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This is terrible reporting. I don’t support the warrantless monitoring of citizens via Section 702, but the email displayed shows zero nefariousness as far as I

by lumb63 2y ago

This is terrible reporting. I don’t support the warrantless monitoring of citizens via Section 702, but the email displayed shows zero nefariousness as far as I can tell. It is just the FBI deputy director encouraging FBI agents to lawfully (at least according to FISA) use the tools at their disposal to demonstrate their use to the FBI.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
> “To continue to demonstrate why tools like this are essential to our mission, we need to use them, while also holding ourselves accountable for doing so properly and in compliance with legal requirements,” Not sure why this is news.
- olliej 2y ago
  You cannot use a “fisa warrant” legally, they’re objectively unconstitutional. Conforming to the “legal requirements” means also conforming to the constitution, it doesn’t matter if someone writes a law that says you don’t need to obey the constitution, that just means the law itself is illegal. It’s amazing how government officials interpret the 2nd amendment (giving the right to bare arms in the absence of a formal militia to mean everyone can have guns in of all kinds in all cases, but then turn around and say the 4th amendment does not grant any rights at all)
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    > You cannot use a “fisa warrant” legally, they’re objectively unconstitutional. According to you. The courts think it's perfectly constitutional.
    - dwater 2y ago
      Yes, in an alternate universe it would be gratifying to see a high court that wasn't captured by far right ideologues that was willing to take another look at precedent establishing decisions of the past that rolled back freedoms and privacy and say, "You know what, the facts that supported FISA, the Patriot Act, etc., were falsely manufactured for political reasons, and actually now that those falsehoods have come to light we think it's time to admit that those decisions were unsupported and should be reversed." But I expect the opposite for this universe.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
        I disagree that they're captured and I support FISA. FISA should be expanded as far as I am concerned.
      - int_19h 2y ago
        It's not a right/left thing, at least not in the colloquial sense those words are used in US. Laws like these have broad support on both sides of the political spectrum. The fundamental problem is authoritarianism, which is a disease infesting both left and right.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      The courts claim lots of things are constitutional when any reasonable person can see that the claim is nonsense. To give just a few examples from Supreme Court cases: Seizing property to turn it over to a private developer instead of for public use is a valid use of the government's eminent domain power (Kelo v. New London). Congress regulating farmers growing wheat on their own property for their own and their animals' consumption on the grounds is a valid regulation of interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause (Wickard v. Filburn). Allowing Congress to delegate legislative power to the executive branch, in clear violation of Article I of the Constitution, as long as Congress gives an "intelligible principle" (Hampton Co. v. United States). Ruling that exercising your Fifth Amendment right not to be a witness against yourself can be taken as evidence of guilt (Salinas v. Texas).
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
    "bare arms" The Constitution, afaik, is silent on the matter of shirt sleeves. However, a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed. The crime is that the States have given up on forming those well-regulated militias and that we have a continuous standing army in a Military-Industrial-Congressional complex whose corruption boggles the mind.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      > the States have given up on forming those well-regulated militias The States claim that state-run National Guard units are the "well-regulated militias". Their claim is wrong, but not for the reason you imply. The reason their claim is wrong is that the 2nd Amendment is about the right of the people to keep and bear arms to resist a tyrannical government--any tyrannical government: not just the Federal government, but the State governments as well. If the States can organize a militia and then say individual citizens no longer have the right to keep and bear arms outside that organized militia, that defeats the purpose of the 2nd Amendment just as much as the Federal government having a standing army and claiming it's an organized militia.
      - RajT88 2y ago
