Submitted by: Robert Bowen
FBI Investigates Millions of Americans Without Warrants
- August 24, 2022
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- The 2022 annual transparency report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reveals the FBI has been surveilling millions of American citizens — without warrants or proper cause
- Between December 2020 and November 2021, the FBI scoured private emails, texts and other electronic communications of 3.4 million U.S. residents, without obtaining a single warrant. Between December 2019 and November 2020, just under 1.3 million Americans were surveilled in this manner
- There’s also been a sharp uptick in the number of times government officials asked for the identity of individuals surveilled to be revealed, a practice known as “unmasking”
- Supposedly, FBI agents were looking for signs of potential terrorist activity. They also sought to prevent hacking attacks. In the process, they violated the constitutional privacy rights of millions, and considering the hacking attacks that have occurred anyway, this mass surveillance doesn’t seem to be achieving its stated aim
- Two attorneys and two journalists are suing former CIA director Mike Pompeo in Spanish High Court for illegally surveilling them and copying private data from their electronic devices and passports while they were visiting Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy. The agency is also listed as a defendant, for purposes of forcing them to expunge all collected records
In the aftermath of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) unprecedented August 8, 2022, raid1 on former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, many are starting to question the FBI's actions, not just in this case, but in a more general sense.
What's become clear through this raid is that the FBI has been weaponized to hunt down and neutralize political opposition. On the surface, Republicans appear to be the target, but more specifically, the target is really anyone who disagrees with and wants to stop what we now know is a global coup by an unelected technocrat elite.
The raid on the former president shows that no one is safe from government overreach (or more precisely, the overreach of a government captured by the globalist cabal). This is made all the more disturbing by the fact that the FBI has been surveilling millions of American citizens — without warrants or proper cause.
Public assurances aside, the agency has repeatedly been caught acting lawlessly (the FBI-infiltrated kidnapping plot of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer being just one of the more recent examples2), and that lawless behavior is a piece of evidence that suggests it's been captured by powers that do not have the welfare of American citizens at heart.
FBI Illegally Spies on Millions of Americans
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the FBI is violating Americans' privacy "on an enormous scale." As reported by Bloomberg,3 the 2022 annual transparency report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reveals the FBI, between December 2020 and November 2021, scoured private emails, texts and other electronic communications of some 3.4 million U.S. residents, without obtaining a single warrant.
Between December 2019 and November 2020, just under 1.3 million Americans were surveilled in this manner. The report also notes there's been a sharp uptick in the number of times government officials asked for the identity of individuals surveilled to be revealed, a practice known as "unmasking."
Supposedly, FBI agents were looking for signs of potential terrorist activity and sought to prevent hacking attacks. But in so doing, they violated the constitutional privacy rights of millions, and considering the hacking attacks that have occurred anyway, this mass surveillance doesn't seem to be achieving its stated aim.
Privacy Rights Help Prevent Tyrannical Overreaches
While some say you have nothing to worry about if you're not doing anything wrong, that old adage has long since worn out because, again, we're dealing with an agency whose job it is to take out political opponents. You don't need to do anything illegal or criminal to be targeted for neutralization.
"Wrong-think" is now a "crime" in and of itself, so you better believe that privacy matters. You do not want the FBI to rifle through your personal correspondence. They will find something, some sentence, some idea, some opinion, with which to hang you, figuratively speaking.
Just look at Dr. Simone Gold. She's now serving a prison sentence over what amounts to medical opinion. She didn't do anything criminal or illegal. She's a political prisoner.
But by "political prisoner," I'm not exclusively referring to opponents of the Democrat Party. The true political opposition parties in this day and age are the technocratic Great Reset insiders (who have infiltrated all political parties) on one side, and the rest of us, who see the playbook and don't want to submit to their planned slave system, on the other.
Congress Must Protect Americans' Fourth Amendment Rights
In response to the ODNI's report, Ashley Gorski, a senior attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project stated:4
"Today's report sheds light on the extent of these unconstitutional 'backdoor searches,' and underscores the urgency of the problem. It's past time for Congress to step in to protect Americans' Fourth Amendment rights."
According to Bloomberg,5 the "authority" used to surveil Americans by the millions was Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It's set to expire at the end of 2023, unless Congress renews it. Clearly, they shouldn't, as it's being grossly misused.
"Show me the man and I'll show you the crime," Lavrentiy Beria, Joseph Stalin's secret police chief, once said.6 Beria oversaw the expansion of Stalin's gulags for political dissidents, and bragged he could prove criminal conduct by anyone, anywhere. Framing innocent people is nothing new. It's not even all that difficult, especially if you have access to everything a person has ever said, thought or done.
CIA Sued Over Fourth Amendment Rights Violations
The Central Intelligence Agency is also making headlines, and for the same disturbing reason. As reported by Newsweek,7 the CIA illegally surveilled and recorded Julian Assange's conversations with American attorneys, journalists, doctors, celebrities and at least one U.S. Congressman while holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition.
The CIA also obtained copies of visitors' passports, photographs of the IMEI and SIM card numbers in their cell phones (which allows devices to be identified on any network and are essential for surveillance targeting), as well as copies of the private data from their phones and other electronic devices brought into the embassy.
Passports and electronic devices had to be handed over to security guards and could not be brought inside. Unbeknownst to visitors, everything was then meticulously photographed and copied in their absence.
