© Washington Times
Mr. Trump's intelligence and counterterrorism team said Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has saved hundreds of lives by preventing terrorist attacks and insisted — despite Mr. Trump's claimed experiences — that the law is not being abused.
Comment: Is it that the law is not being abused? Or is it that people are being abused by the law?
"Simply put, the use of this authority has helped save lives," Thomas P. Bossert, President Trump's top counterterrorism adviser, wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times, announcing support for a bill introduced this week making the snooping powers permanent. Without congressional action, Section 702 is set to expire on Dec. 31. That part of the law allows federal intelligence agencies to scoop up the communications of foreigners outside the U.S. It does not allow Americans to be targets of snooping, but if foreigners who are targeted are communicating with Americans, then those exchanges can be tracked in what is dubbed "incidental collection."
Comment: Over 1B communications reportedly collected.Unscrupulous security gathering, without oversight from independent watchdogs, gives unlimited capability to create statistics and offer 'potential or hypothetical ad hoc scenarios' then foiled to validate its necessity. Who are the watchdogs to verify authenticity of agency reporting and that incidental collection of American communications are actually purged as required? (Nothing, if security is all it is claimed to be, is ever truly lost.)