        That's actually incorrect. The second amendment is entirely about state militias, and anyone claiming it's related to resisting a tyrannical government hasn't actually read the documents they claim to have read. Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution outlines militias as a duty of congress, and the function of the militias (note: resisting a tyrannical government is not listed!) Article II, Section 2 defines the President as the commander in chief of the military and militias. The above is what the second amendment is making reference to. There are following acts of congress that clarify who gets to be in a militia: the militia acts of 1792, 1795, 1862 and 1903. These allow for people of different races and genders to join militias. The militia act of 1903 clarifies that there are different types of state militias: formal and informal. Formal is things like the National Guard, Texas Rangers, etc. Informal is - in times of emergency, the state can basically just round up a posse for the outlined purposes in Article 1, Section 8. The second amendment does guarantee personal firearm ownership under this possibility, connected to possible service in an informal militia. You're welcome.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > giving the right to bare arms in the absence of a formal militia That's not what the 2nd amendment says. It says "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". That doesn't mean that if the government decides to organize a formal militia, people's individual right to keep and bear arms goes away; that would defeat the whole purpose of the amendment, which is to enable the people to resist a tyrannical government, just as the Americans resisted British tyranny using their own individual arms. In other words, the "well-regulated militia" is the entire body of armed citizens. The "well-regulated" part means that the citizens themselves are supposed to regulate their own and each other's use of arms so that they are not used to promote tyranny instead of resist it.
    - thfuran 2y ago
      >that would defeat the whole purpose of the amendment, which is to enable the people to resist a tyrannical government That doesn't really jive with the president being explicitly legally empowered to call upon the militia to quell insurrection.
      - pdonis 2y ago
        Yes, it does, because the militia has more than one purpose. It's not only for resisting a tyrannical government. That's one of its purposes, but not the only one. Indeed, once the Declaration of Independence had been signed and published, one could argue that the United States were in fact organizing and using the militia to "repel invasion" by the British. But the militia was used before that happened, when the only grounds for its use was to resist tyrannical government by the British.
        olliej 2y ago
        The only people claiming they want to fight a "tyrannical government" as their justification for dick extensions are the people who routinely try to remove the rights of others, and are the same people who have repeatedly tried to use force to overthrow the elected government when their candidate lost. Parroting that nonsense, when everyone knows that the reason they want unrestricted access to guns is just that they're idiots that made having guns their personality. The 2nd amendment says "A well regulated Militia", but the "I need guns to compensate for personal issues" people say you can't have any regulations or rules that would in anyway require the to actually be mentally or physically capable of supporting a free State. Again, the group of people arguing for the definition of the 2nd amendment that gives unrestricted access to guns are the people who routinely and consistently opposed the "free State" the 2nd amendment is ostensibly for, hell they generally oppose the 1st, 5th, 8th, 15th, 24th, and 28th amendments, so any proclaimed absolutism about their support for the constitution is dubious at best. I'd make a claim based on current commentary that these groups don't support any of the the constitution at all given their repeated and explicit disdain for articles 1 through 3 that define the core of the us government.
felsokning 2y ago
It definitely reads like a, "If we don't use it, we lose it," message - and not a, "oh, mahgerd, wE gOtTa Do SoMeThInG nOw!!!!!!" kind of message.
philipov 2y ago
I dunno. If they're really so essential, why do they require him to encourage their use? Sounds like they're completely optional, not essential.
sweeter 2y ago
I would have to disagree, the main issue with FISA is not only that allows the US Government to do warrantless wiretapping, it forces citizens who are business owners to facilitate that wire-tapping (which is already legal but only for a small subsection of types of businesses like telephone and internet companies) and FISA expands on the definition of these kinds of businesses without openly defining what that expansion is, the FBI can just make that determination without any due process, foresight, or reasoning. This is hugely detrimental to all Americans. They could go to any business and force them to wiretap their wifi or turn over ALL user records. The fact that there is no transparency at any level and that they are quietly pushing this through is damning. If they want to expand the definition of what FISA allows, they should do so in the open. The Majority Report had an expert on to talk about it, you can google it, its the first link under "majority report FISA"
