#FISA DOCUMENT INFO WARS SERIES#

In fact, Nunes sponsored a version of a bill passed earlier this month that greatly expanded the surveillance powers authorized under Section 702. Nunes and fellow House Republicans have focused their fretting on traditional FISA, rather than Section 702. Experts say it’s much more troublesome than traditional FISA, because it has far less oversight. Section 702 is the piece of FISA that most worries civil liberties activists at organizations like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

#FISA DOCUMENT INFO WARS SERIES#

This section doesn’t involve a judge at all: It authorizes a series of warrantless surveillance programs, several of which were first made public by Edward Snowden. Lost in the conversation over Carter Page is an entirely separate portion of the law, called Section 702. Nunes and fellow House Republicans have focused their fretting on traditional FISA, rather than Section 702.īut Title 1 of FISA is not the part most susceptible to abuse. But to assess whether that’s the case, you have to know again how FISA works. Nunes apparently wants it to look like the FISC judge issued the warrant on shaky grounds. It’s basically a burn-the-house down strategy to protect the president,” he told Politico. “It’s designed to push out a destructive narrative and further the attacks on the FBI. The House Intelligence Committee’s lead Democrat, Adam Schiff, has said he believed the memo was misleading. While the dossier may have been cited, officials could have also included a significant amount of evidence collected by the US intelligence community. But we don’t know what other evidence law enforcement may have relied on to obtain a warrant to investigate Page.

You can start to see rough outlines of the conspiracy theory already: Unverified research, funded by Democrats, led to the surveillance of an advisor to a Republican presidential candidate. Yes, that dossier, made public last year and subsequently revealed to be financed in part by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Nunes’ memo reportedly alleges that to obtain their warrant, law enforcement officials relied on research from a dossier written by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. “When we talk about traditional FISA and we say someone has to get a court order based on probable cause,” says Goitein, “that means there has to be some sort of criminal activity, such as espionage, in order to qualify.” Everyone from Breitbart and Fox News to Mike Cernovich has talked about it ceaselessly. Wikileaks even pledged a $1 million reward to anyone who leaked the document to the organization. Representative Steve King said it was “worse than Watergate.” Over the past week, thousands of Americans-as well as likely bots linked to Russia-have flooded Twitter with the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo. Congressman Matt Gaetz said it’s “jaw-dropping,” and called for its public release.

Republicans who have viewed the Nunes document will have you believe it’s incredibly explosive.

That misunderstanding makes it easy for the law to be twisted for partisan purposes. But that confusion, and the fuss over the memo more generally, demonstrate just how little the American public understands about how FISA actually works. Jones had not, in fact, obtained the Nunes memo. The memo purportedly proves that intelligence officials abused surveillance powers authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in investigating Trump’s campaign ties to Russia. Jones thought he had a mysterious four-page document authored by Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, who leads the House Intelligence Committee. “EXCLUSIVE: Infowars has obtained and is now releasing the secret FISA memo,” conspiracy theorist Alex Jones blared on Twitter Tuesday.

Fisa document info wars