Title I Surveillance Authority

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article yesterday explaining the difference between a regular FISA warrant and Title I Surveillance Authority. Title I Surveillance Authority was the process used against Carter Page. The article explains why that is important.

This is how FISA Title I works:

The article explains:

This is not some innocuous request for metadata exploration – the FBI said American citizen Carter Page was a “foreign agent of a hostile foreign government”; the FBI was calling Carter Page a spy.

…To present a methaphor, under Title I FISA authority, Carter Page was essentially ‘patient zero’ in an Ebola pandemic.  Labeling him as a foreign agent allowed the FBI to look at every single person he came in contact with; and every single aspect of their lives and their activities in growing and concentric circles; without limits to current time or historic review.

The “Title I” designation as a foreign agent applied retroactively to any action taken by Mr. Page, and auto-generates an exponential list of other people he came in contact with.  Each of those people, groups or organizations could now have their communication reviewed, unmasked and analyzed by the DOJ/FBI with the same surveillance authority granted upon the target, Mr. Page.

….And keep in mind, amid all of this exhaustive FBI surveillance and DOJ national security division digging into every aspect of his life, Mr. Carter Page has never been accused of any crime, wrongdoing, or subsequent criminal conduct.

It appears the entire reason to label Mr. Page as a Title One “foreign agent” was so the DOJ National Security Division and FBI Counterintelligence Division, could use Mr. Page’s short contact with the Trump campaign as an excuse to monitor everyone else within the campaign before, during and after the election.   (emphasis mine)

Think about this for a minute. An upstanding citizen was accused of being a foreign agent by using political evidence against him and that evidence was used to spy on him and the people around him (and the permission to spy was renewed more than once).

This is use of government agencies for political purposes. People need to go to jail for this crime. The tactics used to spy on Carter Page could theoretically be used on any American. If this abuse of power is not dealt with quickly and firmly, we can be sure that it will be repeated in the future.