The House Intelligence Committee's FISA Reform Package Would Not Have Prevented Russiagate Or Mass Surveillance, Either.

The House of Representatives is presently considering two separate proposals that will renew section 702 of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - now 50 U.S.C. Sec.

Still, in spite of the expansions of authority, the framework for FISA and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has largely remained in place to police intelligence community activities and to prevent, as much as possible, abuses of the system that were witnessed in the past.

With advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processors, it is easy to imagine that nowadays, it is operating itself on a technical basis more and more to identify threats from within to the homeland, particularly in the mass surveillance arena, for now it still requires a human touch to truly come away with the political abuses that have been witnessed again and again, even if to direct the mass surveillance at particular ideologies.

Whereas the disclosures in the 2000s and in 2013 revealed the architecture for mass surveillance, the 2016 abuses against the Trump campaign revealed how the top secret FISA court could be used for targeted, political surveillance, the basis of which was none other than being critical of U.S. foreign policy, combined with allegations by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC that their opponent was a foreign agent being adopted by the FBI and Justice Department.

It goes without saying that the provisions now proposed by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to reform FISA would do almost nothing to stop the mass surveillance, nor would the provisions have prevented the Russiagate scandal, since they do not restrict the basis for targeting a U.S. person if it is believed he or she is an agent of a foreign power.

A competing proposal by the House Judiciary Committee, although adding more restrictions to the process than the House Intelligence Committee's, would not stop the mass surveillance or have prevented Russiagate, either.

Think the system can be reformed from within? Then maybe you support the House Intelligence Committee version of the renewal of these surveillance powers. 

https://dailytorch.com/2023/12/the-house-intelligence-committees-fisa-reform-package-would-not-have-prevented-russiagate-or-mass-surveillance-either/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=811bef40-32cd-4866-ae33-137eb54cb530