Kimberley Strassel: Adam Schiff's surveillance state

[mystery-ak]

Kimberley Strassel: Adam Schiff's surveillance state

By Kimberley A. Strassel | The Wall Street Journal

Lawmakers are debating ways to prevent the Federal Bureau of Investigation from abusing its surveillance authority again. While they’re at it, they have an obligation to address their own privacy transgressor, Rep. Adam Schiff.

That’s the gist of a pointed letter from Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, which landed Thursday at the House Intelligence Committee. Chairman Schiff spent months conducting secret impeachment hearings. His ensuing report revealed that he’d also set up his own surveillance state. Mr. Schiff issued secret subpoenas to phone carriers, to obtain and publish the call records of political rivals. Targets included Rudy Giuliani and another attorney of the president, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee (Rep. Devin Nunes) and a journalist (John Solomon).

Impeachment is over, but Mr. Carr hasn’t forgotten this abuse of power, and his letter, which I obtained, calls for answers and reform. The FCC takes call privacy seriously, only recently having proposed some $200 million in fines on phone carriers for failing to protect customer data. Mr. Carr’s message to Mr. Schiff is that Congress doesn’t get a pass. It is not automatically entitled to “a secret and partisan process that deprives Americans of their legal right to maintain the privacy of this sensitive information.”

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https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/adam-schiff-surveillance-state-kimberley-strassel

[PeteS in CA]

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/that-schiffty-mr-schiff.php

THAT SCHIFFTY MR. SCHIFF
POSTED ON MARCH 13, 2020 BY SCOTT JOHNSON

Kim Strassel ... in her Wall Street Journal column “Adam Schiff’s Surveillance State.” ... reports on “a pointed letter from Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, which landed Thursday at the House Intelligence Committee.” ...

Chairman Schiff spent months conducting secret impeachment hearings. His ensuing report revealed that he’d also set up his own surveillance state. Mr. Schiff issued secret subpoenas to phone carriers, to obtain and publish the call records of political rivals. Targets included Rudy Giuliani and another attorney of the president, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee (Rep. Devin Nunes) and a journalist (John Solomon).

... Mr. Carr’s message to Mr. Schiff is that Congress doesn’t get a pass. It is not automatically entitled to “a secret and partisan process that deprives Americans of their legal right to maintain the privacy of this sensitive information.”

Mr. Carr doesn’t dispute that Congress may, “in at least some circumstances,” have the legal authority to obtain call records under the Communications Act. The offense, he writes, was denying his targets the right to fight the subpoenas: ...

Carr calls out the devious and abusive aspects of Schiff’s subpoenas: “He issued them secretly. He didn’t notify his targets, and Republican committee members were barred from telling the public what they knew about the subpoenas. Worse, he deceived one of his targets. He sent a subpoena for call records to Mr. Giuliani on Sept. 30 and suggested Mr. Giuliani had two weeks to work with the committee, even as Mr. Schiff was already secretly demanding Giuliani call records from a phone carrier.”

... Carr asks: “Is Mr. Schiff continuing to issue secret subpoenas? And what else is he sitting on? The impeachment report indicates the committee obtained ‘nearly 4,000 pages of confidential call records,’ nowhere near what Mr. Schiff published. Who else’s life is getting ransacked at this moment?”

Strassel's column is behind TWSJ's paywall, and I'm not paying. Carr makes impressive noises, but will he ACT. Schifftyroo needs to be modeling black and white wide vertical stripes in the halls of the GrayBar Hotel.