The sham of incidental surveillance - Exposed | Eastern North Carolina Now

   I sometimes wonder why I get so worked up over politics and current events after a lifetime of dismissing the folks in Washington except during an election. Could it be because as a retired person, I have more time to reflect on issues? For whatever reason, I am finding it more difficult dismiss our elected leaders abuses. That includes both sides of the political spectrum. The sad thing is that I can no longer accept the assumption that restrictions on our intelligence agencies are protecting our rights. At at time when we are at risk from a dedicated enemy intent on destroying us, we should be able to feel assured that the necessary surveillance is not being abused for political purposes. The original article had some misleading errors marked below in red.

    If I understand the current law regarding our intelligence agencies ability to legally conduce surveillance, it is broken down into two categories. As is my habit, I tried to do some basic research into the procedure of getting a FISA warrant.

• Surveillance on foreign persons: This requires the approval of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA)
• Surveillance on US Citizens: This requires the issuance of a court order by a domestic court.

    For the sake of argument, let's just say that I want to set up surveillance of you as an American Citizen. Well I have twoe options.

• Get a warrant from a domestic court.
• Get a warrant from the FISA court
• Do it without a warrant knowing that I will not need to explain it because my candidate for office is almost guaranteed to win and I can easily cover this up in the next administration.

    But wait you say, You cannot get a warrant from the FISA court to conduct surveillance on an American Citizen. There is a simple workaround that. What if you happened to own a hotel where you also live and it has restaurants that hire legal 'FOREIGN' cooks and bottle washers? Maybe you also rent rooms to 'FOREIGN' nationals. Occasionally 'FOREIGN' national groups hold banquets and meetings in your conference hall.

    It appears obvious to me that you might accidentally gather "INCIDENTAL SURVEILLANCE INFORMATION" about almost anyone in the hotel including the owner and resident. Of course we also have "STRICT" procedures that will protect the identify of US Citizens from disclosure or use of that "INCIDENTAL SURVEILLANCE INFORMATION." I contend that, while we may unsophisticatedly feel secure in our rights to privacy we are actually subject to continuous surveillance if we are anywhere around people of foreign nationalities. With the abundance of video cameras around, no one should have a sense of autonomy I any public setting and that is not an intrusion on our privacy. It is just a reality of current technology.

    One would think that the system would protect against abuse and use for other than legal purposes. See the chart below, this is the record of FISA Warrant request and approval:     WIKI- FISA

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    My high school friend Clay once told me a story about wiretapping. He formerly worked for Southern Bell and told me a story that happened back in the 1970s. I have written about him before her on BCN.  (Aging and the Passing of Friends

    He was a telephone repairman and had a dispatch to check on a phone in an apartment complex that had complained about dropped calls and clicking on the line. This was long before anyone had cell phones, DSL or any other electronic gadgets like those that we do today. He went to the apartment, checked the line and found no problems. Then he went to the man phone pedestal by the street. He removed the cover but noticed a wire running from the pedestal into the woods. He followed the wire and it lead to the parking lot next to the woods. He saw it led to a van, parked in the parking lot. He knocked on the van and two guys dressed in suits opened the sliding door. When he explained that he was a telephone repairman, they told him to get lost as the guy who places the repair order was under surveillance.

    He returned to the apartment and told the resident that he had not found any problem and that he would check the box further down the street. He left, closed out the order and forgot about it. He had no idea if the surveillance was legal, drug related or any other of a number of reasons.

    Now knowing that the FISA court almost never (.034%) denies request for warrants, and that a warrant can be requested because they think that the foriegn busboy or cook in the your local restaurant could be under suspicion of 'high crimes and misdemeanors.' Disregard that he could be an "UNDOCUMENTED PERSON." Apparently, that does not rise to the level of concern by our authorities.

    I used to be of the opinion that you should not be afraid if you have done nothing wrong. I still have a tenuous attachment to that naivety, but my observations of our government systematic abuse and disregard for our rights under law, leaves me with a somewhat paranoid feeling that the frog must have felt when he noticed that the water was getting warmer.

    Do you feel more comfortable now that we have court assigned to protect your rights?