of acting out of political bias, the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, and his team uncovered a staggeringly dysfunctional and error-ridden process in how the F.B.I. went about obtaining and renewing court permission under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.

“The litany of problems with the Carter Page surveillance applications demonstrates how the secrecy shrouding the government’s one-sided FISA approval process breeds abuse,” said Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “The concerns the inspector general identifies apply to intrusive investigations of others, including especially Muslims, and far better safeguards against abuse are necessary.”

Congress enacted FISA in 1978 to regulate domestic surveillance for national-security investigations — monitoring suspected spies and terrorists, as opposed to ordinary criminals. Investigators must persuade a judge on a special court that a target is probably an agent of a foreign power. In 2018, there were 1,833 targets of such orders, including 232 Americans.

Most of those targets never learn that their privacy has been invaded, but some are sent to prison on the basis of evidence derived from the surveillance. And unlike in ordinary criminal wiretap cases, defendants are not permitted to see what investigators told the court about them to obtain permission to eavesdrop on their calls and emails.

Civil libertarians for years have called the surveillance court a rubber stamp because it only rarely rejects wiretap applications. Out of 1,080 requests by the government in 2018, for example, government records showed that the court fully denied only one.

Defenders of the system have argued that the low rejection rate stems in part from how well the Justice Department self-polices and avoids presenting the court with requests that fall short of the legal standard. They have also stressed that officials obey a heightened duty to be candid and provide any mitigating evidence that might undercut their request.

But the inspector general found major errors, material omissions and unsupported statements about Mr. Page in the materials that went to the court. F.B.I. agents cherry-picked the evidence, telling the Justice Department information that made Mr. Page look suspicious and omitting material that cut the other way, and the department passed that misleading portrait onto the court.

And, had it not been for the Trump case, much of this would have never seen the light of day – see the secrecy parts. Now, what do we do with it all? My guess is more of the same.

The IG’s Report

10 Tuesday Dec 2019

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Comments Off on The IG’s Report

Tags

coup, enemy combatants, FISA, IG report, treason, Trump

It’s out. FULL (REDACTED) REPORT HERE

The Storm? This thing is so ridiculous – in multiple ways – that I found it nearly impossible to pull appropriate quotes. It’s almost 500 pages. Like a giant paper shield? This one might be what really matters, recommendation number nine:

• The FBI should review the performance of all employees who had responsibility for the preparation, Woods review, or approval of the FISA applications, as well as the managers, supervisors, and senior officials in the chain of command of the Carter Page investigation for any action it deems appropriate.

The coup, to include the Russia-Ukraine-impeachment hoax, started well before Trump was ever elected. The IG pins it as ten days after Trump was nominated but the plans were likely in place earlier, maybe in 2015 when he announced his candidacy. Back to no. 9, above: I’d leave NOTHING else to the FBI. However, Trump should take any action he deems appropriate. If I were him, then I would deem it appropriate to declare this coup a coup and prosecute it accordingly, meaning immediately and militarily, pursuant to the Lincoln-Bush-Obama Doctrine. Light. Them. Up. All of them.

 

A Real Crime

08 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Comments Off on A Real Crime

Tags

FBI, FISA, police state, spying

Committed, of course, by agents of the Empire. The FBI spied on you, via FISA.

Some of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s electronic surveillance activities violated the constitutional privacy rights of Americans swept up in a controversial foreign intelligence program, a secretive surveillance court has ruled.

The ruling deals a rare rebuke to U.S. spying activities that have generally withstood legal challenge or review.

When will those agents responsible be arrested? Probably around the time the deep state comes clean about this impeachment hoax nonsense.

When THEY’RE doing something wrong, you have something to worry about.

Another Week, Another Secret Government Program Exposed

18 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Comments Off on Another Week, Another Secret Government Program Exposed

Tags

First Amendment, FISA, press, spying

Many thanks to the New York Times Washington Post Freedom of the Press Foundation for exposing this anti-1A corruption.

Today, we are revealing—for the first time—the Justice Department’s rules for targeting journalists with secret FISA court orders. The documents were obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Freedom of the Press Foundation and Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

While civil liberties advocates have long suspected secret FISA court orders may be used (and abused) to conduct surveillance on journalists, the government—to our knowledge—has never acknowledged they have ever even contemplated doing so before the release of these documents today.

The FISA court rules below are entirely separate from—and much less stringent—than the rules for obtaining subpoenas, court orders, and warrants against journalists as laid out in the Justice Department’s “media guidelines,” which former Attorney General Eric Holder strengthened in 2015 after several scandals involving surveillance of journalists during the Obama era.

