Congressman confronts FBI over “egregious” unlawful search of his personal data
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Just wait until he finds out about all the "bulk collection" that occurs. Remember Clapper's famous "not wittingly" lie while under oath in front of committee?
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Republicans have excelled at not giving a single shit about something until it personally affects them. And then they just want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
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He's a republican so he's probably involved in treason or insurrection against the US
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Yup. And that's also how you know it will stay a problem. There may be reforms, but the indication is clearly that these clowns will reauthorize, just with some assurances that they themselves will be shielded.
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My thoughts exactly. Unfortunately that's how it always is. No one gives a shit until it's THEIR problem
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I wonder if this is going to turn out to be like the Manafort thing and he got caught up incidentally because they were surveilling someone else.
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From the report:
https://www.intelligence.gov/assets...h-Joint-Assessment-of-FISA-702-Compliance.pdf
That seems to suggest they weren't necessarily looking for info on LaHood himself, but maybe something regarding LaHood, but made overly broad searches that likely returned personal information about LaHood himself. So it's just overall sloppiness, instead of maliciousness, if you believe this report.
Also, some info on what the "707 Report" referenced is:
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So they charged, prosecuted and jailed the people responsible? No? In that case, there is nothing to deter the next abuse, and the one after that...
Seriously, if they do this to a Congresscritters, there's far less to worry about doing it to the rest of the population.
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Any shields and safeguards need to be written into the law and not rely on FBI promises of a changed culture. It takes time to change laws and the changes are usually made in full public view, where changing the regulations just takes a new director and can be done with little public oversight.
I hope that Congress puts some actual safeguards onto public privacy but I expect that they will just add a "don't get caught" clause instead.
I hope that Congress puts some actual safeguards onto public privacy but I expect that they will just add a "don't get caught" clause instead.
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At least read the article… LaHood said Section 702 is invaluable and should be reauthorized, but requires reforms. Hardly throwing the baby into the garbage. Plenty of valid criticism to be leveled at Congress and Republicans, but this is wildly inaccurate.
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Snowden - 2013: "dudes, the three letter agencies are all spying on us and its wrong"
Most people: "Whatever, you're a traitor!"
Darin LaHood - 2023: "holy shit guys, did you know they're spying on us? This should be stopped!"
Most people: "Whatever, you're a traitor!"
Darin LaHood - 2023: "holy shit guys, did you know they're spying on us? This should be stopped!"
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
... unconstitutional and unsupervised spying on regular Americans without a warranty is still ok though he added.
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Wah people are being mean to the guy who voluntarily remains a member of a party that tried to overthrow the us government
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Do you have any idea how many innocent people have had their lives ruined by this type of thinking?
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Wow. Just wow. I worked at a hospital for a while. While they were "onboarding" me to the medical records system they explained that I would be summarily fired if I so much as looked up a patient's record, even a family member's record, without some good reason related to my job AND the care of that particular patient. They were deadly serious. I heard of a couple of people getting fired for that.
And 702 gives federal agents (who take an oath I believe) the ability to sniff around in citizens' personal records? Really? And they do it? Really? To members of congress? Really? WTF? (I wouldn't even dream of looking up the medical record of a hospital board member or a politician patient.)
Look, I know firing federal agents is costly: it torches the cost (to taxpayers) of training them and getting them up to speed. And it potentially makes enemies of them. And, I know there are a lot of them, so they're hard to supervise. But people entrusted with personal data have to be trustworthy people. And when people show themselves to be untrustworthy, they should at least be called on the carpet to answer for their behavior.
Huge collections of secret data are toxic assets. Secrets eventually leak. Not even state actors with unlimited funding (I'm looking at you, NSA) can prevent leaks. Why can't we have a system with fewer pools of secrets? Why can't we discard them after a period of time? Or maybe transitioned to some kind of near-line or off-line storage? AWS Glacier is a worthy tech solution to the problem. But tech solutions can't solve human problems.
Or if we must have the pools of secrets, we should put hard-nosed no-bs master sergeants (or other people with similar long experience supervising people who outrank them) in charge of granting access to those secrets.
And 702 gives federal agents (who take an oath I believe) the ability to sniff around in citizens' personal records? Really? And they do it? Really? To members of congress? Really? WTF? (I wouldn't even dream of looking up the medical record of a hospital board member or a politician patient.)
Look, I know firing federal agents is costly: it torches the cost (to taxpayers) of training them and getting them up to speed. And it potentially makes enemies of them. And, I know there are a lot of them, so they're hard to supervise. But people entrusted with personal data have to be trustworthy people. And when people show themselves to be untrustworthy, they should at least be called on the carpet to answer for their behavior.
