We need to have our surveillance powers for monitoring overseas terrorists activities reinstated and soon. Contrary to the naive and BDS driven claims from the suicidal left we are not as safe from attack now as we were a week back when we operated under rules and processes that had been successfully guarding this nation from attack since 9-11. To understand how close the threat is just look north to the terrorist retirement communities found in Canada:

Ottawa yesterday unveiled a string of more specific allegations against five terror suspects, detailing, for example, how one suspect called the satellite phone of al-Qaeda’s second-in-command and how another was in charge of a group of training camp recruits in Afghanistan.

…

Syrian Hassan Almrei, an alleged document forger, was involved in a bizarre incident at Toronto’s Pearson Airport in September, 1999. It’s alleged that Mr. Almrei gained access to a restricted area. “Almrei and the five individuals appeared to have access cards and codes for a restricted access building on the [Pearson] grounds,” the documents state.

Egyptian Mahmoud Jaballah, long alleged to be a communications conduit for terrorist cells involved in the 1998 African embassy bombings, is now said to have “communicated closely” with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda No. 2.

The new documents indicate Mr. Jaballah’s Canadian conversations were recorded, including ones in which he referred to Mr. al-Zawahiri as “the father” and dialled his satellite phone.

There’s more. The reason the communications of these men was picked up and retained, if these are NSA intercepts and I have no reason to believe they are not, is because pre 9-11 the NSA could save the details of terrorist communications when both ends were overseas. It was only when a terrorist was able to cross into our own country that we established special protections from surveillance by forcing the NSA to delete the details on ‘who’ and ‘where’. The ‘what’ was destroyed as a sacrifice to the ghost of Nixon and Watergate.

After 9-11, if these characters make it across our borders, the big difference before now was that the NSA could pass the lead to the FBI because NOW the purists at the FIS Court have finally acknowledged the NSA can pick up serious threats that need to be investigated. Prior to 9-11, any evidence gained from an initial NSA lead was ‘tainted’ and the court refused to consider warrants based on leads coming from these NSA leads (though the FBI could request and NSA monitor a suspect – and that meaningless difference would let the evidence into FIS Court). After 9-11 the FIS Court was required to consider all leads, since the NSA had detected the 9-11 highjackers but the antiquated and hyper-paranoid rules of the FIS Court meant the details to follow up and save lives were thrown away. Thrown away folks.

And this is where we are again: judges determining targets, but really delaying or missing leads because of concerns based on political biases and grudges. I prefer the NSA analysts pick the targets and let the FBI do its job unfettered by judges trying to set precedence. The lapsed law is impacting our ability to defend ourselves, don’t let those with no access to threat intel spin you otherwise.. Some impacts are in the short term, but it will get wore in the long term. Which will lead us to a naive complacency, fondly reminiscent of September 10th, 2001.