While the story quietly broke on April 1st, this is not an April Fool’s prank.
The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, confirmed that the NSA has been collecting more than just metadata from Americans – the agency has been reading e-mails and listening in on phone calls too. Don’t believe it? Read his own words to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR):
When wading through the technical jargon, one may scratch her head. “Okay, so the NSA performed queries on Americans’ communications with people ‘reasonably believed’ to be abroad under this Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA). What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
FISA is supposed to only apply to non-Americans outside the US, but the infamously invasive bill gives intelligence agencies carte blanche to tap into domestic communications as long as one of the people involved is suspected to be outside the US. This can be done without a warrant. The significance of Section 702 is that it allows the NSA to obtain e-mails and phone calls.
So when Clapper openly admits that the NSA has performed “queries using US person[s]” as “identifiers,” that means the NSA performed searches targeting Americans to poke around for foreign intelligence. The fact that Section 702 is the linchpin of this communication means the NSA has been accessing Americans’ e-mails and listening to their phone calls.
Don’t laugh too hard at the line that “these queries were performed … as consistent with the statute and the Fourth Amendment.”
The most unsettling part of Clapper’s letter is the extremely vague language. There’s no mention of whether the Americans targeted were within our borders or somewhere else. There’s no mention of whether they had any inkling of reasonable cause or were going on a fishing expedition. “Yes, we have searched for the communications of specific Americans under Section 702″ and that’s about it.
Our Constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure have been consistently eroded for decades. If there’s reason to believe that an American is involved in suspicious activities, is it really that difficult to obtain a warrant?
The intelligence community gives more and more reasons to fear the power of the State. Think about the precedent this sets. Do we want these laws and activities on the books if a violent dictator rises to power twenty, fifty years from now?
This isn’t InfoWars. This is real life.