<h1>Abuse of the FISA Law Is The Real Story</h1>

To hear the media narrative, you would think the biggest story of the century is the “sinister” connections between Donald Trump, his associates, and certain Russian officials and private Russian citizens.

However, for all the smoke generated by these stories, according to testimony by FBI director James Comey, there is no evidence of collusion or any illegal or improper actions by Trump or any of his associates. (I would have to say yet as the FBI investigation is on-going, but after eight months of investigation, I would doubt they will find any.)  

Despite this, the media persist in running the “Russian collusion” narrative. However, in their hatred of all things Trump, they are ignoring the more significant part of this story.

A more important and, quite frankly, scary aspect of this story.

The reason we know about this in the first place is that the National Security Agency (NSA) has intercepted communications between these foreign agents and associates of Trump’s business organization and presidential campaign.

FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) gives the NSA broad authority to intercept communications of foreign persons without a warrant. Even if they are within the United States or they are communicating with US citizens.

If they are communicating with US citizens then, by law, the NSA must shield the identity of the US citizens by substituting pseudonyms for their actual names and redacting any text that would reveal their identity.

However, there is a highly-classified index that equates the pseudonym with the actual citizen’s identity.  This allow the citizen name to be “unmasked”. These names can only be unmasked at the order of high-level officials and only for purposes of national security or to pursue a criminal probe. (It is unclear whether a FISA warrant is required to unmasked a name for a criminal investigation, but it should.)

With that in mind, consider these points.

1.       We know conversations with the Russian ambassador to the US and former Nation Security Advisor Michael Flynn was leaked to the New York Times. Not only was classified intercepts leaked but Flynn’s identity was unmasked so the leaker had to be a high-level Obama administration official or a high-level official revealed the information to the eventual leaker. Either way disclosing classified information and the Identity of US citizens in warrantless intercepts is a felony.     

2.       An unusually large number of foreign persons with contacts and previous relationships with Trump and his associates were targeted for surveillance by the Obama administration. There doesn’t seem to be any indication of a national security or criminal interest in these conversations.  

3.       According to sources, Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice ordered the unmasking of all Trump related intercepts. Rice has admitted to the unmasking but denied she leaked the information to anyone. Rice claims the unmasking if US citizen’s identities is not unusual and is legal under the FISA law.  Rice has lied to the American people in the pass so her credibility is somewhat questionable.

Given the lack of any evidence of wrong-doing from the incoming Trump administration it is hard to conclude anything other than Trump, his campaign staff, and business associates were targeted for pollical purposes.

It is obvious that the Obama administration was casual about protecting the privacy of US citizens that were inadvertently swept up in a FISA surveillance.  

And that is the scary part of the story. The Obama administration deliberately used the FISA law in a back-door effort to spy on his political opponents. This is the stuff of banana republics and deserves far more scrutiny than it is receiving today.