Mar 13 2017
Congress Wants Evidence On Illegal Surveillance – Here It Is!
If Congress wants evidence of illegal surveillance of “Team Trump” I have the answers.
But first, please note the deliberate and specific subject of this sentence. The evidence will be about “Team Trump: which includes the Trump Campaign and its associates (i.e., “associates” = all those US Person not formally on the campaign but ready to serve in the administration if called). And “illegal surveillance” will not only cover the method of capturing the parties and the content of their communications, but whether the intercepted names and content were legally handled in accordance to the US Constitution its the 4th Amendment protections:
The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides, “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The ultimate goal of this provision is to protect people’s right to privacy and freedom from arbitrary governmental intrusions.
The childish and slippery word games being used by both Congress (Dem and Rep alike) and the Fake News Media is fooling no one. The fact a surveillance of possible national threats is legally allowed DOES NOT in turn mean the 4th Amendment is suspended in any shape or form regarding US Persons impacted during that surveillance.
The illegal application of our intelligence capabilities – to divert them from protecting this nation and instead using them for political purposes – is not a slippery or semantic problem. The law is precise: it is illegal.
If a US Person is ‘caught up” in an intelligence gathering activity targeting someone else, that fact (i.e., their name or their part of the conversation) SHOULD NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY!
To continue to pretend ‘framing’ the topic of this issue will confuse the voters is simply confirming the wisdom and insight of the pro-Trump voting block. We won’t get fooled again by the denizens of the Political Industrial Complex*. The PIC have been to the “Wordsmith’s Well” too many times. Their credibility is shot.
If Sen John McCain (already caught distributing fake dossiers about Donald Trump) wants evidence of illegal surveillance activities
, he simply needs to call on Sen Rand Paul to testify:
Paul explained how the NSA routinely and deliberately spies on Americans’ communications — listens to their calls and reads their emails — without a judicial warrant of any kind:
The way it works is, the FISA court, through Section 702, wiretaps foreigners and then [NSA] listens to Americans. It is a backdoor search of Americans. And because they have so much data, they can tap — type Donald Trump into their vast resources of people they are tapping overseas, and they get all of his phone calls.
And so they did this to President Obama. They — 1,227 times eavesdrops on President Obama’s phone calls. Then they mask him. But here is the problem. And General Hayden said this the other day. He said even low-level employees can unmask the caller. That is probably what happened to Flynn.
My apologies to Gen Hayden and Sen Graham, but while someone “can” unmask the details of surveillance details about a US Person, they really cannot without running afoul of the US Constitution. Robbers “can” rob banks, Generals can issue kill orders on civilians, Police can shoot innocent people and Politicians can break laws as they see fit. If they do and are caught doing so they need to prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
No sane person claims laws stop illegal behavior. But do illegal acts by our leaders mean laws should be ignored?
What you see in these kinds of statements is resignation by our leadership to allowing rampant illegal activities. “It’s always done” is how rampant bribery and kickbacks become the norm. This kind of complacency is grotesque.
No one leaked Obama’s calls because the broader government entities knew it was unethical. Yet Donald Trump’s calls (and is campaign associates calls) are leaked to the public because …
What? He is not what these tools wanted as President?
In this prior post I noted the paper trail required for any details about US Person to be unmasked and distributed to points inside the Intelligence Community where they could be later be leaked (most likely via Congress where members (or their staff) caught leaking cannot be “fired”).
If Congress has not reviewed the FISA applications, or these records required for distribution, or any assertion by President Obama to use his independent powers to implement a surveillance program (see this early post), then they are not doing their job.
And one has to wonder why Congress would want to hold back and not look into every possible avenue? What are they concerned about uncovering?
* The Political Industrial Complex encompasses all those elites whose livelihoods are predicated on central-control of resources and who determine who is allowed to succeed in society. It is a bipartisan exclusive club. It includes the Politicians and their career staffers. It includes crony donors and lobbyists who reap government windfalls and special treatment that average citizens cannot obtain. It includes the PIC industrial base of pollsters , consultants, etc. And it includes the pliant news media, whose success rest on access to those in power, and in return for access making sure no bad news will disrupt said power.
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