Aside from the blatantly obvious issue of equal protection of the law, if the people who would have to pass a broader law are already protected by one that is narrowly focused on them, they're less incentivized to pass the broader law. Letting the narrow law pass creates a barrier to passing the broader law.

It goes even further than that. If the politicians are protected by their own special law they are much more likely to write laws that violate the privacy and rights of everyone else because they do not feel threatened by it.

For one, we have a POTUS that may have benefited knowingly or unknowingly by means of a foreign intelligence influence campaign. This gives those entities a free pass to influence campaigns or to hide other types of spying relating to an incumbent who is running for re-election. Seems like a bad time to make such a change in the law.

There’s also the whole equal protection under law issue — a core tenant of American law is that everyone is nominally the same. Declaring a vague category of citizen out of bounds of the law is absurd.

> Declaring a vague category of citizen out of bounds of the law is absurd.

Yet it’s hardly new for congress to exempt themselves from the laws they pass. Political campaigns are exempt from robocalls for instance. It’s an unfortunate reality.

That’s a little different as it relates to political speech.

Prohibiting law enforcement/intelligence used in national defense is very different.

You could literally say the same thing about the Steele Dossier sponsored by the Clinton Campaign, Steele was identified as connected to a foreign government influence campaign as well. A candidate literally cooperated with a foreign actor with undisclosed Russian ties to generate evidence against their opponent which they knew would be disseminated by the American IC. Not having these protections just incentivizes whoever currently controls the apparatus to strategically investigate their party's opposition.

Edit: Putting this here since I've reached my reply cap. There was a request for citations. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/report-footnotes-show-fbi-k...

> Steele was identified as connected to a foreign government influence campaign as well.

Maybe I’m just out of the loop, but this needs a source.

Steele is very publically a former MI6 agent, and while the British are our allies, that counts in and of itself.

However, it's also fact that Steele himself was well known to Russian intelligence, and while it's clear he was no friend to them he was a known enemy - They were specifically trying to feed him disinformation[1][2]

Did he bite bad bait? That's the question that doubters bring up. The "pee tape" thing is so bizarre I think it's likely true, but on the other hand I think that at this point Trump could just own it.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/16/politics/christopher-steele-f... [2]https://www.wsj.com/articles/steele-dossier-disinformation-u...

That is even more fuel to my point.

It isn't about POTUS, it's about the notion that preventing US counter intelligence from doing their jobs with respect to illegal influence on political campaigns. If what you say is true, and the Clinton campaign was seeking foreign assistance, shouldn't we know about and prevent that?

It is not a party a vs. party b issue.

That source does not say what you claim it does.

It violates the core principle of equal justice. What if we only required search or arrest warrants for those with more than $10M in assets? Your comment would still apply, and would be more obviously unjust.

Whether it harmonizes perfectly with the spirit of equal justice or not is irrelevant to whether or not it still represents an improvement over the status quo. Your hypothetical is similarly asanine and works mainly as a straw man because, as far as the integrity of the democratic process, there's a clear difference between shielding individuals competing in a public election and random rich people on the street. You're literally arguing against something that would improve the integrity of the system.

If you have a broken system, and you allow people in power to fix it in targeted ways that only affect them, then it will never get fixed for ordinary people.

Your point might hold true if the people being exempted from surveillance weren't also the people deciding who can be exempted from surveillance. But since they are, it is counterproductive to the privacy cause to allow Congress to give itself these kinds of special rules.

Force everyone in society to play by the same rules, and everyone in society will get the benefits. Allow Congress to get into the habit of exempting themselves from social systems or problems, and those problems will continue to exist.

In other words, when setting up incentives you have to think pragmatically about the entire system in the long term; you can't always just focus on short-term goals to the exclusion of everything else. Local optimums[0] aren't just a problem in AI, they're also a problem in real life. Because of the long term consequences, we're not interested in forming privacy castes in scenarios where doing so will make it harder for us to improve the system in the future.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_optimum

Small correction, but these amendments originate in the Senate, not Congress.

The US Senate is a proper subset of Congress, comprising one of its coequal houses, the other being the House of Representatives.

Collectively the two are Congress.

Is formalizing a two-tier surveillance regime an improvement over the status quo?

It's no different than medieval monarchies giving Kings special protections.

If you're tasked with the public welfare you should get greater scrutiny, not be granted special privileges from it.

It's the classic case of those writing the law carving out an exception for themselves.

Someone's borrowing history at a public library has strong federal protections. Shouldn't someone's browsing history get the same treatment?