NSA Boss: Section 702 Should Be Renewed Because It Helped Prove Russia Hacked Election

The push for a smooth Section 702 renewal continues. The never-not-abused surveillance program has received some vocal support in recent weeks. Former FBI Director James Comey's Senate testimony began with his praise for Section 702, despite there being about a million investigation-related questions Senators were dying to hear answers to.

Any opening will do for promoting the NSA's internet-based collections, even with the agency voluntarily shutting down its upstream email collection because it just couldn't stop sweeping up (and searching) domestic communications. Such is the case here, with NSA boss Admiral Mike Rogers aiming to remain the commander of oceans of internet data/communications (some of it gathered under actual oceans!) for the foreseeable future. The selling point here is the popular Jeopardy category CURRENT EVENTS.

"I would highlight much, not all, much of what was in the intelligence community's assessment, for example, on the Russian efforts against the U.S. election process in 2016, was informed by knowledge we gained through (Section) 702 authority," Rogers said.

Rogers said allowing the statute to expire on Dec. 31, unless Congress votes to reauthorize it, would degrade U.S. intelligence agencies' ability to provide "timely warning and insight" on a variety of criminal and national security threats.

There is little doubt the 702 program provides all the things Rogers says it does. How could it not? The program pulls millions of communications directly from internet backbones, in addition to what it gathers with the help of service providers. It also gathers plenty of US persons' communications, the recent culling of the "about" collection notwithstanding. And it gathers tons of useless communications because that's just how the collection works: the collection continues regardless. FISA court orders just narrow the searches analysts can perform.

Even with a pro-surveillance president and a controlling party that's shown little interest in pushing back against the administration, the Section 702 renewal process isn't going to go as smoothly as the NSA (and FBI) would hope. Too many documents have been leaked and the NSA has been caught abusing the program far too often. Sure, it's great the program helped track down evidence of politically-motivated hacking, but no one has ever argued the program is useless. They've argued it violates privacy and civil liberties in bulk and no amount of "usefulness" changes that fact.