All Your Data Are Belong To Us…

The House and Senate are doing what the deep state does so well. Buried in the final pages of a short term Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund government, the controversial bulk metadata (Call Detail Records) within the FISA program, due to expire on December 15th, is being extended to March 15th, 2020.

(pdf link – House)

As we suspected the intelligence community -and most of congress- wants the reauthorization, even if temporary, prior to the release of a critical IG report on FISA abuse. That said, a short term extension is the best case scenario when we consider the goal of the intelligence apparatus -writ large- was a permanent reauthorization.

The “business records provision”, the “roving wiretap” provision, the “lone wolf” provision, and the more controversial bulk metadata provisions [Call Detail Records (CDR)], parts of the Patriot Act, are going to be revisited *AFTER* the report by IG Horowitz. The new deadline for terminal expiration will be March 15th, 2020.

FISA Court judges Rosemary Collyer (declassified 2017) and James Boasberg (declassified 2019) both identified issues with the NSA database being exploited for unauthorized reasons. The sketchy programs, and abuse therein, needs more public attention.