Saturday, February 03, 2018

Why The Nunes Memo Is A Big Deal (And It's Not About Trump)

... because it shows that the FBI and DOJ were completely out of control.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC or FISA in the media these days) is the court to which our law enforcement agencies must plead to be permitted to surveil people. It is supposed to be independent of said law enforcement agencies and is there to protect us from overzealous govvies.

FISC presumes that the FBI is acting in good faith and is presenting them with all relevant information. When the FBI and DOJ lie to FISC, as they did in the Trump surveillance case by omitting the crucial information that they were being fed unsubstantiated rumors by the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaigns, FISC is effectively taken out of the loop.

Without FISC, the FBI can do whatever it pleases, including spying on you and me, simply because someone in the FBI feels like it.
(FBI agents break down my door in a surprise raid, grab, handcuff and drag me away as they ranscack my house.)

Me: What did I do? Why are you doing this to me?

FBI agent: Some dude somewhere said you were selling cocaine to underage prostitutes.

Me: I've never done anything like that in my life! What made you think it was true?

FBI agent: Hey, we don't have time to corroborate every tip we get. It sounded good enough to us. Besides, we don't like you.
And that's that. This did, in fact, happen in the past which is why FISC was set up in the first place. Law enforcement agencies figured they could surveil "undesirable" American citizens by claiming they were agents of foreign governments. FISC was established to force the FBI to have to prove it.

For us Normals, living outside of the ever-crazier Beltway madhouse, this isn't about Trump or Comey or Hillary, it's about making sure the leash on the FBI and DOJ is on good and tight.

After getting a tip from ligneus and reading my blog, they figured a bazooka would be a good idea.

5 comments:

Kelly the little black dog said...

Criminals always complain that the police are out to get them.

Ohioan@Heart said...

And people who cherish the freedom of America watch that the political parties don’t use the government to curtail that freedom, particularly if that government action is outside the bounds of equal protection before the law.

K T Cat said...

I still can't figure out what the exchange was supposed to be between Trump and the Russians. As far as I can tell, the whole thing has gone very, very badly for the Russkies.

Foxfier said...

The fact that the FBI lied is exactly why the individual people who did so need to be criminally charged.

BIG time.

There is no system that can give correct answers if you are allowed to give it false readings-- which is why giving false information is such a bad thing.

There were multiple points where stuff was signed off on. Those names were saying "I verify this is legal."
If it wasn't... THEIR heads must roll.

Don't let folks reset this into a group thing, INDIVIDUALS did it, they need to pay.

ligneus said...

Guess I'm a bad person to know!