- nickff 2y ago
  I don’t like the government forcing business owners to assist in controlling the populace either, but this is hardly a unique situation. The best example I can think of is requiring employers to pay deduct employees’ income tax. Should we stop requiring employers to deduct income tax? For the record, I think the answer to both is yes, but I’m in the minority.
  - notaustinpowers 2y ago
    FISA allows these governmental agencies to force/compel businesses to share this information without users being notified of it. Requiring employers to deduct employee's pay for income taxes notifies the employee in question before it is done. The notice is the important bit here.
    - nickff 2y ago
      People are constantly bombarded with notices, to the point that most of us actually read very few of them. I'm not sure the notice makes a big difference here; what proportion of taxpayers do you think actually know their total tax liability and/or effective tax rate at the federal, state, and/or local levels? We have notice of all of them, but it's so hard to keep track of income, investment, sales, and property taxes, that very few of us actually know this stuff. I bet that if you put a notice of FISA data collection on someone's pay stub, it's unlikely they would even notice.
bandyaboot 2y ago
Yeah, this article is very strange. The debate should be about whether the law is appropriate. This email adds nothing to that debate.
prosody 2y ago
Would you object if the FBI deputy director encouraged FBI agents to lawfully use their service firearms in the field to demonstrate their use to the FBI? There are real harms involved with increasing surveillance of the public and reducing judicial oversight. Placing the use of warrantless wiretapping as an end in itself rather than a possible means whose use needs to be carefully weighed necessarily means that the weighing will be less careful.
- jrockway 2y ago
  Ultimately Congress should have written the law more carefully. It's their job to balance the various concerns of the government; effectiveness of their law enforcement vs. civil liberties. The FBI's job is only to investigate to the maximum extent of the law, and the email was just reminding people of that.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > Ultimately Congress should have written the law more carefully. That's not how the clandestine agencies like Congress to write laws though. They love to live in the spaces and gray areas created by vaguely written laws.
  - Retric 2y ago
    > investigate to the maximum extent of the law Every branch of the government has a duty to uphold the constitution including its protections. Further the constitution is the law suggesting it’s only their responsibility to uphold some laws is the root of a great number of issues.
  - foooorsyth 2y ago
    > Ultimately Congress should have written the law more carefully Insane framing of “we know the spirit of the law but we are going to do everything we can to skirt it”. >The FBI’s job is only to investigate to the maximum extent of the law Wrong, according to the FBI itself: “The mission of the FBI is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States.” https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs/what-is-the-mission-of-the-fbi https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs/what-is-the-mission-of-the-fb... Pray tell, how does warrantless spying on citizens help to uphold the 4th amendment?
zugi 2y ago
Not at all. Remember what FISA stands for: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This law was originally written to allow spying on Foreign citizens. They stoked enough fear to get Congress to amend and expand the law to allow targeting of U.S. citizens, implying we were all in danger of we didn't allow it and promising to use that power responsibly. Now the FBI Deputy Director says: "I urge everyone to continue to look for ways to appropriately use US person queries to advance the mission" - that is, literally think about ways to use this power to spy on U.S. citizens. This absolutely is and should be big news.
tootie 2y ago
Putting the word "desperation" in the headline is serious editorializing. It's a valuable story but Gizmodo is chasing clicks.
boomboomsubban 2y ago
A congressperson said this email directly contradicts what the FBI told them during the bid to get the program renewed. Even if you're fine with them spreading their net to the legally allowed limit rather than what's necessary, lying to Congress seems like nefariousness.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  Are you ready for Assange's extradition 11 days from now?
  - boomboomsubban 2y ago
    Sorry, what does this have to do with what I said?

