Senate Republicans vented their frustration after former President Trump helped derail a compromise House bill to extend Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authority, sending lawmakers scrambling to find a Plan B to keep the nation’s intelligence agencies from losing their ability to spy on adversaries and terrorists.
Republican senators are warning that the nation’s spy program is about to go “dark” and that much of the intelligence that goes into President Biden’s daily briefing could be lost, putting the nation at risk for surprise attacks.
“I’m very disappointed in President Trump’s assessment of FISA. It is an essential tool. It may need to be amended but it is absolutely essential as everyone in the intelligence community will tell you,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!” Trump fumed on his social media platform, Truth Social.
This is one of those situations where everybody sucks, and there’s no good side of the fight.
Trump wants to kill any foreign surveillance, because he was caught creceiving orders from foreign investors in his campaign. FISA is inherently flawed and should be reformed or replaced, but the American people do have an interest in monitoring foreign communications with our political leaders.
Thing is FISA’s interests in political representation is a very small part of their actual mandate. Which should surprise no one since it was founded by Nixon. The brunt of it is targeted at regular people.
For example the vast dragnet surveillance of the NSA were approved under FISA. We know such surveillance is used regularly against social movements like occupy Wall Street, WTC protests, most likely BLM, etc.
https://www.fedbar.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/FISA-pdf-1.pdf