The Surveillance State of America Has Extended Section 702 with a RISAA Enhancement

As Americans, we generally think that censorship and surveillance are reserved for the authoritarian regimes of our enemies like Russia and China, and we often turn a blind eye when our allies conduct similar actions, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky consolidating the news media and banning opposition parties, or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu banishing and outlawing Al Jazeera (one of the few corporate media sources to point out war crimes committed by the Israeli military). Even more so, we often ignore our own government’s totalitarian tendencies when it spies on us through the Patriot Act, uses “legal” means to ban TikTok because there is too much anti-Israel speech on the platform, partners with or compels social media companies to eliminate unfavorable content, targets Catholics and right-leaning political groups and individuals, or considers a bill to arbitrarily label (through the secretary of the Department of Treasury) nonprofit groups as “terrorist-supporting organizations” and strip them of their tax-exempt status if they criticize the Israeli government. Perhaps we should look in the mirror before condemning what other countries do internally.

As discussed previously, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (as part of the FISA Amendments Act) is utilized covertly to spy on Americans without warrants by initially targeting a foreigner and then sweeping up additional communications of citizens “inadvertently.” Since the data can be stored for years, federal agents are then able to use the information later on and for criminal investigations unrelated to the initial national security searches. This method for bypassing the Fourth Amendment was easily extended last month in both houses of Congress in a bipartisan manner (a requirement for a warrant failed because enough congressmen were convinced that national security would be threatened if we actually followed the Constitution), and although we will have another ceremonial debate about this in 2026, there is no reason to believe that Section 702 will ever expire (it has been going strong since 2008). Our “elected” representatives and intelligence community always make it seem like an apocalypse will occur if we do not allow the government to keep all of its tools to spy on us.

Do not worry, though! The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) only abused its authority and targeted American citizens (with Section 702) 57,094 times from December 2022 to November 2023. The corporate media is all excited about this, because from December 2021 to November 2022, the unconstitutional inquiries were 119,383. What an accomplishment! The Constitution says that absolutely zero occurrences are acceptable, but hey, 57,000 times is far better than 119,000, huh? A leaked email from FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate seemed to suggest that the bureau is encouraging its employees to conduct even more warrantless searches in order to show the world that its mission is important and just (the deputy director pushed back and said that he did not want employees to violate the law, and instead, he wants them to be able to utilize all of the new tools granted by Congress to spy on Americans).

It is like there is some hidden provision within the Bill of Rights that allows the government a certain number of hunting tags in the surveillance world, and as long as that number is not exceeded, there is no harm to the privacy of Americans. Even though FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted that his bureau has fallen short and that reforms are necessary, no restrictions on government spying were seriously considered or passed when our “representatives” expedited Section 702 back into existence. Business has continued as usual. If you have a problem with the federal government conducting warrantless searches on citizens, you can just pack up and move to a less totalitarian country somewhere else in the world, right (because there are so many free countries to choose from on this planet)?   

Around the same time of the reauthorization of Section 702, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA is bill H.R. 7888) passed in the duopoly party system, which bickers about trivial matters but ultimately agrees when it comes to major items like surveillance (both Republicans and Democrats steal your rights). RISAA enhances Section 702 by expanding the definition of “electronic communications service provider” (ECSR) to include any “custodian” who has access to equipment. So now, the government can require data centers, hotels, commercial landlords, cleaning services, libraries, coffee shops, plumbers, storage companies, and many others with access to the internet (a few business types are exempt) to participate in the government’s warrantless data collection from its Section 702 authority (see Section 25 of RISAA). If you thought that the government censoring us through social media companies was bad, wait until they start spying on us through every service that we use on a daily basis. Put your mind at ease, though, because our progressive and liberal friends will remind us that there is absolutely no evidence that this is occurring yet, and we are just making up imaginary scenarios to scare people. The government would never abuse its power, and we just have to have faith in our democracy and institutions.

Gradually over time, our rights are being eroded, and although most Americans have already been conditioned to accept that the government monitors everything that we do online and elsewhere (even spying on us through our cellphones or smart televisions), we should be outraged (but we are not). Even when federal agents do obtain a search warrant, it is usually through a rubber-stamped FISA court (FISC), which rarely, if ever, denies such requests and only hears the government’s side of the story in secret (behind closed doors). Our surveillance state has become far more intrusive than even that of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, as even those regimes had limited technology to spy on citizens, and King George III would be proud of what the United States government has become (his general search warrants in colonial America, which helped spark the American Revolution, were called Writs of Assistance). This country does not look anything like what our founders intended it to be, as we have a far more centralized and powerful government than anything that they could have imagined, and our foreign policy has become nothing less than an empire that rivals and even exceeds that of the British, Roman, Ottoman, or Mongol Empires. Our government has been infiltrated and hijacked by elites and authoritarians, and it is up to us to either save it or let it be remembered in history as another totalitarian empire with great influence on the world but without the principles of freedom guiding it along.  

Thank you for reading, and please check out my book, The Global Bully, and website.