by lumb63 2y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

> “To continue to demonstrate why tools like this are essential to our mission, we need to use them, while also holding ourselves accountable for doing so properly and in compliance with legal requirements,” Not sure why this is news.

olliej 2y ago
You cannot use a “fisa warrant” legally, they’re objectively unconstitutional. Conforming to the “legal requirements” means also conforming to the constitution, it doesn’t matter if someone writes a law that says you don’t need to obey the constitution, that just means the law itself is illegal. It’s amazing how government officials interpret the 2nd amendment (giving the right to bare arms in the absence of a formal militia to mean everyone can have guns in of all kinds in all cases, but then turn around and say the 4th amendment does not grant any rights at all)
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  > You cannot use a “fisa warrant” legally, they’re objectively unconstitutional. According to you. The courts think it's perfectly constitutional.
  - dwater 2y ago
    Yes, in an alternate universe it would be gratifying to see a high court that wasn't captured by far right ideologues that was willing to take another look at precedent establishing decisions of the past that rolled back freedoms and privacy and say, "You know what, the facts that supported FISA, the Patriot Act, etc., were falsely manufactured for political reasons, and actually now that those falsehoods have come to light we think it's time to admit that those decisions were unsupported and should be reversed." But I expect the opposite for this universe.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
      I disagree that they're captured and I support FISA. FISA should be expanded as far as I am concerned.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      It's not a right/left thing, at least not in the colloquial sense those words are used in US. Laws like these have broad support on both sides of the political spectrum. The fundamental problem is authoritarianism, which is a disease infesting both left and right.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    The courts claim lots of things are constitutional when any reasonable person can see that the claim is nonsense. To give just a few examples from Supreme Court cases: Seizing property to turn it over to a private developer instead of for public use is a valid use of the government's eminent domain power (Kelo v. New London). Congress regulating farmers growing wheat on their own property for their own and their animals' consumption on the grounds is a valid regulation of interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause (Wickard v. Filburn). Allowing Congress to delegate legislative power to the executive branch, in clear violation of Article I of the Constitution, as long as Congress gives an "intelligible principle" (Hampton Co. v. United States). Ruling that exercising your Fifth Amendment right not to be a witness against yourself can be taken as evidence of guilt (Salinas v. Texas).
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  "bare arms" The Constitution, afaik, is silent on the matter of shirt sleeves. However, a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed. The crime is that the States have given up on forming those well-regulated militias and that we have a continuous standing army in a Military-Industrial-Congressional complex whose corruption boggles the mind.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > the States have given up on forming those well-regulated militias The States claim that state-run National Guard units are the "well-regulated militias". Their claim is wrong, but not for the reason you imply. The reason their claim is wrong is that the 2nd Amendment is about the right of the people to keep and bear arms to resist a tyrannical government--any tyrannical government: not just the Federal government, but the State governments as well. If the States can organize a militia and then say individual citizens no longer have the right to keep and bear arms outside that organized militia, that defeats the purpose of the 2nd Amendment just as much as the Federal government having a standing army and claiming it's an organized militia.
    - RajT88 2y ago
      That's actually incorrect. The second amendment is entirely about state militias, and anyone claiming it's related to resisting a tyrannical government hasn't actually read the documents they claim to have read. Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution outlines militias as a duty of congress, and the function of the militias (note: resisting a tyrannical government is not listed!) Article II, Section 2 defines the President as the commander in chief of the military and militias. The above is what the second amendment is making reference to. There are following acts of congress that clarify who gets to be in a militia: the militia acts of 1792, 1795, 1862 and 1903. These allow for people of different races and genders to join militias. The militia act of 1903 clarifies that there are different types of state militias: formal and informal. Formal is things like the National Guard, Texas Rangers, etc. Informal is - in times of emergency, the state can basically just round up a posse for the outlined purposes in Article 1, Section 8. The second amendment does guarantee personal firearm ownership under this possibility, connected to possible service in an informal militia. You're welcome.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > giving the right to bare arms in the absence of a formal militia That's not what the 2nd amendment says. It says "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". That doesn't mean that if the government decides to organize a formal militia, people's individual right to keep and bear arms goes away; that would defeat the whole purpose of the amendment, which is to enable the people to resist a tyrannical government, just as the Americans resisted British tyranny using their own individual arms. In other words, the "well-regulated militia" is the entire body of armed citizens. The "well-regulated" part means that the citizens themselves are supposed to regulate their own and each other's use of arms so that they are not used to promote tyranny instead of resist it.
  - thfuran 2y ago
    >that would defeat the whole purpose of the amendment, which is to enable the people to resist a tyrannical government That doesn't really jive with the president being explicitly legally empowered to call upon the militia to quell insurrection.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      Yes, it does, because the militia has more than one purpose. It's not only for resisting a tyrannical government. That's one of its purposes, but not the only one. Indeed, once the Declaration of Independence had been signed and published, one could argue that the United States were in fact organizing and using the militia to "repel invasion" by the British. But the militia was used before that happened, when the only grounds for its use was to resist tyrannical government by the British.
      - olliej 2y ago
        The only people claiming they want to fight a "tyrannical government" as their justification for dick extensions are the people who routinely try to remove the rights of others, and are the same people who have repeatedly tried to use force to overthrow the elected government when their candidate lost. Parroting that nonsense, when everyone knows that the reason they want unrestricted access to guns is just that they're idiots that made having guns their personality. The 2nd amendment says "A well regulated Militia", but the "I need guns to compensate for personal issues" people say you can't have any regulations or rules that would in anyway require the to actually be mentally or physically capable of supporting a free State. Again, the group of people arguing for the definition of the 2nd amendment that gives unrestricted access to guns are the people who routinely and consistently opposed the "free State" the 2nd amendment is ostensibly for, hell they generally oppose the 1st, 5th, 8th, 15th, 24th, and 28th amendments, so any proclaimed absolutism about their support for the constitution is dubious at best. I'd make a claim based on current commentary that these groups don't support any of the the constitution at all given their repeated and explicit disdain for articles 1 through 3 that define the core of the us government.

felsokning 2y ago

It definitely reads like a, "If we don't use it, we lose it," message - and not a, "oh, mahgerd, wE gOtTa Do SoMeThInG nOw!!!!!!" kind of message.

philipov 2y ago

I dunno. If they're really so essential, why do they require him to encourage their use? Sounds like they're completely optional, not essential.

