The Voluntary Exchange Podcast: #ReleaseTheMemo

I was going to put out an episode on the Turks invading Kurdish-Syria, but it was requested that I read the super secret FISA memo all the Trump people are going crazy about. So I went over to the guy with the all the documents, Alex Jones, and grabbed the full 99 page report for which the Nunes' memo was based on.

I took the report in blocks of 10 pages. You have to understand that the report is written by the FISA Court. A kangaroo court used to justify terrible violations of the Constitution. And this report is no exception.

The report lays out the systematic way the agencies such as the FBI, CIA and the NCTC uses data collected by the NSA under Section 702 of the Patriot Act. The review explains the past procedures in "targeting" and "minimization" for each of the above agencies, and amendments to these procedures which in most cases allows more loopholes and justification for violations of the 4th Amendment. Included throughout the document is the FISA Court stating that these procedures (even when they do not stop illegal activities by all agencies) are in line with the 4th Amendment.

The review takes place in late October of 2016. The government has been stalling the FISA court for months, requesting extension after extension which the Court approves. It is laid out that because of compliance issues at some of the agencies (FBI for example) and the government wanted to get it's ducks in a row before going in front of FISA. Which to me is weird to read, since there is a very small chance of the FISA Court really condemning anything the intelligence community does. It was created to justify crimes carried out by the CIA and other agencies. Staying within the context of the document was a challenge.

The web of data collection goes like this. The NSA creates "targeting" procedures for its analysts. They must follow rules like not using a US Citizen as the target of a search. Or after a phone number is discovered to be that of an American, that number can not be used as a target.

From there each agency has it's own "minimization" procedures. Which from the best I can understand is how they sort, classify and disseminate the information. The NSA does minimization prior to making the info available to other law information agencies. The report outlines how FISA agreed to more and more agencies having access to more "raw" data.

Terms like "upstream" collection are used to explain how the NSA tracks targets' electronic communication as it happens. The texts and emails are pulled by the NSA as they are sent out. In real time. This type of collection is not provided directly to agencies like the FBI, CIA or the NCTC.

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) is not a law enforcement agency. However, this report shows the FISA court opening up the regulations on what the NCTC can review from the NSA collection database. The NCTC can now look through FBI collections of "evidence of a crime" material even though it is not doing law enforcement. The language used included saying the NCTC "may retain and disseminate" for it's "crime reporting obligations". This data contains material on US citizens and this is the part Rand Paul is so upset about.

This report contains the discussion about using information collected on US Persons without a warrant through the NSA as a legal way to build a domestic crime case. They use the example of emails containing discussed child abuse being forwarded on to a local domestic violence agency to rationalize this violation.

The breadcrumbs are there to be followed. The loopholes were in place and evidence is there that targeting of US persons like Trump & Flynn was common practice during the Obama administration. Included in the new procedures for all agencies, is the ability for "litigation hold". This is the smoking gun for the Trump people. The ability for the NCTC, FBI or CIA to hold material it should have otherwise destructed for a longer length of time for present and future "litigation purposes". Information collected on US citizens without a warrant, held for future prosecution. I think that's blackmail and a violation of the 4th.

It is a dense read, and I go into more detail on the recording, but the Trump crowd playing this up is really not too smart. The report continues through early 2017, indicating the same procedures contained, now with the blessing of FISA oversight. We'll see if any of Rand Paul's and William Binney warnings are heard by the president.

Content

The episode can be found here and on ITunes. The full archive can be found on Podomatic. The Youtube version is below:

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