This is hardly a one-off for the Obama Administration, whose director of national intelligence lied to Congress about spying on American citizens. That was before John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director, spied on Senate staff and broke into their computer files. And, of course, Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general, used the Espionage Act to surveil journalists from Fox News and the Associated Press. And let’s not forget the time they eavesdropped on the phone calls of members of Congress.
It has also become clear how the Obama FBI abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to spy on the Trump campaign, altering evidence, and repeatedly lying to the FISA court to obtain illegal warrants.
It’s part of the reason that, when FISA was reauthorized in the Senate this week, it was done with the inclusion of moderate reforms. The reforms were largely due to the efforts of Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) who relentlessly has been doing the spadework to fix the nation’s spy powers since last leading the efforts in 2015. Thanks to Lee and his collaborators, the FISA court will now have at least a measure of accountability and transparency.
But there is still work to do. An amendment to forbid the FISA court from authorizing surveillance of American citizens (thus forcing the National Security Agency and the FBI to go through the traditional courts to get a warrant) from Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) failed. So, too, did an amendment from Senators Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to require a warrant before allowing the NSA to snoop through the browser and search history of individual Americans.
ConservativeChick
Article URL : https://theohiostar.com/2020/05/18/commentary-the-great-steaming-heart-of-the-swamp-beats-in-the-u-s-senate/