The World Is Changing. House Votes Against Intelligence Community
WASHINGTON -- Nineteen Republicans joined House Democrats on Wednesday to defeat a measure to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law that enables the federal government to spy on foreigners abroad. The procedural rule was blocked by a vote of 193-228.
The world is changing.
It's a sad moment for the country when you consider how, after the 9/11 attacks, Americans stood behind efforts to allow the intelligence community access to said communications in the belief that spy craft would be used to protect Americans from hostile national security rivals.
And now all of that is melting.
For years after 9/11, conservatives at least could be counted on to champion the intelligence establishment, while Democrats were more likely to question their methods. Then came the 2016 election and Donald Trump's victory.
But then, in January 2017, before Trump took the oath of office, BuzzFeed News ran what was peddled as a "dossier" of dirt that Russia was supposed to have put together on Trump. Problem: It wasn't true.
It turned out Democrats paid for the dossier. Later, America learned that the FBI had spied on Carter Page, who was an unpaid adviser to the Trump campaign.
Awkward. The FBI is not supposed to get involved in politics.
You would think that after its sordid misdeeds came to light, the FBI would have cleaned up its act.
But then last year The Washington Post reported that in 2020 and 2021, the FBI wrongly tapped the government's monster database more than 278,000 times.
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