There is a major issue within the use of the FISA-702 authority that must be immediately understood.  A silo problem that is not being discussed within Congress as the potential for FISA-702 reauthorization is looming.

I’m setting aside my opinion of the entire process in order to just outline the facts as they appear.  I am not in support of any of this FISA process; nor do I support the baseline premise of the NSA database capturing the private electronic communication of Americans, which I do not believe is legislatively authorized to exist.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) recently released the 2023 FISC opinion on FISA-702 activity as reported by the NSA, FBI and to a lesser extent CIA and NCTC [REPORT HERE].

In this report, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) is reviewing legal compliance by the NSA and FBI in accessing the NSA database that houses the private electronic records, metadata, of every American.  This is the core of the FISA-702 authorization, where 702 indicates an American citizen protected from illegal searches and seizures by the Fourth Amendment.

The NSA database contains the private electronic data (metadata) of every single American – including emails, text messages, social media posts, instant messages, direct messages, phone calls, geolocation identifiers, purchases by electronic funds, banking records and any keystroke any American person puts into any electronic device for any reason. [A big issue here is the use of Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) but that’s for a different article.]

The 2023 FISC report reviews the action of the FBI and NSA to ensure compliance with rules and restrictions in the search of this database.

The NSA and FBI report violations of the process to the FISA Court; this is somewhat of an honor system.  You may have heard FBI Director Christopher Wray recently saying they have reduced the number of unauthorized searches of this database by 80%.  The FBI has presumably tightened up the rules and restrictions on who and how this database can be searched.

The ODNI release only covers the compliance of the NSA and FBI (and the CIA and NCTC) to the FISA-702 rules.  The CIA and NCTC are foreign mission authority only, therefore they should never even be involved in searching American citizens.

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If anyone else wants to climb in here and read this report [pdf DATA HERE], drop your review notes in the comments.  It’s going to take me a day or two to finish making all my notes.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence [ODNI] has released a 117-page April 2023 order/opinion by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [FISC] about the compliance audit conducted by internal review as the U.S. intelligence agencies seek reauthorization.   Everything FISC happens in secret, and the report is heavily redacted; however, some interesting information can be obtained if you read the report carefully.

Here’s an example.  The FISC is now agreeing with the NSA and FBI that all search logs and audit trails should be erased after 10 years from query.  That means every audit trail from the period up to August 2013 is about to be erased.  That means almost all of the Obama era search queries will disappear before the next administration takes office.

They are not erasing our data; they are erasing the logs of their search inquiries into our data.  FU!

[Source, page 27 – FISC opinion, 2023]

Readers here know my position.  I do not believe the FISA court is needed; nor do I believe the NSA, FBI, NCTC or CIA should have any search access to the metadata [full scope electronic records] of American Citizens without a court order.

The DOJ and FBI should go to the ordinary federal courts for search warrants.  The CIA and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) both have foreign service missions, so they do not need access to American citizen metadata (702 acquired).  Why would the CIA and NCTC need to snoop into the private data of American citizens when their legislative authority forbids them from conducting domestic surveillance?    Additionally, the NSA should not contain a lifetime repository for all electronic records of American citizens.  That’s my opinion.

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In roughly the past fifty years, the term “continuity of government” has been used with increased frequency describing how the United States of America, a constitutional republican system of government, contains internal mechanisms to protect the executive branch in the event of crisis, attack or disruption of leadership by adversaries.

The term ‘continuity of government‘ became much more common in the aftermath of 9-11-01 and the thunder shock of an al-Qaeda inspired terrorist attack in New York and Washington DC.

Within the very brief discussion period that led up to the 10-26-01 Patriot Act [pdf here], literally a structural reform of the entire domestic terrorist apparatus that created the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), a bill only debated for a few weeks, the baseline was the enhanced ‘continuity of government‘ in the event of an emergency.

As we have exhaustively outlined on these pages, the outcome of the Patriot Act was to create a system where every American was now viewed by our federal government through the prism of the citizen being a potential terrorist threat.  The federal government aligned all of our institutions and systems accordingly.

DHS was created to monitor American behavior, the TSA was created to scan American travelers, and the FBI was enhanced with resources to conduct surveillance despite our Fourth Amendment protections within our Constitution.  Instead of the U.S. Govt protecting U.S. citizens from foreign threats, the Patriot Act changed the mission of government to protect itself from potential citizen threats.

In essence, We the People became the suspects, and all of the constitutional viewpoints within the FBI and Dept of Justice were modified to create monitoring systems.

The legislative branch was considered part of a this newly protected elite class of Americans, and the judicial branch deferred all scrutiny to the executive as long as they claimed, ‘national security.’  The secret FISA court system would grant the agents surveillance power over U.S. citizens.

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For some apparently unknown reason, CNN’s Jake Tapper suddenly dropped his combative nature that he carries toward Republicans and shifted to an extremely demure disposition, as he interviews Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.   This is the softest softball interview I have ever seen Jake Tapper deliver; and that history goes all the way back to his ABC days as a White House correspondent.

It’s almost as if there’s an agenda here in the background for Jake Tapper.  Remember, this is the guy who led the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy for over two years with his friends Carl Bernstein, Jim Sciutto and Manu Raju, and the same Jake Tapper who affirmed that everything in the Chris Steele dossier was factually accurate.

