The Justice Dept's secret rules for targeting journalists with FISA court orders
freedom.press
freedom.press
So for example, RT America was recently forced to get FARA registration, as was some Chinese media outlets.
One development in the Paul Manafort case is that he admitted to pushing disinformation to American media to support his Ukrainian clients. If there were other avenues of hostile foreign influence operations attempting to subvert US media, a FISA warrant would be one way it might be done.
One thing to remember about the FISA court is that it's not about surveillance for the purpose of normal criminal prosecutions, it's about supporting national security, which often doesn't necessarily lead to criminal charges. It may mean just monitoring what adversaries are up to. This is also why the bar for FISA warrants is different than it is for normal criminal investigations.
At any rate, the FISA court's powers can certainly be abused and meaningful oversight is needed. Especially in this time with increasing politicization of federal law enforcement. Spying on journalists gets into dangerous territory, so yes, people should pay close attention here.
As I said, sometimes what the FBI does is just monitor the actions of spies and their assets for a long time, without taking action. Then, they may abruptly roll up a bunch of spies at once after watching them for year. We saw that a few years ago with Operation Ghost Stories where a bunch of deep cover Russian intelligence officers got deported (there was a lot of media coverage of a particular attractive agent: Anna Chapman).
The problem isn't how many times the warrants were used but rather how many times did they turn out to be a witch hunt. Assuming there is some oversight (although one has to wonder...) analyzing this shouldn't be an issue.
There is a good deal of oversight in the system already, the FBI spends a lot of time vetting their FISA warrant applications before they submit them. But as another commenter pointed out, there's the issue of parallel construction and how to prevent abuse of that.
Doesn’t the administration at any given time do the same thing? It’s been pretty blatant since Viet Nam and I’m sure it went much earlier than that. The only difference is that they don’t call them clients.
FARA is aimed at preventing clandestine efforts by foreign governments to subvert/compromise our government. Enforcement has been lax to non-existent for a long time, but that has changed in big way in the last few years or so, for reasons that are obvious.
Will the governments being dissuaded from influencing ours include allies such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and the UK? Or will it just be Russia, Iran, and China?
I would personally be in favor of stopping our allies from influencing our government as they do it constantly and blatantly. If you influence it enough, perhaps that's how you become an ally in the first place and how you remain as one.
It does include some of our erstwhile allies but enforcement is obviously going to be focused on our adversaries.
It is used for domestic criminal purposes, as long as the court only sees a parallel construction[1] that conceals that the evidence is the fruit of the poisonous tree.
On one hand, parallel construction can be used in order to not compromise sensitive sources and methods. If you found out about a spy ring because you compromised a spy's phone, you might not want that revealed, so a different path to the evidence is constructed to conceal that method.
But it of course can be used in a nefarious manner to launder evidence gained on someone illegally. So maybe in the course of a nat'l security investigation the feds stumble conversations of a drug trafficker, then use parallel construction to create a paper trail that would make it seem like the knowledge about the drug trafficker was obtained through normal channels.
That is absolutely an area that requires more rigorous controls and oversight, although I don't know how often FISA warrants have been exploited in that matter. Could be mostly federal law enforcement eavesdropping with stingrays.
In actual practice you shouldn't perform broad illegal surveillance of your populace and if you do you shouldn't be able to use it in court without revealing your sources.
This fundamentally violates the rights of the accused.
This isn't a new observation unique to todays conversation (I'm sure it has been bought up from the establishment of a secret court) but you can't claim what you are claiming unless you happen to be a FISA court judge. We don't know what this court is doing. We don't decide what these words mean. The dictionary doesn't decide what these words mean. The judge decides what the words mean.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause#Dormant_Commer...
The very large number of lawyers and justices are employed to argue extensively about the meaning and interpretation of the law.
You are interpreting the law here. You cannot know if your interpretation aligns with FISC, because the proceedings are not public.
By the way, while looking up names for this comment I came up with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla... . So it looks like the FISC court is doing exactly this by getting creative with what a "special-need" is.
This is one of the most infuriating things about people's political decisions. When a party or individual they support is in power they're happy to extend the limits of his power as much as they possibly can. And then they act surprised when those very same powers are later on exploited by a an individual they do not support.
The only way this can ever end is by starting to reign in power even when the people that would use that power are those that we currently like and trust to use it responsibly.
An example: a "office building" that has a large underground lab. Normal people see a construction site with a few dump trucks of dirt leaving. A spy will watch long enough to figure out it isn't just a few dump trucks, a lot more dirt is leaving than should be. A journalist has cover to watch long enough.
It is a double edge sword. A spy who can copy the real blueprints, or works in the lab is better. However the people who have that access to that might not talk at any price so you take what you can get.
