In an eleventh-hour effort to preserve and expand the federal government’s warrantless surveillance powers, the House Intelligence Committee advanced a bill last week that has the full-throated support of Donald Trump’s senior law enforcement appointees.
“Jim Himes appears to be desperately throwing a Patriot Act-like expansion of warrantless surveillance into the hands of Donald Trump,” Sean Vitka, policy director at Demand Progress, told The Intercept.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has described it as a “Patriot Act 2.0.” Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center, said that the House Intelligence Committee’s bill would have devastating consequences for everyday Americans.
In addition to a warrant requirement, the Judiciary Committee bill, sponsored by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., addresses another method for warrantless data collection long practiced by the Department of Justice and intelligence community.
The Fourth Amendment guarantees Americans a reasonable expectation of privacy, and the government should never be given the opportunity to skirt the supreme Law of the Land,” Biggs wrote in a press release accompanying a letter to congressional leaders.
Jayapal, for her part, said that the law should be overhauled to protect Americans’ constitutional rights and their sensitive data, “Section 702 reauthorization should be subject to strong scrutiny and debate and cannot be included in larger, must-pass legislation,” she wrote.
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They’re super stoked because the legislation can easily be twisted into effectively creating a surveillance/police state, which is 100% what the GOP will try to do if they manage to win the presidency. And Trump is the GOP front runner.