Watching Jake Tapper softly interview Ron DeSantis with literally zero pushback, not a single challenge to a single response from DeSantis, is really odd – particularly on the heels of Tapper’s background allies advancing another round of indictments against President Trump.  It’s almost as if this is a coordinated set up on behalf of the DC system to the benefit of Ron DeSantis, who is supported by the multinational corporations who sponsor the CNN agenda.  Go figure.  WATCH: 

Jake Tapper seems almost intellectually resigned, seemingly disinterested, in having to play this role.  Watch him closely… you can almost see Tapper saying, “yada, yada, yada… can we just get this over with.”  lol  Too conspicuous.

Trump gets a grand jury letter from the DOJ…. DeSantis gets a softball interview with Jake Tapper… Congress has a Hunter Biden whistleblower hearing…. then comes a Trump indictment.  Gee, it’s almost like that one time when Mar-a-Lago was raided, and oddly DeSantis was scheduled for bunker time…. right before the national campaign launch. 👀

At this point, it’s not just the strings we can see…. the hands moving above the strings are visible.

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Sometimes things speak for themselves:

♦ September 2015 – Billionaire Paul Singer contracts with Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS for opposition research on candidate Donald Trump during 2016 GOP presidential primary.  Simpson prior work during time at Wall Street journal serves as reference.

♦ November 2015 – Simpson hires Nellie Ohr to assist on Trump project.  Ohr was CIA open-source analyst.  Revelations by NSA compliance officer in April 2016 point to November 2015 as origin of multiple unauthorized searches of NSA database.

♦ December 2015 – Mrs. Ohr contacts Christopher Steele, submitting data for cross-reference with sources and seeking collaboration on Trump project. Ohr using ham radio license as independent operator.

♦ January – March 2016 – GOP Presidential primary ongoing.  Candidate Donald Trump wins majority of primary delegates from all early state contests.  Momentum for Donald Trump becomes significant.  Cruz, Kasich, Rubio final group along with Trump.  Late March, Paul Singer contacts Glenn Simpson to cancel opposition research. NSA compliance officer notifies NSA Director Mike Rogers about unauthorized use of database by “contractors.”  Rogers asks for full review.

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Steve Bannon rages against the regime at the Turning Point Action conference in West Palm Beach. {Direct Rumble Link}

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President Trump appears with Maria Bartiromo for a lengthy discussion about the current state of politics. {Direct Rumble Link} Within the interview both domestic and foreign policy issues are discussed as well as Trump’s perspectives on the candidates contesting to win the GOP nomination.

It is an interesting interview on many fronts as we look at the republican primary and the candidates who are situated on behalf of institutional and financial interests that oppose President Trump.  WATCH:

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The war in Ukraine ends the moment Trump is elected. Russia keeps the eastern part where the U.S. was provoking unrest.  The U.S. stops trying to use Ukraine as a proxy provocation against Russia.  Ukraine stops doing stupid stuff, becomes independent of the USA, and takes care of its own people.  And with Trump’s assurance to Russia – Ukraine will not join NATO. Everything stops. Done.

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National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan represents the UniParty outlook from Washington DC.

From the position of influence and affluence, both Republican and Democrat policy makers are aligned in a unified outlook toward foreign policy and geopolitical affairs. Washington DC does not have two competing political parties on these issues; there is complete alignment and unidirectional focus.  Never forget that.

Before getting to the Sullivan points, I’m going to shift the discussion slightly, back to the core and explain something that might help provide context for issues from China to Russia and beyond.

Everyone in Washington DC agrees with the agencies and institutions that create the national security state.  The intelligence apparatus and the national security agencies frame the “interests of the U.S. government.” The politicians never push back against those agencies and the strategic policies they present as a solution.  This is important to accept as you contemplate the continued push only in one interventionist direction, regardless of American public opinion.

The only countervailing force that has ever entered the modern system against this dynamic was President Donald Trump. That is why the “system”, consisting of both Republicans and Democrats, together with every institution the system controls, was/is/are unified to repel Trump.

This hive mindset is critical to understand, because the central conflict, the perspective that Trump represents a threat, originates from whether the combined institutional administrative state is correct in their assessments or not.

The “system,” an assembly of career ideologues who define themselves by their sense of self-importance, never believe they are wrong about anything; therefore, every means is justified in their mind.  Any person who opposes their worldview is a threat.  Every threat then becomes a target.

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Prior to Elon Musk taking control of Twitter, the social media company entered a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission putting a neutral arbiter from Ernst & Young in an oversight position for the company’s privacy, data collection and information security protocols.  Given what we know about DHS and FBI control and influence over Twitter content, there is a certain irony in the prior position of the FTC regarding user privacy.

That said, Twitter’s new parent company X Corp filed a court motion Thursday [PDF HERE] asking a federal court overseeing the settlement to either throw out the consent decree entirely, or put it on hold until the FTC turns over documents to Twitter showing historic bias against the company. Twitter is also seeking to bar the FTC from deposing CEO Elon Musk over issues that preceded his arrival.

Within the filing, Twitter presents some alarming information as shared by Ernst and Young about the FTC pressure applied to them.

[SOURCE LINK]

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan questioned FTC Chair Lina Khan about this issue today during a congressional hearing.

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During congressional testimony today, Representative Thomas Massie questions FBI Director Chris Wray about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the J6 pipe bombs and the inability of the FBI to identify a suspect.

Massie plays CCTV video of a mysterious person who *found* the pipe bomb located near the DC headquarters of the DNC and then informed stationed police units nearby.  The inability of the FBI to identify the suspect despite the area being surrounded by CCTV systems has always been odd.  Additionally, the cell phone ping-data from the area where the pipe bombs were discovered was also mysteriously corrupted and rendered of no value. WATCH:

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