A fine litany of the seditions of the Deep State.
That said, a question: What powers does the DNI have to rectify that? Rather, is not the position one of assessing which intel to bring to the President's attention?
OTOH I find the WSJ editorial below fails to engage with the abuses of 702.
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Tulsi Gabbard’s Surveillance Folly
Kash Patel and John Ratcliffe both rebut her views on Section 702.
By The Editorial Board
Jan. 30, 2025 6:22 pm ET
Tulsi Gabbard faced the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday for her confirmation hearing, and her performance wasn’t reassuring. Given a chance to walk back her opposition to Section 702 surveillance policy, she reinforced why she would be dangerous as White House director of national intelligence.
Section 702, part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, lets the feds monitor foreigners abroad. “Literally 60%, on average, of what goes into the President’s Daily Brief—what President Trump will read each day in assessing what’s going on in the world—comes from this important piece of law,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, ranking Intelligence Democrat, said Thursday.
The information collected goes into a database that can be searched later. In some cases, intelligence agencies may also run queries for U.S. persons, under safeguards set (and recently strengthened) by Congress.
Ms. Gabbard says these safeguards aren’t enough. “Warrants should generally be required before an agency undertakes a U.S. Person query,” she told the Senate in writing, “except in exigent circumstances.” She underscored that view in response to a question from Sen. Ron Wyden on Thursday.
This is the same argument that was made, including by many left-wing Democrats, when Section 702 was reauthorized last year. Congress rejected it. Three Democrats on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, whom President Trump fired last week, argued that U.S. person queries should require court approval. But this would undermine the value of Section 702 to track terrorist communications and other threats in real time.
Listen to Kash Patel, Mr. Trump’s nominee to run the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on why this matters. “FISA collection” is sometimes used “to find and save American hostages,” Mr. Patel told the Senate in his separate confirmation hearing on Thursday. “Having a warrant requirement to go through that information in real time is just not comportive with the requirement to protect American citizenry,” he added. “It’s almost impossible to make that function and serve the national, no-fail mission.”
That no-fail point is crucial. Terrorists have an asymmetric advantage over open societies because they operate in secret and only need to succeed once to do enormous destruction. This is the great lesson of 9/11. Surveillance is one of the few tools the U.S. has to detect and prevent such attacks before they happen, including overseas communications with people in the U.S. who may intend harm.
Given Ms. Gabbard’s views on 702, it’s no surprise that she sounds badly uninformed on the subject. “What would be necessary to be shown, in order to establish probable cause to a judge, in order to obtain a warrant?” Texas Sen. John Cornyn asked her on Thursday. “Do you know what the elements of probable cause are, and whether that’s a practical and workable solution?”
Ms. Gabbard: “This is the center of the debate, the high standard of probable cause that’s required to get a warrant, and why this will continue to be a conversation, again, with the Attorney General weighing in and all of you in Congress making this policy decision.” That’s either obfuscation or she has no idea.
Mr. Cornyn then pointed to what CIA director John Ratcliffe, who served as DNI in Mr. Trump’s first term, told the Senate two weeks ago. “You really don’t have the information to obtain the warrant,” Mr. Ratcliffe said. “And the process of obtaining the warrant—we’re talking about national-security issues where sometimes minutes matter in the ability to disrupt or interdict the bad actors or to act upon the intelligence.”
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Does Ms. Gabbard think Kash Patel and John Ratcliffe are denizens of the “deep state” who can’t be trusted to tell the truth? Or is her anti-surveillance ideology so great that she is willing to take a risk with the lives of Americans to cripple a crucial surveillance tool?
Mr. Trump made a campaign deal with Ms. Gabbard to give her a cabinet position in return for her endorsement. He did his part by nominating her. But the Senate can do Mr. Trump, and the country, a favor by rejecting a director of national intelligence who doesn’t understand the vital tools of the job.
