FISA — the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — is the U.S. legal framework that governs surveillance warrants for foreign-intelligence purposes. John Kiriakou describes it as one of the most easily abused instruments in the surveillance state.
Carter Page
Kiriakou cites the case of Carter Page, against whom the Steele dossier — which he characterizes as the “dirty dossier” — was used to support “not one, but four FISA applications.” His framing: “You know how easy it is to ruin a person’s life with FISA?” He notes Page was driven into bankruptcy, and that one of Page’s lawyers was the same attorney Kiriakou had used.[1]
Part of the surveillance architecture
Kiriakou groups FISA with the Patriot Act and Section 702 as the legal machinery that erodes Americans’ constitutional protections. He names Thomas Massie, Rand Paul, and Ro Khanna as among the very few legislators willing to oppose it, concluding that three votes out of 535 cannot turn the tide — and that he is not optimistic about the future of American privacy.[2] He cites Mike Johnson as a case study in how the security state co-opts even its critics: Johnson once led a congressional Weaponization Committee investigating FBI mass-surveillance abuses, but became the tie-breaking vote to approve Section 702 surveillance without reforms once he became Speaker of the House.[3]