The article is very clear about this being directed at journalists that are not suspect.
Why do you bring up this argument?
I mean, hit man could pose as doctors, I don't think you would argue that doctors should be patted down before going to work. Because the conflation is ridiculous.
This 'spies could become journalists' thing seems like a sophist government apologist point.
The whole thing is a farce designed from the beginning to be abused.
Then if one is especially suspicious one could put say 40k Americans on a list of suspicious people.
This is basically just saying none of us has any right to privacy which is the actual present case.
There's a long tradition of journalist/spies, already.
However, I think it would be funny if it turned out she was a target of a FISA warrant. I can imagine the scrambling in the media to explain how it was completely legitimate for the government to use a FISA warrant to spy on her.
Sadly such a revelation wouldn't change anything. The mainstream press would defend the use of a FISA warrant, Senate and Congressional Democrats would generally approve and Republicans might make a fuss but end up doing nothing because law_and_order. Republican's on the intelligence services committee were aware of what they considered FISA abuse against their political allies and did nothing about the FISA renewal.
All this attacking-the-figurehead is really doing, is distracting the public from the real cause of trouble in American politics today: the Generals. The Pentagon is a significant source of turmoil in the world - for anyone to think that this doesn't apply to the President, is just plain nuts. Nobody exerts more pressure for war, more war, endless, holy war, on an American President than the Pentagon and its complex of intricate corporate lackeys, financiers, courtesans and pimps...
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_...
FISA courts, secret processes, secret orders are completely arbitrary and undemocratic. You can't hollow out the very things that define democracy and continue to call it that. How does a secret court fit in a democracy? How does targeting journalists with secret courts and orders fit a democracy? Then what is the difference between totalitarianism and democracy?
Threads on China, Russia and others are full of commentators lecturing others about democracy and human rights. How can you hold others accountable for the very things you are guilty of yourself, how can this kind of hypocrisy pass in informed discussion?
It's this alarming dissonance, hypocrisy and complete failure to hold anyone accountable since Snowden's revelations that is providing cover for these kinds of shocking overreach. And in the absence of mainstream protest and activism it will keep getting worse.
Any government that is doing these things does not represent we the people. Journalists are our loudest narrators - meaning - the government appears to really wish to control our narrative.
When the narration is coordinated with the DNC, this makes me think they aren't doing their job any more.
But yes, it wasn't acceptable when the Obama administration was wire tapping Fox News reporters, and it's not acceptable now.
All of these (or even the majority) are controlled by the DNC?
I don't think so, and if that isn't on the nose enough for you, I'll just say that I think you're talking about 24 hour news networks... CNN specifically. Yea, they endorsed Clinton as hard as they could.
So STOP WATCHING THEM, and stop equating journalism to the likes of CNN and Fox. Watch and/or read something else. You speak English and live in a country with a protected press (which is why this article is worrying in the first place). There are literally thousands of newspapers, magazines, television news shows (and networks) out there.
Pick a couple of reputable ones (including at least one that challenges your views) and stop watching piffle.
To play devils advocate, yes they are (to varying degrees), in the same way that college campuses are "controlled" by the DNC.
>and stop equating journalism to the likes of CNN and Fox
Kinda funny how far we've come. CNN used to be the impartial one.
As far as CNN... they saw what Fox was doing on the right and realized partisan pandering is more lucrative than impartial reporting. I honestly think that's likely to become worse over time.
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/09/exclusive-new-email-leak...
Go ahead and compare your list of 'news' organization with the leaks from podesta s emails.
You can strike ABC, NBC, CBS, NYT, and NPR off of my list. CNN and Fox also have employees named in the article.
So... That's still not half. And the assumptions made at the beginning are beyond spurious.
Now, I don't comment much here, and I don't know how moderators look on having loosely related conversations in the comments, so I'm probably not going to continue this discussion... But I stand by my point.
We know from the Clinton and Podesta e-mail leaks (remember their content?!? it was kind of important) that ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, NYT, Bloomberg, and Politico all had "journalists" amenable to planting or slanting stories. These weren't just op-ed pieces either.
The article talks about the Clinton campaign's attempt to influence these journalists, but not the extent to which they were influenced.
That confirms partnership, no implying or inferring needed.
FWIW: I still never said "control". It is certainly easy to argue the DNC doesn't control the media. The problem is that such control is unnecessary as many journalists were and continue to be willing partners in turning news stories into one-sided political pieces, while be unwilling to label such work editorial. i.e. "Not doing their jobs."
> Any government that is doing these things does not represent we the people.
It barely ever did and it certainly does not now.
> the government appears to really wish to control our narrative.
As if there ever existed one that did not want to.