Thread by @JoanneDavis

May 23rd – 2018
Part I – The FISA Court Grants The Authority, Not The Ability…
theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/05/23/par…

1) There is a meeting scheduled tomorrow between key congressional oversight committee heads (Nunes, Gowdy etc.) and leadership of the FBI (Director Wray),

2) DOJ (Edward O’Callaghan) and ODNI (Dan Coats). The meeting was set up by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, and the purpose of the meeting is to come to some agreement on access to documents being withheld by the DOJ, DOJ-NSD and FBI.

3) However, amid the ongoing debate over spies & informants used by the CIA & FBI to conduct political surveillance, there’s an aspect of the ongoing investigation that seems to be entirely overlooked.

On January 7th, 2016 the Inspector General of the National Security Agency,

4) George Ellard, submitted a mandatory compliance report outlining the status of the NSA’s ability to monitor the access of users w/in the NSA database.

I’m including the full report below in pdf format because it is important to understand what the NSA inspector general said.

5) I strongly urge you to read it (despite the redactions) because the larger issues remain visible within the report:

View this document on Scribd

For those who don’t read it, a quick summary would be: We don’t actually have control over how this massive amount of meta-data

6) is being used, searched, queried, and how the information within it is being filtered, minimized or extracted.

The NSA is essentially admitting to being overwhelmed with the scale of the data being collected, and they are similarly overwhelmed by the number of people who

7) have #ACCESS to this data. Of course the NSA Inspector General uses use much more techno-terminology like:

“Agency controls for monitoring query compliance have NOT been completely developed.”

8) …And: “The Agency has NO process to reliably identify queries performed using selectors associated with 704 & 705(b) targets.”

…And more alarmingly: “We identified another [redacted] queries that were performed outside the targeting authorization periods in E.O. 12333 data,

9) which is prohibited by the E.O. 12333 minimization procedures. We also identified queries performed using USP selectors in FAA §702 upstream data, which is prohibited by the FAA §702 minimization procedures.”

In short:

10) There’s a ton of activity that we know is taking place that is not supposed to be happening; and we really don’t know the full scale of the abuse we know to be happening -but can’t get our arms around- because, well, there’s just so damn much of it.

This is a critical part

11) of the Obama-term spying and surveillance issue that is being missed by current media reporting.

Given the highly political nature of the intelligence activity we are seeing lately, who do you think would be exploiting those system-wide database vulnerabilities, and why?

12) Yep, likely those carrying the most entrenched political agenda & ideology. Vested interests both inside the government (career deep state agency staff writ large), & outside government (all those pesky contractors we keep hearing about).

The FBI and NSA database is

13) essentially a vault of unlimited information; the mother-lode of metadata & electronic record-keeping of everything. Essentially, the holy grail for political operatives who would like to exploit and leverage the information.

Do you want to conduct opposition research?

14) Those databases would contain such exhaustive amounts of information you could assign a dozen users per target & still not scratch the surface of what is available. Bank records, purchases, social media accounts, phone records, GPS locations, travel patterns,

15) vehicle locations, home/work ip addresses, emails, audio-activation, pictures, CCTV captures, the works.

Through electronic surveillance you could spy & surveil anyone; in almost real time if focused, motivated & intended. What stands between this massive surveillance system

16) being used/abused for those political purposes or not?

Nothing.

Really.

Unless you want to define self-restraint & the morality of the person who has access as an impediment. Extractions or leaks are only unlawful if you are on the wrong ideological side of those who

17) control the political reigns of power…Just ask Comey. If you didn’t intend to break the law, you didn’t.

Do you think such a network could/would be exploited or weaponized for political purposes? Well, did you think the IRS would be weaponized in 2010?

Think about it…

18) Now, consider yourself a person motivated by nefarious political intent. Or perhaps like Lisa Page & Peter Strzok you are motivated by a higher calling to protect our country from outcomes of an election you don’t agree with. Perhaps you are authorized by willful blindness

19) of those who are suppose to be the gatekeepers. Now, what does going to the FISA Court gain you, that you don’t already have?

Going to the FISA Court gains you “authority“; it doesn’t gain you #ACCESS. You already have the #ACCESS.

20) As you think of that phrase, consider the April 2017 declassified FISA Court ruling we often reference, along with the admissions made to the FISA court by the DOJ, FBI & NSA in October of 2016. Approximately 85% of all FISA-702(17) “about” queries were unlawful violations.

21) What was the DOJ, FBI and NSA asking the FISA Court for: ‘forgiveness’, or ‘permission‘?

...strongly suggest that based on the intel communities own admissions, throughout 2015 & beginning of 2016 – all of the non-preferred presidential candidates were under electronic

22) surveillance by people in and outside of government who had access to this holy grail of opposition research.

It wasn’t until NSA Director Mike Rogers shut down contractor access to the system in April 2016 that political exploitation of the FBI & NSA databases was impeded.

23) Not stopped entirely, simply impeded.

(FISA 99-page Opinion – Rosemary Collyer Presiding Judge)

Remember this name: John P Carlin. It’s going to become much more important as the days and weeks progress. He plays a key role in part of the activity in 2016 & connects the

24) story of Carter Page to the FBI and CIA surveillance operation. {Preview Here}

On 9/26/16, the head of the Department of Justice National Security Division, John P Carlin filed the required certification letter (full pdf below) with the FISA court for the year 2016.

25) Mr. Carlin DID NOT include the Inspector General report from January 2016; & Carlin did not notify the FISA court of the compliance audit requested by NSA Director Mike Rogers as an outcome of that IG report (March 2016).

Read rest of Article
"UNROLL" @threadreaderapp