Released FISA Document Shows NSA Violations Of Law In Queries Of US Persons

Earlier today, we posted a small report on the release of a FISA document that was filed in April of 2017. Frankly, even from what we have heard coming from congressman regarding a 4-page FISA memo concerning the enormous abuse of power from the Obama administration against then-candidate Donald Trump seems like child's play after combing through some of this.

The document seems to indicate that the NSA violated the Fourth Amendment and several other statutes in their claims to be engage in queries of "national security."

Reporter Pete Santilli began reading through the document today and I listened and read along. I point to Pete as the fact of the matter is that Pete forged a lot of the legal aspects and evidence that was used in the Bundy trials. He was the one putting things together and he was the one who pointed out the presence of Palantir and their holding tank of information that was used against him and other defendants in the Oregon Malheur Wildlife Refuge protests in 2016.

What Pete discovered in the reading of the document is that while everyone is rightly in a tizzy over the #releasethememo agenda, the reality is that this is far bigger than Donald Trump. It extends to every single American alive and those being born today.

The live presentation occurred on Facebook. Understand, this is not, I repeat not, the memo that is being currently spoken about. Nevertheless, it involves the same unconstitutional and unlawful spying by the Deep State.

https://www.facebook.com/peter.t.santilli/videos/10212907944986643

Over and over in this document, the government appealed to the courts to give them access to information in the name of national security.

However, the court was "not satisfied that the government had sufficiently ascertained the scope of the compliance problems or developed and implemented adequate solutions for them and communicated a number of questions and concerns to the government."

Understand that the desire to collect information was specifically to target "non-United States persons reasonably believed outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information (Page 6)." However, part of the NSA's "upstream collection the acquisition of multiple communication transactions (MCTs)" also included persons in the US, as stated on Pages 16 and 17.

One thing that should be noted though about this is that the court had already determined in 2011 that the NSA's minimization procedures, when it came to actually collecting US persons' information, "statuatorily and constitutionally deficient."

The government then is said to have suggested that "NSA may have limited capability, at the time of acquisition, to identify some MCTs as to which the 'active user' is a tasked selector. To the extent that NSA is able to do so, such acquisitions would be consistent with FISA and the Fourth Amendment because all discrete communications within this class of MCTs would consist of communications to or from a tasked selector."

The document then goes on to point out:

"Since 2011, NSA's minimization procedures have prohibited use of U.S.-person identifiers to query the results of upstream Internet collection under Section 702. The October 26, 2016 notice informed the Court that NSA analysts had been conducting such queries in violation of that prohibition, with much greater frequency than had previously been disclosed to the Court."

So, not only was the NSA not forthcoming with the Court, but they were in violation of the law. In fact, the document went on to state that the NSA was using US persons as its targets, not non-US persons.

"That relatively narrow inquiry found that [redacted] analysts had made [redacted] separate queries using [redacted] U.S.-person identifiers that improperly ran against upstream Internet data."

I believe the redactions are the numbers of analysts, queries and persons they were targeting and it appears to be at least double digits, and in the queries could be three or four digits.

The failure to disclose this information was considered a "lack of candor" on the NSA's part and "a very serious Fourth Amendment issue," according to the document.

This is how it begins. The NSA shows a "lack of candor." Thy openly violated the law, specifically the Fourth Amendment, and no one is arrested, charged or loses their job. In fact, the court went on to extend time of the 2016 Certifications to allow the government "sufficient opportunity to assess and report on the scope of the problem and an appropriate remedial plan, and was consistent with the national security, the Court extended the time period for its consideration of the 2016 Certifications to that date.

However, as the Court gave an extension to January 3, 2017, the government came back with a Notice that indicated the Inspector General's study was still ongoing.

Yet, the excuses given for some of the unlawful queries were that "human error was the primary factor" and that system design issues contributed.

Yep, blame it on the rain! How in the world is it human error or system design issues when you deliberately target a US person in search for information?

There's much more that will be covered in a subsequent article, but suffice it to say, the NSA seems to have specifically targeted US persons in its queries without any authorization to do so and in a full violation of the law.

I have always said that I have no issue with searches and seizures of people here in America provided the Fourth Amendment is followed to the letter, but this was not done by the NSA. It looks like several analysts at the NSA should be given perp walks, not more time on the job.