Once again the FBI is outlined by the FISA court using the NSA database for warrantless searches of American citizen information.  This is the fourth consecutive year the FISA court has outlined abuse of the NSA database by FBI workers, contractors and officials.

The latest 67 page FISA compliance review for the year 2020 was written by FISA Court Presiding Judge James Boasberg (same judge from Clinesmith trial).  The opinion was written in November 2020 and declassified (with lots of redactions) today. [pdf version HERE] – [SCRIBD pdf HERE and Below]

I’m still going through the report; however, understanding the issues in current politics, TechnoFog has a well written succinct encapsulation of the top-line issues [READ HERE] which includes:

[…] April 2019 – July 2019: An FBI technical information specialist was involved in “Compliance incidents” by conducting 124 queries of Section 702-acquired information on (1) Volunteers who had requested to participate in the FBI’s “Citizens Academy”; (2) Persons who needed to enter the field office to perform repairs; and (3) Persons who reported they were victims of a crime.

[…] In other words, the FBI is using FISA acquired information to investigate domestic crimes – not matters of foreign intelligence. These included investigations of “health-care fraud, transnational organized crime, violent gangs, domestic terrorism involving racially motivated violent extremists, as well as investigations relating to public corruption and bribery.”

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Journalist Lee Smith hits the sweet spot in his discussion of the U.S. Postal Service conducting surveillance on Americans.  As Smith notes the targeting is not to identify the political ideology of “all Americans”, rather the objective is surveillance of people who likely did not vote for Joe Biden.

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Again it is important to repeat, this type of activity is one long continuum.  The IRS was previously used; federal contractors for the FBI have previously been used; allied Big Tech companies have been used; and now the United States Postal Service is running a covert surveillance program against Americans that sounds suspiciously like the prior DHS announcement.

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Again it is important to repeat, this type of activity is one long continuum.  The IRS was previously used; federal contractors for the FBI have previously been used, and now the United States Postal Service is running a covert surveillance program against Americans that sounds suspiciously like the prior DHS announcement.

The Yahoo news article is filled with people saying they don’t know why.  But that’s only because they have not been paying attention.  The USPS has the systems in place to record every single package (sender and recipient), of every single piece of mail, sent anywhere at all times.  They have a massive database of information on every single American.

So when you put the USPS statutory authority together with their technical capability, and then consider they operate their own police force… and then tie it together with “DHS Preparing to Use Private Contractors to “Scour Public Data and Social Media” To Compile Dissident Citizens for Watch List and No Fly Lists“…. what is described in the Yahoo article is almost identical to what we previously outlined.

Yahoo –  The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News.

The details of the surveillance effort, known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, have not previously been made public. The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as “inflammatory” postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.  (read more)

Now compare that description to what we previously outlined:

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Representative Devin Nunes appears with Maria Bartiromo for an in-dept discussion on current political events.  Within the conversation Nunes outlines how leftist politicians are helping China to achieve their objectives.  More alarmingly Nunes, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, outlines how the U.S. intelligence apparatus is now focusing inwardly to target American citizens they consider subversive.

Additionally, Nunes outlines a current process within the Navy to identify conservative service-members and target them for removal.

https://youtu.be/NILeewXHCgI

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Please keep in mind the warnings provided on these pages about DHS now starting to assemble lists of dissident citizens under the guise of domestic extremists. {Go Deep}  Also remind yourself the same DHS and FBI are now using private contractors embedded in Big Tech to scour public information on social media and provide feedback to help DHS assemble those lists. {Go Deep}

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A story in The Hill highlights a “data breach” in the Christian donation site GiveSendGo and how that data breach is being weaponized against people who support the standard of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in the Wisconsin case against Kyle Rittenhouse.   You can read the article HERE, but what I would draw attention toward is not the details of the people being targeted, but rather the process behind the “data breach.”

We have talked about the weaponization of metadata for several years on this website.  Factually we know with certainty that political operatives within the national security apparatus illegally exploit their access to the FBI and NSA database, the totality of all electronic communication, amid Americans.

The NSA has made those factual admissions to the FISA court who are supposed to be the backstop to protect the fourth amendment privacy of our nation.

The fact that no-one has ever been held legally accountable for violating the law and extracting the personal information of U.S. citizens shows how eroded the constitutional protections really are.  Not a single person has ever been arrested or convicted for exploiting their access… so why would it stop?  Short answer: it hasn’t.

As a result every time I read a story that says a “data breach’ is being weaponized for political benefit, my immediate reaction is now to dismiss the oft claimed “hackers” and focus on the most likely source of privacy weaponization: the known and intentional intrusion by government officials and contractors.

