Wednesday, August 05, 2020
byCommon Dreams
'Dangerously Bad': Coalition Accuses Adam Schiff of Throwing Dreamers Under
the Bus to Ensure Trump Retains Unaccountable Spying Powers
"Schiff has been trying to sneak ratification of such surveillance through
Congress."
byEoin Higgins, staff writer
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) speaks to the media during a dinner break in the
Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on January 27, 2020.
(Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Rep. Adam Schiff worked behind the scenes to ensure the White House had
expanded surveillance powers in Section 215 of the Patriot Act by selling
out the civil rights of immigrants, a coalition of privacy groups alleged
Wednesday.
"The consequences of Schiff's actions are inescapable: In trying to hand the
Trump administration Section 215, he repeatedly sabotaged efforts to protect
privacy," Demand Progress senior counsel Sean Vitka said in a statement.
"This is dangerously bad law and dangerously bad oversight."
According to a letter (pdf) signed by a number of groups from the right and
left including Americans for Prosperity, Demand Progress, Fight for the
Future, Free Press Action, FreedomWorks, and the Project for Privacy and
Surveillance Accountability, Schiff during negotiations over the
reauthorization of the Patriot Act in May altered privacy protections for
web activity in the Act's Section 215 so that the government could still
target immigrants-including recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals (DACA), also known as Dreamers.
That action, Vitka said, allowed the California Democrat-who serves as
chairman of the House Intelligence Committee-to provide protections for
"dragnet internet surveillance by cutting Dreamers and many other immigrants
out of a proposed protection, which, in context, appears to have served as a
loophole to protect something else: potential undisclosed surveillance of
Americans' internet browsing and search histories."
According to Gizmodo, Schiff was joined in his efforts by House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to ensure the Trump administration retained
extraordinary spying powers:
In May, Democrats engaged in closed-door negotiations over a proposed
amendment aimed at shielding U.S. residents who are not suspected of
violating the law from having their search and web browsing histories seized
by the FBI without a warrant. Democratic and Republican sources on Capitol
Hill told Gizmodo that the efforts were continually hindered by top
Democrats, including Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a former and ex-officio committee
member.
[...]
Sources with knowledge of the secret meetings said that months-long efforts
to introduce privacy reforms were undermined at nearly every juncture by the
"national security Democrats" in control of the party. A critical vote in
February was abruptly canceled, for instance, to stop a pro-privacy
amendment from being attached to the FISA reauthorization bill. The bill
itself was effectively shelved by Pelosi in June in an apparent effort to
stymie bipartisan calls for reform.
"Throughout the 2020 PATRIOT Act reauthorization fight, Schiff has run point
for [Attorney General] Bill Barr to make sure Congress doesn't know what the
law it is considering means, including whether it allows the FBI and NSA to
conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans' internet activity," said Vitka.
In May, Common Dreams reported on the negotiations and the actions of both
Pelosi and Schiff to hold back information on the program lawmakers were
voting on. Comments Schiff made at the time to Charlie Savage of the New
York Times, Wednesday's letter suggest, indicate that "the government may
have secretly contorted the law to justify dragnet surveillance of the
internet activity of people in the United States, regardless of their United
States personhood."
A regular on MSNBC, Schiff has made a name for himself over the last three
years as one of President Donald Trump's most vocal critics and supporter of
immigrant rights. But his actions with respect to the Dreamers and his
efforts to ensure the president maintains control over an unaccountable and
incredibly powerful government surveillance regime tell a different story.
That those actions were taken in secret, Vitka said, just shows that letting
the intelligence collection program continue is unpopular among lawmakers.
"Ironically, if Schiff has been trying to sneak ratification of such
surveillance through Congress, he has unwittingly demonstrated that he knows
Congress wouldn't support it," said Vitka.
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