This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, June 13th, 2017. I'm Caleb Brown.

It wasn't just Infrastructure Week that was sidelined by the current political intrigue.

Last week's hearings on warrantless surveillance of Americans also had to take a back seat.

Democratic Representative Telsi Gabbard of Hawaii believes that's a shame.

The rights of Americans are implicated by warrantless surveillance,

and protecting those rights is a core function of Congress. I spoke with Gabbard about the

surveillance authorized by Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act and other topics yesterday.

There's a lot that is included within Section 702, but I think what has brought so much concern

from people like myself as well as colleagues

from both sides of the aisle and people at home is section 702 has allowed

for massive government-led exploitation of personal privacy, allowing them to collect online

communications and specifically emails for everyday Americans.

And this has been the most concerning element of it.

Now I looked at a fact sheet presented by the permanent select committee in the House and they

have some I think carefully chosen words related to section 702. They say that bulk

collection authorized by section 702 cannot be used to target and I think that's a

very important word target Americans. Is that true?

Again, those carefully chosen words are used intentionally and you know there are

loopholes. are used intentionally and you know there are there are loopholes and workarounds that that should be concerning and

and basically what section 702 and actually the NSA recently made an announcement of a practice that they would stop,

which was they would stop collecting Internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence

target under Section 702, which is what they call about communications.

...