Federal district court rules FISA's Section 702 warrantless surveillance clause is UNCONSTITUTIONAL

By arseniotoledo // 2025-01-25

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A federal court ruled that warrantless searches of Americans' private communications under FISA Section 702 violate the Fourth Amendment, deeming them unconstitutional.
The case involved Agron Hasbajrami, a U.S. resident whose emails with a foreign individual, collected without a warrant, were used as evidence in a terrorism-related case.
Section 702, designed for foreign surveillance, has been criticized for its "incidental" collection and warrantless searches of Americans' communications, with the FBI conducting 3.4 million such searches in 2021.
The court rejected the government's claim of a "foreign intelligence exception" to the Fourth Amendment, emphasizing that public interest alone does not justify warrantless searches.
Privacy advocates celebrated the ruling as a significant victory, urging Congress to impose a warrant requirement and increase transparency for Section 702 activities.

A federal district court has ruled that warrantless searches of Americans' private communications collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is unconstitutional. The ruling, issued back in December but only recently unsealed by United States District Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall of the Eastern District of New York, argues in the case of "United States v. Hasbajrami" that Section 702 is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. (Related: Gabbard's shocking BETRAYAL of civil liberties for DNI post: FISA Section 702 flip-flop exposed.) The case centers on Agron Hasbajrami, a U.S. resident arrested in 2011 at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he prepared to travel to Pakistan. Hasbajrami, an Albanian citizen, was accused of providing material support to terrorists. The government's evidence of this crime included emails between Hasbajrami and a foreign individual allegedly linked to terrorist groups. These emails were collected without a warrant under Section 702, which authorizes the warrantless surveillance of foreign targets abroad. However, the court found that the subsequent search of Hasbajrami's communications – also conducted without a warrant – constituted an unreasonable invasion of privacy under the Fourth Amendment. Section 702, enacted as part of FISA in 1978, was designed to enable the intelligence community to collect communications of foreign nationals outside the U.S. for national security purposes. However, the law has long been criticized for its “incidental” collection of communications involving Americans, which are stored in vast databases accessible to federal agencies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alone conducted 3.4 million warrantless searches of Section 702 data involving U.S. persons in 2021, according to court documents. DeArcy Hall’s ruling rejected the government’s argument that such searches fall under a “foreign intelligence exception” to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. "A search that relies on an initial warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement is limited by its original justification," she wrote. "The court agrees that there is a 'powerful' public interest in allowing law enforcement to run queries for national security purposes – but public interest alone does not justify warrantless querying." The decision builds on a 2019 ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that backdoor searches of Section 702 databases constitute "separate Fourth Amendment events." While the appellate court left it to the lower court to determine whether a warrant was required, DeArcy Hall’s ruling now resolves that question, setting a significant precedent for future cases.

Privacy activists celebrate: "Better late than never"

Privacy advocates hailed the decision as a long-overdue victory. “Better late than never,” said Andrew Crocker and Matthew Guariglia of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who have been vocal critics of Section 702 abuses. Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project, called the ruling “a major constitutional decision on one of the most abused provisions of FISA.” The ruling comes amid ongoing debates over Section 702’s reauthorization, which Congress last extended in April 2023 for two years. While lawmakers have repeatedly reauthorized the statute on a bipartisan basis, concerns about misuse by the FBI and other agencies have fueled calls for reform. The EFF and other advocacy groups are urging Congress to impose a warrant requirement for searches involving U.S. persons and increase transparency around Section 702 activities. Watch this episode of "Brighteon Broadcast News" as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, discusses how FISA was abused to surveil American citizens who supported Palestine. This video is from the Health Ranger Report channel on Brighteon.com.

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Privacy activists celebrate: "Better late than never"

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