The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Why Intelligence Officials Believe The U.S. Is At Risk To Terrorism Beginning Saturday
Congress left town for the weekend after failing to pass a reauthorization of FISA Section 702. The program is considered to be the premier intelligence gathering tool in the intelligence community’s arsenal.
Authorization lapses at 12:00:01 am et Saturday. This comes as the World Cup is underway. The nation is about to celebrate its 250th anniversary and the conflict with Iran continues.
Both bodies failed to pass extensions of FISA yesterday after the President decided to temporarily install Bill Pulte as Director of National Intelligence. His nomination of Jay Clayton to be DNI just as senators fled from the chamber for the weekend. His confirmation hearing is next Wednesday.
But here’s the rub:
Congressional authorization for Section 702 lapses. But the special court overseeing FISA says it can continue probes through March of next year. In other words, the program doesn’t fully go dark.
At least on paper.
Reality may be something altogether different.
The program hinges on telecommunications firms providing the intelligence communtiy universal information about every single phone call, email and text message exchange. This is EVERYTHING. They don’t the content of the messages. Just who is talking to who.
And there’s the problem. Some Constitutional scholars see this as warrantless surveillance, violating the Fourth Amendment. The telecommunications firms will willing to provide the data - if they had a blessing from Congress. But no legal extension of the program by lawmakers puts the telecoms on thin ice.
It’s believed that some companies might refuse to provide data. And if the intelligence services don’t have the data, they can’t track what they need during this very vulnerable period.