The House rejected a short-term extension of Section 702. The foreign surveillance program expires Friday. Trump supports someone named Pulte. These facts are connected somehow.
Section 702 lets intelligence agencies monitor foreign targets without a warrant. Been around since 2008. Expires in three days. The House had one job: vote yes on keeping it alive a bit longer. They voted no. Why? Because the president stands with Pulte. Who the f*ck is Pulte? Doesn't matter. What matters is Trump picked a side and now your government can't spy on terrorists because of loyalty to a guy whose name sounds like a dental procedure.
Imagine explaining this to someone in 1985. "The Cold War ends, America wins, and forty years later we voluntarily shut down our foreign surveillance apparatus because the president is ride-or-die for Pulte." They'd ask what Pulte did to earn such devotion. You'd shrug. They'd assume he saved the president's life or discovered a cure for something. Nope. Just Pulte being Pulte. That was enough.
The expiration happens Friday. Three days to figure out if we want to keep watching the bad guys or if we're going full honor system. Maybe the terrorists will just tell us their plans. Could work. Cheaper than FISA courts. More efficient than warrants. Just put up a suggestion box at the border and hope for the best.
Retail traders saw this headline and immediately searched "How to trade FISA expiration." They found nothing. Got mad. Blamed the algos. One guy on Reddit claimed he'd been buying calls on surveillance stocks all week. Another said he was hedging with puts on privacy. Both positions expired worthless. Naturally.
Friday arrives and the program dies. The intelligence community scrambles. Congress blames each other. Trump tweets about Pulte again. And somewhere in a cave or a server farm or a basement in New Jersey, someone planning something terrible gets a three-day head start because we couldn't get our sh*t together long enough to click yes on a computer.
Photo by on Unsplash
Leave a Comment