Comey Should Be Prosecuted

BREAKING: LEAKED DOCUMENTS Show Comey Shared Secret Intel on Americans with Private Parties

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(Gateway Pundit) – Sara Carter of Circa News explains how declassified memos show FBI illegally shared spy data on Americans with private parties.

The Tea Party Reports:

Via Circa News:

The FBI has illegally shared raw intelligence about Americans with unauthorized third parties and violated other constitutional privacy protections, according to newly declassified government documents that undercut the bureau’s public assurances about how carefully it handles warrantless spy data to avoid abuses or leaks.

In his final congressional testimony before he was fired by President Trump this month, then-FBI Director James Comey unequivocally told lawmakers his agency used sensitive espionage data gathered about Americans without a warran only when it was “lawfully collected, carefully overseen and checked.”

Once-top secret U.S. intelligence community memos reviewed by Circa tell a different story, citing instances of “disregard” for rules, inadequate training and “deficient” oversight and even one case of deliberately sharing spy data with a forbidden party.

For instance, a ruling declassified this month by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) chronicles nearly 10 pages listing hundreds of violations of the FBI’s privacy-protecting minimization rules that occurred on Comey’s watch.

The behavior the FBI admitted to a FISA judge just last month ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight the bureau promised was in place years ago.

The court also opined aloud that it fears the violations are more extensive than already disclosed.

“The Court is nonetheless concerned about the FBI’s apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI is engaging in similar disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported,” the April 2017 ruling declared.

The Justice Department inspector general’s officedeclassified a report in 2015 that reveals the internal watchdog had concerns as early as 2012 that the FBI was submitting ‘deficient” reports indicating it had a clean record complying with spy data gathered on Americans without a warrant.

Sara Carter reports:

The FBI illegally shared data it collected with unauthorized third parties and federal contractors according to a document recently declassified by the foreign intelligence surveillance court.

10 pages from the FISA court show a history of violations in the FBI like one case where the foreign intelligence data on an American in U.S. was disclosed to a forbidden party.”

Unmasking Not A Bad Thing, Unless It Is You! FBI Should Be Ashamed

BREAKING: Obama's FBI Passed Around Classified Information On American Citizens To People Outside Government

Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

BY:

 BEN SHAPIRO

MAY 26, 2017

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Ashocking report from Circa.com revealed on Friday that the FBI under 

director James Comey “illegally shared raw intelligence about Americans with 

unauthorized third parties and violated other constitutional privacy protections, 

according to newly declassified government documents.” That’s a bombshell 

charge — Comey told Congress earlier this month that the FBI only used 

warrantless data that was “lawfully collected, carefully overseen and checked” — 

but the specifics are even more damning.

According to Circa, one ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court 

(FISA) “list[ed] hundreds of violations of the FBI’s privacy-protecting minimization 

rules that occurred on Comey’s watch.” That included giving intelligence data to 

third parties who weren’t cleared to see it, among them “a private entity that did 

not have the legal right to see the intelligence.” The FBI claims that the number

 of violations is small by percentage of all data operations.

Trump acolytes will undoubtedly suggest that this is precisely what happened

with Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who was caught up in surveillance of Russian third 

parties, unmasked by the Obama administration, and then revealed to the press 

by someone in the know. They will suggest that we now know that the FBI was 

often exceeding its mandate by searching data without a warrant that they should 

not have, and by occasionally allowing that information to flow outside of 

established channels.

In reality, the business of national security is sloppy. Mistakes will undoubtedly 

be made. The question is twofold: what sort of mistakes were made with

 regard to leaking the identity of Flynn to the press? And more generally,

were the systems in place for restricting the free flow of classified information 

about American citizens sufficient? 

NSA Gets A Boost By Secret Court--Protecting Citizens Not Part Of The Mandate.

New Documents Show That Company Tried To Protect Customers From NSA, Was Shot Down By Secret Court

April 25, 2014 by Sam Rolley 

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A series of top-secret court documents released Friday reveal the extent to which private companies have been powerless to protect customers against government invasions of privacy via National Security Agency spying.

The documents from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court reveal that a phone company whose name was redacted in the documents challenged an NSA’s request to hand over telecommunications data in bulk. The company petitioned the court to “vacate, modify or affirm the current production order” in January after a District Judge ruled that the NSA’s phone records program was likely unConstitutional a month earlier.

