Years ago I was torn on this issue. Another conservative was pushing the nation security aspect.
I came up with a hypothetical where the deep state spying as used to obtain information to destroy
a Senate candidate. There are lots of ways to make this happen. Obama won a race where a judge opened the sealed divorce records of one candidate. That was apparently legal but provides an example.
I decided I was OK with FISA as long as the hammer dropped on anyone who used the information for other purposes. That has not happened. Leaks abound and it was a presidential race. Nothing happened.
Snowden disclosed 'parallel construction' where secret information could used to gather evidence without the illegal trail. There was an episode of The Good Wife titled "Parallel Construction, Bitches " Season 5, episode 13.
i can't remember if I posted this here.
NSA will provide data for the asking to state/fed govts (based on 'need' as of 1/3/17) hide this postingAs of Jan. 3, 2017, the NSA will provide its data on anyone to fed or state agencies based on 'need', no longer probable cause. Thanks to the outgoing admin.http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/01/19/andrew-napolitano-attorney-general-loretta-lynch-and-parting-shot-at-personal-freedom.htmlEXECUTIVE
Andrew Napolitano: Attorney General Loretta Lynch and a parting shot at personal freedom
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On Jan. 3, outgoing Attorney General Loretta Lynch secretly signed an order directing the National Security Agency -- America's 60,000-person-strong domestic spying apparatus -- to make available raw spying data to all other federal intelligence agencies, which then can pass it on to their counterparts in foreign countries and in the 50 states upon request.
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The recent USA Freedom Act permits the NSA to ask the FISA court for a search warrant for any person -- named or unnamed -- based on the standard of "governmental need." One FISA court-issued warrant I saw authorized the surveillance of all 115 million domestic customers of Verizon. The governmental need standard is no standard at all, as the government will always claim that what it wants, it needs.
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Notwithstanding all of the above gross violations of personal liberty and constitutional norms, the NSA traditionally kept its data -- if printed, enough to fill the Library of Congress every year -- to itself. So if an agency such as the FBI or the DEA or the New Jersey State Police, for example, wanted any of the data acquired by the NSA for law enforcement purposes, it needed to get a search warrant from a federal judge based on the constitutional standard of "probable cause of crime."
Until now.
Now, because of the Lynch secret order, revealed by The New York Times late last week, the NSA may share any of its data with any other intelligence agency or law enforcement agency that has an intelligence arm based on -- you guessed it -- the non-standard of governmental need.,,,