When using the legal authorities named in the “media guidelines,” the Justice Department (DOJ) must go through a fairly stringent multi-part test (e.g. certifying that the information is critical to an investigation, that it can’t be obtained by other means, and that the DOJ exhausted all other avenues before doing so) before targeting a journalist with surveillance. They must also get approval from the Attorney General.

With the FISA court rules, there is no multi-part test that we know of. The DOJ only must follow its regular FISA court procedures (which can be less strict than getting a warrant in a criminal case) and get additional approval from the Attorney General or Assistant Attorney General. FISA court orders are also inherently secret, and targets are almost never informed that they exist.

The MSM will be slow to mention any of this if ever they do. They know about it but don’t care. They also know about the new declassifications (and the rejected “deal”) – they know about that and they’re panicking. Soon is now.

The FISA Memo, the Surveillance State, the Tin Horn

08 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Comments Off on The FISA Memo, the Surveillance State, the Tin Horn

Tags

FISA, freedom, government, Judge Napolitano, law, police state

Both “sides” of the uniparty world do well to consider Judge Andrew Napolitano’s assessment of the greater tragedy of the situation (beyond Trump, FBI loyalty, or “Russia”). The players, knowing and not caring, will not. The supporters, largely neither knowing nor caring, wouldn’t even know how to consider. But they should. It has happened.

The journey that domestic spying has taken in 40 years has been one long steady march of massive increase in size and scope. The federal government now employs more than 60,000 people to spy on all Americans, including the White House, the Pentagon, the federal courts and one another. As well, the National Security Agency and the intelligence arm of the FBI have 24/7 access to the computers of all telecoms and computer service providers in the U.S. And certain politicians have access to whatever the NSA and the FBI possess.

…

The surveillance state is now here.

…

The Supreme Court has ruled that electronic surveillance constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. That amendment prohibits warrantless searches and requires probable cause of crime as the sole trigger for judges to sign search warrants. FISA only requires probable cause relating to a foreign agent on one end of a phone call — a far lower standard — to trigger a warrant. The government has convinced the FISC that it should grant warrants based on probable cause of talking to someone who has ever spoken to a foreign person, whether an agent of a foreign government or an innocent foreign bookseller.

That judicially created standard is so far afield from the Fourth Amendment as to render it legally erroneous and profoundly unconstitutional. Yet the FISA expansion that the president signed into law last month — after the debate during which House Intelligence Committee Republicans intentionally remained mute about their allegations of FISA abuses — purports to make this Stasi-like level of surveillance lawful.

…

Predictable misuse of a terrible standard attached to an unlawful act which replaced a similar illegal procedure. Banana. Republic.

And this incident involves the targeting of the President, both as a candidate and as actual, elected office holder. Take away all political affiliations (apologies to the binary thinkers) and the magnitude, the implication is staggering. If the President isn’t safe from baseless investigative abuse, then who is? No one.

Modern technology aside, this is how lesser nations have traditionally operated, everywhere and throughout history – the rule of men rather than the rule of law. Lights out in the shining city.

And where might all of this go next? Since we’re playing loose with the law, and what constitutes the law has changed so much so recently, just how extreme could the response to these particular FISA violations become?

To use Napolitano’s example: if you, an average nobody citizen, talks to a foreign book seller, are surveilled as a result, and find yourself afoul of the “authorities,” then you just take whatever treatment they see fit to dole out. End of story. You have no (respected) rights and no power. Not so for the subject of the Steele dossier.

Donald J. Trump has extreme power. I noted in a recent video that Trump could, if he wanted, “legally” – as defined by two previous Presidents (several more really), Congress, and the Supreme Court – simply declare all of his enemies and detractors enemy combatants. Indefinite detention. GITMO. Drone strikes.

So far it appears the Donald, for all his pomp and Tweeting, has a remarkably cool head. For that we should be grateful. But will it last? What about the next Chief Executive? Or the next one?

The FISA-FBI-Russiagate episode illustrates the utter failure of the federal government. At this point it’s safe to dispense with the pretense of the old Constitutional Republic.

That’s about all that’s safe.

constitution-in-flames

Eric Peters.

Big Brother Forever! On With the FISA 702 Extension

07 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Comments Off on Big Brother Forever! On With the FISA 702 Extension

Tags

America, Donald Trump, FISA, freedom, law, NSA, spying

This would be the same Trump administration that, just a short while ago, complained about being spied upon by this very program…

The Trump administration endorsed a full extension of the intelligence community’s most controversial snooping powers Wednesday, saying that the public has gotten the wrong impression about tools that are designed to target foreigners but, increasingly, have ensnared Americans as well.