“Judge [Richard] Leon’s Memorandum Opinion introduces, for the first time, a question about the legal validity of an order issued by this Court,” the company stated.

“In light of Judge Leon’s Opinion, it is appropriate [redacted] inquire directly of the Court into the legal basis” for the records request, the petition continued.

FISC Judge Rosemary Collyer issued a ruling denying the company’s request in March, deciding that the telecommunications company “provides no basis for vacating or modifying the production order.” She also defined the previous Circuit Court decision questioning the Constitutionality of the NSA’s actions “unpersuasive.”

The unknown phone company’s challenge of the bulk data collection represents the first such fight against the NSA’s data collection efforts.

FISA Court Is A Monster Which Needs To Be Controlled. This Is NOT The Way Courts Are Supposed To Work In The US.

EFF: It’s Hard to Get The Whole Story In The One-Sided Surveillance Court

April 17, 2014 by Electronic Frontier Foundation 

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This article, written by activist Nadia Kayyali  and attorney Kurt Opsahl, was originally published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on April 16.

While most courts in the United States are adversarial—each party presents its side and a jury, or occasionally a judge, makes a decision—in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), only the government presents its case to a judge. While typically two opposing sides work under public review to make sure all the facts are brought to light, in the FISC the system relies on a heightened duty of candor for the government. As is illustrated all too well by recent developments in our First Unitarian v. NSA case, this one-sided court system is fundamentally unfair.

In March, after we learned that the government intended to destroy records of Section 215 bulk collection relevant to our NSA cases, we filed for a temporary restraining order in the Federal court in San Francisco. We also filed a motion to correct the record with the FISC, since it was a FISC order requiring the destruction of bulk metadata after five years that was at issue.

Following the emergency hearing on our motion, the San Francisco federal court ordered the government to preserve the evidence. On the same day that the federal court issued itsorder, the FISC issued its own strongly worded order in which it granted our motion and mandated the government to make a filing with the FISC explaining exactly why it had failed to notify the Court about relevant information regarding preservation orders in two related cases, Jewel and Shubert. This omission influenced the FISC’s decision on the government’s request for relief, and the FISC was not happy about it.

On April 2, the DOJ made its filing. The government’s statements in this document deserve close attention because they illustrate in high-definition the failures of the FISC’s one-sided system.

The response essentially says that in hindsight, it is clear to the government why the FISC would have wanted to know about the Jewel and Shubert orders. But the government’s filings show that it unilaterally decided it was right about its interpretation of the legal theories in these cases. In so doing, it failed to live up to the heightened duty of candor present in ex parte proceedings by failing to inform the FISC that this was disputed. In essence, the government narrowly interpreted the causes of action in the Jewel complaint, excluding the Section 215 surveillance purportedly authorized by the FISC, and thereby narrowing the evidence it would preserve. By making a decision about what facts were relevant, the DOJ attorneys elevated themselves into the role of a judge.

The government apologized to the FISC for its omission, but it also continues to inaccurately portray the controversy over the legal theories our cases. In fact, the DOJ uses this filing to again present their interpretation of the disagreement over the scope of the cases, failing to mention the various arguments we have made on that issue before Judge White in San Francisco. The DOJ calls our view “recently-expressed,” attempting to create the impression that the DOJ had no idea that there was any controversy until 2014.  They neglect to mention that we wrote in a 2010 brief that the “government defendants’ assertion that ‘plaintiffs do not challenge surveillance authorized by the FISA Court’ … misconceives both plaintiffs’ complaint and the role of the district court ….”

If this had been a normal court proceeding, each side would present their position in the most favorable light, and the judge would decide who is right. In the FISC, however, this balanced system breaks down. This one-sided system allows for no accountability except in the rare circumstance where the affected parties can raise the issue with the court. Indeed, in most cases, the arguments and the decision are kept secret, and no one can second-guess the government.

This is why we continue to urge Congress to change the laws governing how FISC operates. At a minimum, significant court decisions must be made public, and a privacy advocate should be a part of the process. These improvements won’t bring the same kind of balance that can come with an adversarial system, but could at least deliver a semblance of fairness to the process.