sweeter 2y ago

I would have to disagree, the main issue with FISA is not only that allows the US Government to do warrantless wiretapping, it forces citizens who are business owners to facilitate that wire-tapping (which is already legal but only for a small subsection of types of businesses like telephone and internet companies) and FISA expands on the definition of these kinds of businesses without openly defining what that expansion is, the FBI can just make that determination without any due process, foresight, or reasoning. This is hugely detrimental to all Americans. They could go to any business and force them to wiretap their wifi or turn over ALL user records. The fact that there is no transparency at any level and that they are quietly pushing this through is damning. If they want to expand the definition of what FISA allows, they should do so in the open. The Majority Report had an expert on to talk about it, you can google it, its the first link under "majority report FISA"

nickff 2y ago
I don’t like the government forcing business owners to assist in controlling the populace either, but this is hardly a unique situation. The best example I can think of is requiring employers to pay deduct employees’ income tax. Should we stop requiring employers to deduct income tax? For the record, I think the answer to both is yes, but I’m in the minority.
- notaustinpowers 2y ago
  FISA allows these governmental agencies to force/compel businesses to share this information without users being notified of it. Requiring employers to deduct employee's pay for income taxes notifies the employee in question before it is done. The notice is the important bit here.
  - nickff 2y ago
    People are constantly bombarded with notices, to the point that most of us actually read very few of them. I'm not sure the notice makes a big difference here; what proportion of taxpayers do you think actually know their total tax liability and/or effective tax rate at the federal, state, and/or local levels? We have notice of all of them, but it's so hard to keep track of income, investment, sales, and property taxes, that very few of us actually know this stuff. I bet that if you put a notice of FISA data collection on someone's pay stub, it's unlikely they would even notice.

bandyaboot 2y ago

Yeah, this article is very strange. The debate should be about whether the law is appropriate. This email adds nothing to that debate.

prosody 2y ago

Would you object if the FBI deputy director encouraged FBI agents to lawfully use their service firearms in the field to demonstrate their use to the FBI? There are real harms involved with increasing surveillance of the public and reducing judicial oversight. Placing the use of warrantless wiretapping as an end in itself rather than a possible means whose use needs to be carefully weighed necessarily means that the weighing will be less careful.

jrockway 2y ago
Ultimately Congress should have written the law more carefully. It's their job to balance the various concerns of the government; effectiveness of their law enforcement vs. civil liberties. The FBI's job is only to investigate to the maximum extent of the law, and the email was just reminding people of that.
- dylan604 2y ago
  > Ultimately Congress should have written the law more carefully. That's not how the clandestine agencies like Congress to write laws though. They love to live in the spaces and gray areas created by vaguely written laws.
- Retric 2y ago
  > investigate to the maximum extent of the law Every branch of the government has a duty to uphold the constitution including its protections. Further the constitution is the law suggesting it’s only their responsibility to uphold some laws is the root of a great number of issues.
- foooorsyth 2y ago
  > Ultimately Congress should have written the law more carefully Insane framing of “we know the spirit of the law but we are going to do everything we can to skirt it”. >The FBI’s job is only to investigate to the maximum extent of the law Wrong, according to the FBI itself: “The mission of the FBI is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States.” https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs/what-is-the-mission-of-the-fbi https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs/what-is-the-mission-of-the-fb... Pray tell, how does warrantless spying on citizens help to uphold the 4th amendment?

zugi 2y ago

Not at all. Remember what FISA stands for: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This law was originally written to allow spying on Foreign citizens. They stoked enough fear to get Congress to amend and expand the law to allow targeting of U.S. citizens, implying we were all in danger of we didn't allow it and promising to use that power responsibly. Now the FBI Deputy Director says: "I urge everyone to continue to look for ways to appropriately use US person queries to advance the mission" - that is, literally think about ways to use this power to spy on U.S. citizens. This absolutely is and should be big news.

tootie 2y ago

Putting the word "desperation" in the headline is serious editorializing. It's a valuable story but Gizmodo is chasing clicks.

boomboomsubban 2y ago

A congressperson said this email directly contradicts what the FBI told them during the bid to get the program renewed. Even if you're fine with them spreading their net to the legally allowed limit rather than what's necessary, lying to Congress seems like nefariousness.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
Are you ready for Assange's extradition 11 days from now?
- boomboomsubban 2y ago
  Sorry, what does this have to do with what I said?