How can we trust such people? Nothing they say is true, they leak classified info (or lies) to protect themselves from scrutiny

I call bullshit, because I can smell it from here

in is out,red is whiteup is down...they plant their own facts in paper,and then reference them.i don't beleive a fucking thing they say.

foreigners, who don't have rights under the Constitution

I don't believe this is correct. I think what you mean is the Constitution does not apply outside of US jurisdiction.

Fuck this little unelected government minion, as this is not his decision. Who gives a shit what a career military yes man that has suckled off the government dole for decades thinks should be done with FISA? This little nimrod sycophant should get back in his cave and await instructions, as per the usual. His opinion has about as much value as mine.

Am I missing something? Doesn't current law allow for the government to seek FISA approval up to 72 hours after surveillance has begun?

When did Congress begin to place the needs and wants of the military above the mandates of the Constitution? Who does Congress represent, the military or the people? The federal government and DC are entirely too self-absorbed in their self-proclaimed importance.

The arrogance that somehow he must "agree" to such changes before Congress can pass such legislation is appalling.

"The arrogance that somehow he must "agree" to such changes before Congress can pass such legislation is appalling."

He is just following our leader....
Follows the law when he wants to and congress lets him. Probably because they'd like to do the same.

What is the surveillance program that dare not speak its name?

John Boehner in his comments to Fox News this week has sought to create a meme that the judicial issue is a silly one over listening in on transmissions between foreigners if those transmissions happen to pass through U.S. telcom switches. Here is what Boehner divulged on Fox:

"There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States."

Parse Boehner's classified leak carefully. Reasonable people, both Democrat and Republican, would agree that intercepting communications among foreigners, even if U.S. telcom switches and Internet routers are involved, should pose little or no constitutional difficulty. Any nation state, after all, will seek to protect itself from potential threats by collecting foreign intelligence.

But here lies the possible rub: what if the only way to collect these communications between foreigners (because of the unpredictable routes taken by IP packets in a packet-swiching network, because of the fairly easy-to-implement practice of IP spoofing, and also because of the increasing use of commercial encryption, as with Skype and with various IPSec protocols) is literally to try to collect everything, everywhere--at least everything passing through U.S. telecoms and major Internet service providers?

What if the goal of Homeland Security State is to set up farms of terabyte upon terabyte collection servers to siphon up and store literally all electronic communications (voice and text), from whatever source or from whatever unidentified individual in the hope of later using data mining techniques to scour the collected data for individuals and messages of special interest? Might all electronic transactions, including all credit card and debit card transations, also be part of such a massive database?

If such massive data collection and data mining are the real goals, the constitutional questions suddenly become startlingly clear. If data mining techniques ever come close to matching the mere capacity to vacuum up raw electronic data passing through the electronic pipelines and through the routers and switches, it would become a trivial matter to filter out a complete picture of any individual American, for whatever reason.

A Homeland Security equivalent of "Google" could conceivably be configured to screen such massive databases for information on a particular American for everything from e-mail rants, to blog postings, to credit card purchases, to court cases, to mortgage information, to tax data, to political contributions, to church memberships, to library borrowing preferences, to magazine subscriptions, to foreign travel, to investment account activity, to phone calls to mistresses.

If we have arrived at that point--or are close arriving at it--we have already surpassed George Orwell's most nightmarish premonitions. Can anyone doubt that a hyper-politicized and neocon-dominated White House would hesitate to use such databases to go after perceived political enemies and to suppress political opposition to specific items on their neocon agenda? Or perhaps the Rovians would even use the database to micro-target likely Republican voters to get out their votes or to micro-target likely Democratic voters to suppress their votes?

Boehner, Rove, Cheney, Bush, and their legions of Republican and media enablers clearly would seek to promote such an Orwellian outcome.

If this kind of data collection and data mining program is indeed the surveillance "program that dare not speak its name," will the Democrats in the House and Senate have the wisdom and spine to defend the Constitution and preserve our democracy?

What a Mess

According to the Post, the reason for the administration's feverish effort to get legislation to expand its surveillance powers under FISA is that earlier this year a FISA Court judge declared a key portion of the administration's program illegal. The ruling of course was secret. And it seems that until now the White House had kept this information hidden from Congress.

So why are we finding this out now? Well, that's another interesting story. Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) went on Fox News Tuesday night and discussed the whole thing. But the very existence of the ruling is highly classified. So it seems he publicly revealed highly classified information.

Needless to say, his flack disagrees: claims that Boehner leaked classified secrets on Fox News are "just plain wrong and distracts from the critical task at hand -- fixing FISA to close the serious intelligence gaps that are jeopardizing our national security."

time to axe little B eh?

When I see stuff like this I realize that the next few years are going to make the last six look like a church social. Why? Because I can see no other reason for any of this administrations actions, other than to take complete control of the Government. One could argue they are protecting themselves from criminal prosecution but the only way to prevent that at this point, is to take control of the government. This FISA thing is a water shed moment because, if the light is ever shined on what has been done with this info, that has absolutely nothing to do with the GWOT, then the government will be beyond even the pretense of the interests of the people. Before that happens, this lot will let another 9/11 happen and then all bets are off. I know the 25%ers will be screaming for our heads. The only real question at that point will be, which side the Generals come down on ,when Bush declares marshall law. Us or him? Civil War?

Really the independence of the courts is at issue, and this is precisely why AG Ashcroft must go, that the Oxycotyn case be looked into, why an independent FISA court be established with records of when a target warrant was requested, how long it was maintained, and whom requested on-going investigation.

Take any individual (according to your concious) that you would object to independently authorizing without review, NSL's or Wire Tapping.

Make the list according to your concious and convictions of whom you would NOT want with that power and not subject to review.