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The Washington Post has a lengthy hit-piece against Kash Patel where they infer unsourced claims the DOJ is investigating the former Nunes aide and Trump administration official for releasing classified information.

Keep in mind that President Trump granted full declassification authority to AG Bill Barr on May 23, 2019.   I would draw your attention to these two paragraphs buried deep in the reporting (emphasis mine):

(WaPo) […] The battle against the deep state continued, meanwhile. Patel kept pushing, along with DNI Ratcliffe, for declassification of memos challenging the origins of the Russia investigation. Nakasone [NSA Director] strongly dissented, and Esper [Sec of Defense] backed him up in an October letter to Ratcliffe “urging that the information not be released due to the harm it would do to national security, including specific harm to the military,” a senior defense official said. Haspel [CIA Director], too, strongly opposed release of the information. Their argument for protecting sensitive information was finally supported by Attorney General William P. Barr, and Trump backed away, a source close to the events said.

“I think there were people within the IC [Intelligence Community], at the heads of certain intelligence agencies, who did not want their tradecraft called out, even though it was during a former administration, because it doesn’t look good on the agency itself,” Patel said in the RealClearInvestigations interview. (read more)

It is tradition the NSA and CIA run to the Washington Post when they need a media PR firm to push their position. So this article makes sense considering the NSA and CIA both had something to hide within the criminal activity behind Spygate. [Maybe the timing has to do with recent information about the Durham probe.]

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The content of the story is less important than the network within it.

The New York Times writes a story about John Durham issuing subpoenas to the Brookings Institute for records of Igor Danchenko’s work there.   Danchenko was Chris Steele’s primary sub-source for the infamous Steele Dossier.

The material provided by Danchenko to Steele was described as unsubstantiated “gossip”, “rumor”, “hearsay” and innuendo by Danchenko himself after he was questioned by the FBI.

New York Times – […] Mr. Durham has keyed in on the F.B.I.’s handling of a notorious dossier of political opposition research both before and after the bureau started using it to obtain court permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser in 2016 and 2017 and questioned witnesses who may have insight into the matter.

In particular, Mr. Durham has obtained documents from the Brookings Institution related to Igor Danchenko, a Russia researcher who worked there a decade ago and later helped gather rumors about Mr. Trump and Russia for that research, known as the Steele dossier, according to people familiar with the request.

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OK, before I blow a blood pressure cuff on this issue, please keep in mind the warnings provided on these pages about DHS now starting to assemble lists of dissident citizens under the guise of domestic extremists. {Go Deep}  Also remind yourself the same DHS and FBI are now using private contractors embedded in Big Tech to scour public information on social media and provide feedback to help DHS assemble those lists. {Go Deep}

Now, we take that foundation and build it one step further…. This well-written report about the recent Senate Armed Services Committee discussion with the National Security Agency (NSA) needs to be absorbed with the prior information as context.  These paragraphs are alarming in the extreme (emphasis mine):

[…] “Several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday voiced their support for expanded authorities for the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command to conduct more intelligence gathering domestically, something that the Biden administration already is exploring, according to Gen. Paul Nakasone, who leads both agencies.”

“Former NSA general counsel Glenn Gertstell has argued that an expansion of NSA authorities to collect domestic intelligence is overdue. “It can’t possibly be the case that the Fourth Amendment ties our hands in such a way that we just have to sit there and watch the Chinese romp through our infrastructure,” he told the Wall Street Journal in March. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and [NSA Director] Nakasone cited it as a key obstacle to potential expansion of the NSA’s powers domestically.” (read more)

The Fourth Amendment is an “obstacle“?….  WTF kind of outlook is that.

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As one of the few people who have engaged in conversation with the lead investigative unit around John Durham I have held a rather unique outlook on this question since August of 2020.

See if you can find him below:

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[Bumped by Request /SD]

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now getting ready to hire public companies, individual contractors outside government, to scour public data and social media in order to provide information for the new “domestic terror watch lists.”  From the description it appears DHS is going to pay “big tech” (Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, etc.), via contracts, to hire and organize internal monitoring teams to assist the government by sending information on citizens they deem “dangerous.”

Gee, what could possibly go wrong with this?…

NBC is reporting on these new developments as the U.S. intelligence apparatus is preparing to go live with the assembly of lists of Americans who “could be” potential threats to the government; and need to be watched.

However, even NBC is beginning to realize the consequences: “DHS planning to expand relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence and to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects on Americans. The department is also contemplating changes to its terrorist watch listing process.”

Here’s the article:

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security, created after the 9/11 attacks to protect the country from international terrorism, is moving toward a sweeping set of policy changes aimed at detecting and stopping what intelligence officials say is now a top threat to the homeland: domestic violent extremism.

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