Busted: Tulsi Gabbard attacked surveillance reforms she now claims to support
Former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard faces a major obstacle to getting confirmed as President-elect Donald Trump's director of national intelligence: numerous senators in both parties are worried about her longtime opposition to Section 702, the program that authorizes the intelligence community to monitor and gather electronic communications to intercept national security threats.
Pressed on the matter by reporters last week, Gabbard — who is known for promulgating conspiracy theories in favor of anti-Western dictators — said she has become more amenable to Section 702 because of reform legislation recently passed to safeguard Americans' civil liberties, noted CNN.
“Section 702, unlike other FISA authorities, is crucial for gathering foreign intelligence on non-U.S. persons abroad. This unique capability cannot be replicated and must be safeguarded to protect our nation while ensuring the civil liberties of Americans,” she said. “My prior concerns about FISA were based on insufficient protections for civil liberties, particularly regarding the FBI’s misuse of warrantless search powers on American citizens. Significant FISA reforms have been enacted since my time in Congress to address these issues. If confirmed as DNI, I will uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights while maintaining vital national security tools like Section 702 to ensure the safety and freedom of the American people.”
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But it's a little more complicated than that, political commentator Krystal Ball posted to X, because it turns out during an interview on The Joe Rogan Experience just months before Trump tapped her to be America's spymaster, Gabbard claimed not only that she opposed Section 702, but that the specific reforms she says made it okay, actually made it worse.
"The thing that the TikTok ban was lumped together with was the bill that would reinstate or extend the FISA authority ... for another two years," said Gabbard in this interview. "Section 702 of FISA gives our government the authority to surveil foreign actors, essentially, to try to identify terrorist threats. But part of that is they have the ability to capture all of the conversations — if you talk to somebody in another country that they're interested in, they can then go in and capture all of your information as an American citizen. And they can do this without a warrant."
"This has been in place for quite some time, but this legislation that was just passed recently expanded those authorities, so they can go and actually look at, like, your Wi-Fi history. If you're connected to Wi-Fi, they can look at everything that you did connected to that Wi-Fi signal. It took an already bad problem and made it many, many times worse," Gabbard continued.
Watch the video below or at the link here.