And this is precisely the reason why FISA and NID offices need to be equally cognizant of the targets of investigations, and why CIA, DIA, DOJ, Treasury (Secret Service and ATF), and DOS inspector generals (warrant officers) have access to the information at the FISA court/NID when it is reasonably determined that "some wild eyed zealot who initiated an investigation for political purposes" that those agencies can assess and manage to the damages to their institutions.

Actually the resignation of FISA judge (Robertson) and the blocking of Glenn Fine's IG investigation demonstrate while 'technology nuetral communications' are important, that equally there needs to checks and balances so that a foreign entity does not 'inject false intel' into the US system and that 'injection' is not known at an operational level by those whom have a need to know, and can make actionable corrections when it has occurred.

FISA will also check the metrics of effectiveness of the programs, with a ratio of warrants to convictions.. or actionable plans.

But the real history of these un-named systems was abuses! The real history is bad records keeping, fishing expeditions, abuses, and political reprisals.

There has to be an Organization such as FISA to prevent this tool from being turned upon not only the people of the US but the US government as well, and where abuse and mistakes are made??

A means to identify and remediate if possible that damage.

In closing.. if there is no checks and balances in the system.. I'm gonna get a tourist visa to Warzistan and find a pay phone and call every NEOCON in the beltway and pay a local to scream at them in nouns and verbs so as to add those bastards to a list... Of course FISA would stop that from becomig a long-term problem and abuse... if it had the tools to do so...

and now the President learns the high price for losing the trust of the vast majority of Americans. We don't trust you.

You lied about Iraq
You lied about Social Security
You lied about Katrina
You lied about the USA purge

Now try and get us to believe you about anything.

codeword "wood" as in "need any wood?"

"foreigners, who don't have rights under the Constitution"

That's not quite right. Even aliens not lawfully admitted into the US have rights under the constitution (e.g., they have a right to a removal hearing under the due process clause of the 14th A.). Aliens outside the US, however, do not have rights under the US Constitution.

FISA, on the other hand, requires warrants only with respect to electronic surveillance of "US persons," defined as US citizens and lawful permanent residents (LPRs). See 50 USC 1801(i) (defining "US person") and 1801(f)(1) (defining "electronic surveillance" as "the acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire or radio communication sent by or intended to be received by a particular, known United States person who is in the United States").

So under the existing statutory regime, no warrant is required to conduct electronic surveillance of communications between non-LPR aliens within (and without) the US, so long as such surveillance is "reasonable" under the 4th A.

This is total BS. They want to continue their slight of hand. We the People want the court in session. We want to know the extent of their underhanded ways. Nothing less.

Jeff in Texas says: The temptations and possible Constitutional violations of such a program are impossible to overstate. Because, after all, none of this intercepted info would ever have to come into court, because it would merely be a jumping off point to get evidence or damaging info that would be admissible, either in court or in the court of public opinion. There is no "fruit of the poison tree" if the poison tree itself is top secret and unknown to all but a few.

Interesting you should raise that possibility. Courts have permitted the use of evidence intercepted during a wire-tapping operation pursuant to a lawfully-executed FISA warrant, even though the criminal case was unrelated to the FISA operation (if I remember correctly, the criminal case involved a child murdered by her parents). But I think the fruit of the posonous tree doctrine would prevent the use of info collected unlawfully--any good defense lawyer would demand to know the origin of the tip that led to the evidence implicating her client. If the govt refused to give that info, the evidence would not be admissible under current case law.

But I am with you. Any amendements to FISA should require the exclusion of evidence of run of the mill crimes.

LOOK, everybody, read the post of August 3, 2007 11:05 AM.

This is extremely important—perhaps one of the most intiguing posts I've read on tpm.

The Admiral, like the rest of Mr. Bush's administration, does not understand:

YOU DO NOT "HAVE" THE CONFIDENCE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. . . . . what in the world would make any of you think that you're anything other than 'dressed up' crooks/liars/bums?

Posted by:
Date: August 3, 2007 11:05 AM

If communications can be stored they can be modified as well.

Total Information Awareness.

Spencer,

Well. as someone whom is very familer with the FISA court, and history, of the add on's, I would say the "Jay Rockefeller compromise," is too long with out court reveiw. 30 days should be sufficent./\

That said I am more concerned who has access to the "dictionary" of the information collected during the sixty days.

Please ecuse occaisional miss spellings. Lets say a former retired "worker" is in Canada" writing a book/\screenplay project, does thast constitute over seas"?/\clearly "workers former and current need monitoring/:" so how is this accomplished when last form signerd is Air force form 398 from the 70's?><\

EOF

Willy Bova\/

Pat this McConnell guy on the head, tell him "thanks for your input, we'll keep it under advisement."

Then make any provisions requiring the DOJ to be involved *in any way* contingent upon the current, tainted AG stepping down, and effective only upon confirmation by the Senate of his successor.

This isn't a game of "Go Fish", Admiral, Congress gets to see all the cards...

It's called a Constitution...

Austin, you're right! And we cannot discount that one iota. It is entirely consistent with this bunch to farm everything out. Rove himself was making a lot of money out of such companies (I believe you can find the data on Mrs P's blog).

That - and the purposes to which this could be put. Not just the gathering. But blackmail, threats, intimidation, releasing of info, disinformation. We cannot rule anything out when we're dealing with rove/cheney/gonzo et al.

Glad to have you on board here! Well, actually it's not really fun on board here. But glad you're a fellow traveler.

714Day. If you've got time, help us out:

Project for Constitutional Compliance

Despite Pandora's box being open and reaping the whirlwind and all.... anon shows us the way. And it continues to provide hope.