Huge collections of secret data are toxic assets. Secrets eventually leak. Not even state actors with unlimited funding (I'm looking at you, NSA) can prevent leaks. Why can't we have a system with fewer pools of secrets? Why can't we discard them after a period of time? Or maybe transitioned to some kind of near-line or off-line storage? AWS Glacier is a worthy tech solution to the problem. But tech solutions can't solve human problems.
Or if we must have the pools of secrets, we should put hard-nosed no-bs master sergeants (or other people with similar long experience supervising people who outrank them) in charge of granting access to those secrets.
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Unfortunately, this calls into question the basic intelligence of the FBI. They KNOW that -- for at least the past 6 years -- the FBI has been in the crosshairs of Republicans for its investigations of Trump and his band of merry grifters, and yet they are stupid enough to go and conduct an illegal search of a sitting Member of Congress. If they are that stupid, I wouldn't trust them with a paperclip collection, much less the collection of intelligence on foreign adversaries.
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I think you're assigning a lot of motives to my question that don't exist.
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What the hell thread are you reading, buddy? Most of the posts above yours seem pretty well reasoned and non-partisan. Sure you're not jumping in with your mind made up already?
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It's only unlawful if the people doing it are held accountable.
Also, for LaHood. Just say the quiet part out loud. Your problem is you, a white american, got targeted, and nothing else.
Also, for LaHood. Just say the quiet part out loud. Your problem is you, a white american, got targeted, and nothing else.
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Spying on politicians is not conducive to keeping a democracy.
Sticking your head in the sand & ignoring potential threats isn't either.
This is a genuinely hard problem to solve, thankfully the US is great at discussing important & complicated
problems in earnest. I'm sure we will figure out a pragmatic means of balancing these competing needs.
It's not as if this whole system of checks and balances thing runs on the honor system & falls apart as soon as any part acts in bad faith...
Sticking your head in the sand & ignoring potential threats isn't either.
This is a genuinely hard problem to solve, thankfully the US is great at discussing important & complicated
problems in earnest. I'm sure we will figure out a pragmatic means of balancing these competing needs.
It's not as if this whole system of checks and balances thing runs on the honor system & falls apart as soon as any part acts in bad faith...
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This is the answer that ALL public persons or institutions give.
Every,Fucking.Time.
The real question is "When are the general public actually going to give a shit and DEMAND changes and DEMAND accountability?" If mostly nobody gives a shit then is it really a problem?
The curse of our time is, for many reasons, apathy.
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infernal666
Ars Praefectus
Republicans caring about unlawful surveillance is like a cat suddenly caring about all the things other cats are knocking off shelves and then continuing to knock shit off the table and claiming there is a substantial difference.
Section 702 needs to be repealed and individual warrants obtained for each person so surveilled,if they can't clear the ultra low bar of convincing a judge with a rubber stamp to issue a warrant they clearly have no probable cause of any kind.
Section 702 needs to be repealed and individual warrants obtained for each person so surveilled,if they can't clear the ultra low bar of convincing a judge with a rubber stamp to issue a warrant they clearly have no probable cause of any kind.
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I am from Illinois, I have heard of him, and this article only reinforces what I already knew.
A typoed-D behind his name would absolutely not have confused me, and I would gladly have informed anyone else here about his actual performance as a representative.
Go away.
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Nah, his only problem is the "right" people should be excluded from it, not with the practice itself.
"LaHood acknowledged at the hearing that—unlike Congress members who want to see Section 702 repealed rather than reauthorized by the end of this year—he thinks Section 702 is “invaluable” as an effective way to gather intelligence on non-US citizens. However, “overly broad” searches like the ones targeting him are “wholly inappropriate.”"
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Trump succeeded. The division has happened. Pre-Trump I would have been a little more sympathetic to your post. Post-Trump? Nope. He's a member of the Republican party. A Trump sycophant. He stands with a now-depraved political party, which is Nazi adjacent. Fuck him. He doesn't get a break.
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The FBI is one of those things that maybe needs to exist but maybe doesn't as well.
Damn but they do a lot of shit while proclaiming themselves to be of the highest integrity.
Damn but they do a lot of shit while proclaiming themselves to be of the highest integrity.
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https://www.rawstory.com/florida-book-ban-2659570194/
They are banning books about the holocaust now.
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I think you're giving Trump a little too much credit, the division has been there for decades. At this point if you're still a Republican you tacitly approve of every atrocity they commit.
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