Quote (Goomshill @ Feb 6 2018 04:22pm)
Whatever original intent the domestic FISA program had, what it actually is today and the complete lack of meaningful oversight and constitutional protections has just made it a free pass to conduct effectively warrantless surveillance of US citizens without probable cause. This one specific bogus FISA approval aside, there's no way a 99.99% approval rubber stamp secret court with secret practices can possibly be any real arbiter of privacy. I hold the FISA program, at least the domestic part of it, to be unconstitutional in the same vein as the other dragnet surveillance that occurs online, on phone data, etc: Its both in violation of what should be a reasonable right to privacy if the laws actually made sense for the modern day, and still technically getting a pass due to the system being so warped to serve an end.
And the system being warped is whats so dangerous here. The dems did something very far out of the ordinary to obtain this FISA warrant: The left-linked partisans wiretapped political opponents. Just because the system is so broken for every other more mundane spy case where they can excuse it as a necessary evil to protect us from dirty terrorists, doesn't excuse the system being broken when it allows peeking into an opponent's campaign. That's where abusing the low warrant requirements turns this from yet another example in a long list of constitutional violations for civil rights group to call foul over, to being an potential watergate 2.0.
for example, lets say back when the NYPD was aggressively pursuing informants within mosques to search for terrorists after 9/11 and conducting surveillance, that figures connected to Michael Bloomberg and heavily aligned with him happened to place informants within Bill Thompson's campaign and surveilled him. The muslim program got the ACLU's knickers twisted as they shrieked racial/religious profiling, and it certainly lacked meaningful safeguards to protection constitutional rights. But just because they were getting away with that in the name of fighting terrorism, wouldn't excuse it if it was used to spy on a political opponent. That would be extremely scandalous and blow up in the face of everyone involved
So here we've got the rubber stamp FISA courts being weaponized against the Trump transition, and maybe before that, we don't know exactly where the political corruption starts and ends, but we do know that some FISA wiretapped intel was unmasked and leaked to destroy Michael Flynn eventually, and we know the circumstances around much of the wiretaps were unusual and suspicious, besides the political toxicity of spying on a campaign, just the facts like the hundreds of unmasking requests at the last minute. That's enough to throw up all kinds of red flags and say that we should be scrutinizing every aspect to make sure all the spying was above the board. And using the steele dossier and self-corroborating it, that doesn't pass the smell test either, that's way more red flags. Even without being the 'main' piece of evidence it would be enough to cast a shadow of illegitimacy over the whole thing, and they'd know that when they did it, they've read the dossier and know where it comes from. As far as quibbling over whether its the main bit, I don't think we're going to get a fair picture of that from either side. They can both lie about it and claim subjective interpretation of the evidence. But Schiff is conspicuously not contradicting that it was central, is he?
a few rapid fire points:
1. I'm not saying it is constitutional, just to clear that up. I don't believe the constitution is perfect and nor do you, i just dont fall into the "its the best we've got" camp, and i think you do. np there.
2. I do think the dossier was "central" to the initial FISA approval.
2a. central has it's own spectrum, more than one thing could be "central" in context
2b. central evidence usually needs supporting evidence to make it pass the smell test
2c. without some further evidence the application wouldnt be renewed at 90 days
2d. hindsight of the dossier and that it's been debunked is at play. i think it had a lot more face validity at the time.
3. i get your hysteria about the dems weaponizing a govt process. i just dont share it. we're in an era where major political parties are backed by worldwide media conglomerates, with trillions invested into their success. the fact that a few bad apples are pulling strings in washington doesn't surprise me, nor does it scare me all that much personally. as ive stated before people who think FBI or CIA agents are apolitical are naive.
4. the one thing that people who are anti-mueller and anti-dem never want to talk about. Putin had a vested interest in HRC losing and DT winning. that's a plain fact. turning govt officials is another basic fact of espionage. then there's posts like yours talking about someone's origin and how they dont "seem like a ruskie"... lets cut the bullshit, we fuck with other countries electoral processes, putin fucked with us. he likely did pull in someone in trumps general area and a fuckload in the govt generally, that's espionage101. we'll likely never find it, there's no paper trail, that's espionage102. but all of this "still no proof" and "i dont get why someone would be a traitor" stuff?
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