​Last year brought surveillance reform achingly close to passage. The Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act – which would have forced the government to obtain a warrant before purchasing Americans’ personal data from data brokers – passed the U.S. House but died in the U.S. Senate. A warrant requirement for the review of Americans’ personal data fell short in the House in a tie vote.

Now, we know that these were uphill votes not just because of the intense opposition of federal intelligence agencies, but because the Biden White House had overseen an intense lobbying effort to give the illusion of grassroots opposition from state law enforcement.

To create this illusion, the administration reached out to local and federal law enforcement alike with pre-approved talking points from a Washington lobbying firm, letters to sign, and a list of lawmakers to target.

The efforts involved the misuse of High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTAs). These are hybrid federal-state entities intended to provide coordination and ensure the efficient use of federal funds in fighting organized drug crime. The federal side of this partnership is directly overseen by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

A response to a PPSA Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveals that during the prior 118th Congress, these organizations were repurposed for lobbying Congress. Emails from the Chicago HIDTA piggybacked off efforts from a Capitol Hill lobbying firm and orchestrated all the elements of what would appear to a Member of Congress to be a spontaneous grassroots movement by state law enforcement groups and associations in opposition to popular surveillance reform amendments.

This network of federal agencies working behind the scenes to coordinate this messaging, under the purview of the White House, distorted the debate and abused Congressional trust in sincere-sounding letters to Congressional leaders like Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Jerry Nadler, Ranking Member. Given that HIDTAs are distribution points for significant amounts of much-needed federal funding, it’s questionable how voluntary the sign-on from state law enforcement groups really was.
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Perhaps Chairman Jordan and Ranking Member Nadler might want to look into how much federal money might have been spent limiting their oversight. At the very least, the current administration should cut off federal funds for lobbying before the surveillance reform debate begins again next year.

The Biden administration’s State Department kept dossiers on Americans accused of acting as “vectors of disinformation.”

This was a side activity of the now-defunct State Department Global Engagement Center (GEC). It secretly funded a London-based NGO that pressured advertisers to adhere to a blacklist of conservative publications, including The American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News, the Blaze, Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and The New York Post.

Now we know that the blacklisting went beyond publications to include prominent individuals. At least one of them, Secretary Rubio said, was a Trump official in the Cabinet room when the secretary made this announcement.
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“The Department of State of the United States had set up an office to monitor the social media posts and commentary of American citizens, to identify them as ‘vectors of disinformation,’” Rubio said on Wednesday. “When we know that the best way to combat disinformation is freedom of speech and transparency.”

​In his fusillade of executive actions, President Donald Trump sent letters demanding the resignations of Sharon Bradford Franklin, Chair of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), along with her two Democratic colleagues. If they don’t leave, then in his trademark style the president will say, “You’re fired!”
 
We suggest that the president think twice. The new administration is clearing out the very people who could be natural allies of President Trump in one key regard – exposing the misuse of intelligence programs. This includes abuses of some of the very programs that were used against Donald Trump in the past.
 
By law, the program must have members from both parties. With the Democrats fired and a preexisting Republican vacancy, PCLOB would have only one remaining member, Republican Beth A. Williams. Without a quorum, PCLOB would effectively not exist. At least two of the Democrats – Chair Franklin and Travis LeBlanc – have been outspoken skeptics of the intelligence agencies and the surveillance status quo.
 
PCLOB is the only watchdog agency tasked with ensuring that the intelligence community and its programs respect Americans’ rights and freedoms. Its stated mission is “working to ensure that efforts by the executive branch to protect the nation from terrorism appropriately safeguard privacy and civil liberty.” Such a watchdog could be a strong ally to a Director of National Intelligence like Tulsi Gabbard and an FBI Director like Kash Patel in exposing surveillance abuses by the intelligence community.
 
Firing the sitting Democrats will lead to one of two outcomes. It will either null out a privacy watchdog that could help the administration’s agenda curb the “deep state.” Or the agency will be refloated with a new quorum that – under its legal charter – must include two new Democrats, who might be a lot less friendly to the Trump surveillance reform agenda.
 
The Trump Administration is off to a commendably brisk start. We respectfully suggest that this decision get a second look.