Thomas P. Bossert, President Trump’s top counterterrorism adviser, in an op-ed in the New York Times, said they are backing a new bill introduced this week to permanently extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the part of the law that allows snooping.

Mr. Bossert said the public will have to trust the government’s assertions that the program is valuable, since most of its successes have to remain classified. But he said Section 702 intelligence helped thwart the New York City subway bombing plot.

“Simply put, the use of this authority has helped save lives,” Mr. Bossert wrote.
Section 702 allows intelligence agencies to collect vast amounts of information from foreign sources located outside the U.S. as part of antiterrorism investigations. Communications with Americans can, however, be snared.

The section is slated to expire at the end of this year, and security hawks and civil liberties advocates are now battling over whether to extend it.

Extended it shall be! “Trust us, we’re from the government.”

Undoubtedly the program may have saved some lives. Others seem to have fallen between the cracks. There was that …. Fourth …. something? No mind.

computer-cctv_2183286b

Telegraph.

Amazing. No, actually it’s typical. Back to the TeeVee (which is watched and watching…).

Did Obama Break the Law by Surveilling Trump?

05 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

crime, Donald Trump, FISA, government, law, Obama, spying

Evidence is mounting that Obama and his team bugged Trump Tower last year. If this turns out true and if the manner of the surveillance is as it appears, Team Obama is in for serious problems:

If the stories are correct, Obama or his officials might even face prosecution. But, we are still early in all of this and there are a lot of rumors flying around so the key is if the reports are accurate. We just don’t know at this time. The stories currently are three-fold: first, that Obama’s team tried to get a warrant from a regular, Article III federal court on Trump, and was told no by someone along the way (maybe the FBI), as the evidence was that weak or non-existent; second, Obama’s team then tried to circumvent the federal judiciary’s independent role by trying to mislabel the issue one of “foreign agents,” and tried to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “courts”, and were again turned down, when the court saw Trump named (an extremely rare act of FISA court refusal of the government, suggesting the evidence was truly non-existent against Trump); and so, third, Obama circumvented both the regular command of the FBI and the regularly appointed federal courts, by placing the entire case as a FISA case (and apparently under Sally Yates at DOJ) as a “foreign” case, and then omitted Trump’s name from a surveillance warrant submitted to the FISA court, which the FISA court unwittingly granted, which Obama then misused to spy on Trump and many connected to Trump. Are these allegations true? We don’t know yet, but if any part of them are than Obama and/or his officials could face serious trouble.

Is this true? Any of it? We’ll find out soon. FISA applications are almost always granted, with complete deference to the Executive branch (12 denials in over 35,000 applications). That the FBI or someone backed off a regular warrant suggests a lack of evidence. That FISA would reject a subsequent application is amazing. The issuance of a follow-up application suggests impropriety (as does this entire episode).

As I mentioned yesterday, a sitting President is one of the few who can obtain FISA records with any ease. And he’s working on it: “”A senior White House official said that Donald F. McGahn II, the president’s chief counsel, was working on Saturday to secure access to what the official described as a document issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing surveillance of Mr. Trump and his associates.”

If any of this is substantiated, then the “why” behind it, the motives, will be explored – likely as part of the criminal prosecution. Was it an attempt to sway the election? A fishing expedition on Trump? War with Russia related? Who knows?

20130725-jennifer

Stanford Center.

Here’s an interesting thought, one grounded in existing precedent: what if the alleged actions touch substantially on national security matters (the Russian war angle or terrorism or something related)? Would an attempt to steer the U.S. into harm’s way constitute action giving aid to an enemy? If so determined, then the responsible party(ies) could possible be labeled as “enemy combatants”, accordingly detained, and treated as such.

We may have entered uncharted territory. Developing…

Perrin Lovett

THE SUBSTITUTE

From Green Altar Books, an imprint of Shotwell Publishing

From Green Altar Books, an imprint of Shotwell Publishing

FREE Ebook!

The Happy Little Cigar Book

Buy From Amazon! The perfect coffee table book!

Perrin On Politics

FREE E-book! Download now~

Ritin’ @ Reckonin’

Archives

  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • June 2012

Prepper Post News Podcast by Freedom Prepper (sadly concluded, but still archived!)

Have a Cup!

Perrin’s Articles and Videos at FREEDOM PREPPER (*2016-2022)

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • PERRIN LOVETT
    • Join 39 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • PERRIN LOVETT
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.