Four Americans who visited Assange are now suing then-CIA director Mike Pompeo in Spanish High Court, seeking damages for violation of their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. The agency as a whole is also listed as a defendant, for the purpose of forcing them to expunge all collected records.
Plaintiffs include two New York attorneys on Assange's legal team, and two American journalists who interviewed him. Lead plaintiff, attorney Margaret Kunstler, told Newsweek:8
"As a criminal attorney, I don't think that there's anything worse than your opposition listening in on what your plans are, what you intend to do, on your conversations. It's a terrible thing. It's gross misconduct. I don't understand how the CIA ... could think that they could do this. It's so outrageous that it's beyond my comprehension."
Attorneys aren't the only ones bound by confidentiality. Doctors and journalists also rely on confidential relationships with patients and sources, so the arbitrary copying of everything on their private devices is a gross privacy violation against any number of individuals they may have had interactions with.
CIA Crossed Lines That Shouldn't Be Crossed
The four plaintiffs are also seeking damages against UnderCover Global, a Spanish security firm that provided embassy protection. The lawsuit was launched after whistleblowers from the firm came forward, admitting they illegally spied on Assange's visitors, copied their passports and electronic devices, and then passed everything on to the CIA.
UnderCover Global CEO David Morales allegedly was being paid "substantial sums of money to share surveillance data with the CIA." According to Newsweek:9
"Legal experts, including a former senior intelligence official, told Newsweek that the allegations in the lawsuit, if proven, show the CIA crossed lines drawn to protect American citizens from surveillance by overzealous intelligence agencies."
According to Tim Edgar, professor at Brown University and former deputy privacy and civil liberties officer for the ODNI, the copying of visitors' cell phone data is particularly difficult to defend.
"That seems to me like a very excessive amount of collection," he told Newsweek. "What's the expected intelligence value from that? It's a high bar to justify. If it's just everyone who visited Assange, then it's not like you have a specific reason to look at a particular phone."
During one visit, actress Pamela Anderson wrote down her email and Apple ID passwords to get help with technical security from Assange. A photograph of the slip of paper with her passwords and PIN numbers was given to the CIA.
This hardly seems justifiable from a national security standpoint. It smacks of perversion, really, and one wonders how many CIA agents have sifted through Anderson's private messages for no other reason than pure titillating entertainment.
Seizure of Privileged Material Makes Fair Trial Impossible
But getting back to more serious matters, the CIA's blanket data collection "may make it impossible for Assange to get a fair trial," attorney Richard Roth, another plaintiff in the lawsuit, told Newsweek. Making matters even worse, when Assange was arrested by British police in April 2019, the embassy turned over all of Assange's legal papers and computers to the U.S. Department of Justice. As noted by Roth:10
"When a federal prosecutor comes after a lawyer with a search warrant and seizes their devices, there are multiple layers of review and protection for privileged lawyer-client communications. None of that happened here. They just grabbed everything."
When done in accordance to law, a court will typically appoint a special master, someone who is independent from the prosecuting government, to make sure privileged communications, such as lawyer-client communication, are segregated from the communication handed over to the prosecution.
Alphabet-Soup Agencies and The Great Reset
Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, we've seen ever more egregious overreaches by government. Intelligence agencies have gone so far as to slap a "domestic terrorist" label on anyone who expresses an opinion that counters the narrative directed by the globalist cabal. This is why privacy rights must be protected at all costs.
In August 2021, former assistant secretary for Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem proposed putting all unvaccinated Americans on a no-fly list. Doctors who speak out against the medical tyranny that is COVID standard of care are being stripped of their medical licenses.
Global organizations such as the International Grand Committee on Disinformation (IGCD), which consists of "an international array of legislators, policy advisers, and other experts," are working together to end free speech worldwide, and every click, comment and online search can and will be used against you.
The digital identity they want to roll out depends on the same kind of intrusive mass surveillance the FBI and CIA have been caught doing, but covering every person on the planet, and without any legal barriers impinging on the kind of information they can gather about you.
In the end, if the technocratic cabal gets their way, you won't even be able to use a public toilet without a compliance passport giving you the green-light.11 That's already the case in China, as you can see in the video below.
Tell Congress to Rein in Out-of-Control Surveillance Powers
Surveillance powers have always been sold to us as something that will protect us. It's high time to realize we've been sold a lie. All the surveillance acts are, in fact, being used against us, and for all we know, that's what they were intended for all along.
After all, The Great Reset didn't emerge out of nothing, overnight. It's a plan that's been in the works for decades, and the digital surveillance network required for it to function as an "open-air prison" has been built up around us for just as long.
We were fooled into thinking it was for our own good, for our protection, but it's not. It's to ensure we won't have the ability to rebel when the final pieces of the Great Reset plan are put into place.
As suggested by Gorski with the ACLU, we need to urge members of Congress to step in and revoke or severely restrict government surveillance powers, and reaffirm the absolute supremacy of the U.S. Bill of Rights. These are rights that cannot be taken from us, come hell or high water — or deep state billionaires with egos the size of Mount Everest.
The way things look, many government agencies — including the FBI and CIA — also need to be dismantled, and only put back together if absolutely necessary, and if so, in new, more limited forms with greater public oversight and more checks and balances.
Make no mistake, this is the highest-stakes game in human history. We're facing nothing short of the enslavement of all of humankind, and our intelligence agencies are proving — through their questionable, biased and often lawless actions — which side they're really on.
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