Millennials should stand up to end FISA
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The device you’re reading this on, whether it’s your phone, your computer, or your tablet, undoubtedly has hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of your most private data. Our personal devices contain a meticulous record of all the text messages we’ve sent to our significant other, the calls we’ve made to our friends, and photos we’ve snapped – some of which we never intended for anyone else to see.

How would you feel if CIA agents, or the NSA, or the FBI could know virtually anything they wanted about the most intimate details of your life?

Under current federal law, they can – no warrant necessary.

Before you go scrub your device clean, it’s important to understand how we got here and what needs to be done before it’s too late.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA as it’s commonly known, allows the federal government to wiretap your phone, your laptop, or pretty much any other piece of technology without a warrant, as long as the primary purpose of the surveillance is to gather “foreign intelligence information.”

While the federal government cannot begin their investigation by purposely targeting a U.S. citizen, it can still record and retain your private conversations if they happen to be picked up. Then, the FBI has the power to scan and search that data for any criminal offense whatsoever.

Here’s where it gets even scarier. After the government has wiretapped and stored billions of emails, phone calls, and text messages, they can go ahead and use your name, email, and phone number to search that data en masse.

If they “happen” to record your private phone conversation under the guise of gathering “foreign intelligence information,” you could be prosecuted for any federal offenses they find. Your private conversation, which the government would never have had the chance to hear otherwise, has now become admissible evidence in a court of law.

It’s no accident that this is commonly referred to as a “backdoor search,” because the government doesn’t need to get a warrant.

The Washington Post looked at hundreds of thousands of leaked documents from Edward Snowden, and concluded that under Section 702, “ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency.”

In short, the government is abusing the powers granted to them by Congress to spy on everyday Americans. It’s a distinct possibility that they could be spying on you or me. The problem is we will never know until it’s too late.

As a generation that’s leading the way in technological advancement and use, it’s critical that millennials work together to stop this warrantless government surveillance. The personal freedom we receive from these incredible devices is null and void if the federal government has the power to spy on us with them.

Leaked documents have proven that both the Bush and Obama administrations abused this power to target ordinary American citizens. In fact, Obama has purportedly used this power to spy on associates of then-candidate Trump, and potentially even political rivals in Congress like Rand Paul.

Now, in the Trump administration, we have the opportunity to put an end to this once and for all.

FISA is set to expire on December 31st, 2017, but many members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat, want to renew this law. Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) as well as Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and countless others have voiced their support for significant reform of FISA, including Section 702. Rand Paul has argued that “we’ll do anything we can to try and stop it, and that includes filibuster.”

If millennials truly value privacy and want to keep the government out of our lives, it’s a no-brainer that we would support Rand Paul’s efforts to reform FISA.

The post Millennials should stand up to end FISA appeared first on Red Alert Politics.

Source: Red Alert Politics