 [The Federalist] On Thursday afternoon, New York University Law School hosted a panel discussion on reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a federal law that allows courts to grant federal agencies warrants to secretly spy on American citizens.
The panel was held by Just Security, an online forum for analysis of national security. Moderated by The Atlantic magazine’s Adam Sewer, speakers were Liza Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center; Cato Institute senior fellow Julian Sanchez; Andrew Weismann, a lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office; and recently fired Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
After registration a light lunch was available, then the assembled awkwardly walked into the auditorium, balancing plates and coats, cups and briefcases. Then we sat waiting.
A loud gentleman with a nonspecific New York accent laughed behind me and said, "Why is Andrew McCabe on a panel about FISA? To explain how to abuse it?" No sooner had the panel taken the stage than someone filming with a selfie stick started peppering McCabe with questions about Operation Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s secret investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. He was asked to leave and did, but these two incidents indicated why I was there.
The actual panel began with a brief description of the secretive FISA process through which surveillance of Americans allegedly suspected of being foreign agents operates. Almost entirely lacking in transparency, for claimed national security reasons, the process lacks the accountability of the domestic criminal surveillance process, because there is little no adversarial challenge to it. It must merely jump through more hoops and agencies, which counterintuitively all panelists seemed to agree made the process more, not less, susceptible to abuse because this supposedly diffuses accountability among more nameless actors who cannot then be held to account for their specific actions. 
|
