All of the negative news about President Donald Trump provided a convenient smokescreen to obscure a story highly damaging to former President Barack Obama on Wednesday. As first reported by Circa News, “The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall.” As would be expected, the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) completely omitted from their evening broadcasts.
“More than one in 20 internet searches conducted by the National Security Agency, involving Americans, during the Obama administration violated constitutional privacy protections,” announced Fox News’ Bret Baier near the top of Special Report. “And that practice went on for years. Not only that. But the Obama administration was harshly rebuked by the FISA court for doing it.”
The report was handed off to Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen, who wasted no time in getting to the heart of the matter. “On the day President Obama visited Los Angeles last October to yuk it up with Jimmy Kimmel, lawyers for the National Security Agency were quietly informing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that NSA had systematically violated the rights of countless Americans,” he quipped.
“Declassified documents, first obtained by the news site Circa, show the FISA court sharply rebuked the administration,” Rosen noted as he began to read a passage from the FISA court’s opinion. “’With greater frequency than previously disclosed to the Court, NSA analysts had used U.S. person identifiers to query the results of internet ‘upstream’ collection, even though NSA’s Section 702 minimization procedures prohibited such queries.’”
The Fox News reporter was intrigued by the documents because: “These disclosers are timely though, as Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act—one of the primary means by which U.S. citizens are caught up in incidental surveillance—is up for reauthorization, Bret, by the Congress at year’s end.”
John Soloman, one of the Circa reporters who broke the story, talked with Rosen and told him that “tonight, for the first time, we can say confidently that there's been a finding that some of that espionage, that spying on Americans, actually violated the law.”
The condemning evidence seemed to have no end, as Rosen reported that:
The documents show it was back in 2011 that the FISA court first determined NSA's procedures to be, quote, “statutorily and constitutionally deficient with respect to their protection of U.S. person information.” Five years later, two weeks before Election Day, the judges learned that NSA had never adequately enacted the changes it had promised to make. The NSA inspector general and its office of compliance for operations “have been conducting other reviews covering different time periods,” the judges noted, “with preliminary results suggesting that the problem is widespread during all periods of review.”
Rosen had also mentioned how “the judges blasted NSA’s ‘institutional ‘lack of candor’’ and added ‘This is a very serious fourth amendment issue.’”
The lack of coverage by the Big Three, and the liberal media in general shows their bias against Trump and their favoritism to Obama. They rather focus on alleged accusations that so far have bared little fruit, instead of the legal opinion of federal judges exposing the highly illegal actions of a segment of President Obama’s administration.
Transcript below:
FNC
Special Report
May 24, 2017
6:03:41 PM EasternBRET BAIER: Now to the other breaking story that we told you about at the top of the show. More than one in 20 internet searches conducted by the National Security Agency, involving Americans, during the Obama administration violated constitutional privacy protections. And that practice went on for years. Not only that. But the Obama administration was harshly rebuked by the FISA court for doing it. That’s the conclusion from shocking new evidence tonight about what one senator calls “an enormous abuse of power.” Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen has the story.
[Cuts to video]
JAMES ROSEN: On the day President Obama visited Los Angeles last October to yuk it up with Jimmy Kimmel, lawyers for the National Security Agency were quietly informing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that NSA had systematically violated the rights of countless Americans, a subject covered ironically on Kimmel’s program.
BARACK OBAMA: People expect the government to monitor this enough to protect them from bad guys. But they worry that if government is in there too much, then who's going to protect them from government?
ROSEN: Declassified documents, first obtained by the news site Circa, show the FISA court sharply rebuked the administration: “With greater frequency than previously disclosed to the Court, NSA analysts had used U.S. person identifiers to query the results of internet ‘upstream’ collection, even though NSA’s Section 702 minimization procedures prohibited such queries.”
Minimization refers to the precautions the government is supposed to take to ensure its infringements on Americans rights are kept to a minimum. The judges blasted NSA’s “institutional ‘lack of candor’” and added "This is a very serious fourth amendment issue.”
JOHN SOLOMAN [Circa News]: And to night, for the first time, we can say confidently that there's been a finding that some of that espionage, that spying on Americans, actually violated the law.
ROSEN: The documents show it was back in 2011 that the FISA court first determined NSA's procedures to be, quote, “statutorily and constitutionally deficient with respect to their protection of U.S. person information.” Five years later, two weeks before Election Day, the judges learned that NSA had never adequately enacted the changes it had promised to make. The NSA inspector general and its office of compliance for operations “have been conducting other reviews covering different time periods,” the judges noted, “with preliminary results suggesting that the problem is widespread during all periods of review.”
(…)
[Cuts back to live]
ROSEN: Senator Rand Paul called this “an amazing abuse of power.” A spokesperson for form President Obama did not return our request for comment. These disclosers are timely though, as Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act—one of the primary means by which U.S. citizens are caught up in incidental surveillance—is up for reauthorization, Bret, by the Congress at year’s end.
BAIER: James, there is some evidence that the FISA court was essentially getting frustrated with the Obama administration.
ROSEN: And running out of patience. Yes, the administration was trying to delineate how bad this practice was, what the scope of the noncompliance was. The court said we are skeptical that you've actually got your hands around this. The administration kept asking for more time to do that and eventually the FISA court said you're not going to get as much time as you would like. It all stretched out past inauguration day and now the new attorney general and the new director of national intelligence have certified to this court that they put in different procedures.
