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Surveillance Bills up for Votes Today
Smell that in the air? It's the bouquet of communications wafting from sender to recipient outside of a wire. E-mail. Skype. That one with the hint of oak? VOIP.
Today's a huge day for the future of the U.S.'s surveillance laws. The Senate Judiciary Committee marks up the intelligence committee's surveillance bill -- which mostly has the support of the White House -- while the House reintroduces the Restore Act. Both bills attempt, to varying degrees, to roll back or amend the Bush administration's Protect America Act. That law, enacted in August, largely removed the FISA Court from government surveillance of foreign-to-domestic communication.
In the Senate, Rep. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) will attempt to enhance the minimization provisions of the so-called FISA Amendments Act -- which protect the anonymity of U.S. persons swept up in a surveillance net -- and clarify that any surveillance in the U.S. outside of FISA is illegal. Those two changes don't impact the bill's major provisions: 1) removing the FISA Court from the process or 2) granting retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies for participation in the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program. Yet the White House still opposes them. New Attorney General Michael Mukasey urged President Bush to veto the bill if Leahy's changes are enacted.
In other words, the White House is keeping to a maximalist strategy on the surveillance front, opposing anything that deviates substantively from its bill. Not surprisingly, civil libertarians are standing their ground in response. Yesterday, the Center for National Security Studies sent a letter to the judiciary committee opposing the Senate intelligence committee's bill as it is now:
The [FISA Amendments Act] authorizes much broader warrantless surveillance authority than is justified by the national security concerns. The administration has identified two concerns: (1) that changes in technology have meant that foreign to foreign communications being intercepted in the U.S. have become subject to FISA requirements and (2) that it is not always possible to know where the recipient or sender of a communication is located, especially on e-mail. They also claim that NSA surveillance is key to preventing future terrorist attacks. However, the scope of the FAA is much broader than is necessary to address these concerns. It authorizes warrantless surveillance of international communications by Americans even when it is known that the communications are with Americans in the U.S. And it is not limited to surveillance to protect against terrorist attacks, but authorizes warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international communications in an extremely broad range of circumstances, whenever gathering “foreign intelligence information” – defined very broadly - is the objective.
The CNSS split with the ACLU over the House's Restore Act last month, but on the FAA, they're on the same page.
In the House, legislative chicanery stopped the Restore Act from moving forward last month. But the House is back in the saddle today. The administration isn't too fond of the bill, as it has some role for the FISA Court at the beginning of the surveillance process, and it doesn't include telecom immunity. We'll see whether the House GOP is able to stop it from moving forward for the second time.
Comments (6)
jimjazz wrote on November 15, 2007 11:44 AM:Gonzales II from now till january '09. Remember that, Feinstein and Schumer. So much for assurances. Mukasey has already lied.
SocraticGadfly wrote on November 15, 2007 1:08 PM:That's the Mukasey that Harry Reid traded for military pork! That's our Majority Leader!
Dennis A. Rice wrote on November 15, 2007 1:08 PM:Americans are well aware that the leadership of the Democratic party, via its approval of Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General, has now guaranteed that there will be no worthwhile investigations of illegal telecom spying on Americans, nor anyone held responsible for the fiasco of the Iraq war, what led up to it, nor the war crimes committed in the name of the American people.
When all is said and done, protecting the wrong doings of the Bush administration and the leadership of the two political parties was what Mukasey's appointment was all about in the first place.
If another nation tried to impose on us what our own government is imposing, we would all go to war.
John Farina wrote on November 15, 2007 2:31 PM:This is terminal to inquiry and indictment, as Dennis Rice has posted; the Dems and Republicans seem on the whole to be dancing to the same tune, with rare exception. It is obvious we have lost our country to power structures long ago concentrated when corporations were fraudulently deemed to be defined, in 1878, as "natural persons" under the Constitution, allowing them to lobby the Government.
The brilliant writing of Sydney Blumenthal in Salon.com, pointedly concluded yesterday, has shown what the inevitable results can be when George Bush, or any person dedicated to corporate supremacy, attains the post of President and furthers the cause of absolute power in the hands of a few. President Bush has played his hand brilliantly, and every single thing he does reinforces his position as an absolute leader with permanent extraordinary powers. The appointment of Mukasey serves to guarantee the gains that proponents of a unitary executive have achieved. Absent an educated, wisely perceptive American citizenry opposed to such destruction of our Constitution, nothing can or will be done.
We will not have opposition nor an uprising by such an ill informed citizenry, as a great proportion of Americans want a simplified, vengeance based and conformist society surrounding them so they need not take personal responsibility for their own existence, nor be required to look upon the abyss within, as all evolving humans must. Compounding the problem is the fact that our Representatives and Senators (especially) have been bought and paid for, and are no longer accessible by the Citizens of this Nation.
Until all corporate money is prohibited from interacting with Government; until it is a felony for corporations or their lobbyist and trade groups to contribute to campaigns; until lobbying the Government is restored specifically and uniquely to natural humans - as individuals - as it was at the writing of the Constitution, this government of the people, by the people and for the people shall perish from this Earth. Other than total awareness of this issue, there is nothing that can or will be done.
Absent a strong showing by a Constitutionally faithful Hillary Clinton, that most adept of politicians, or even a Ron Paul, all will be lost. I am already making plans to abandon this sinking ship in the event it falls into the hands of further madmen. I will watch as the Chinese and Indian and European populations walk in and remove what is left of this carcass. As Rome fell so too will America, and for the same reasons.
TheraP wrote on November 15, 2007 4:05 PM:Beautiful post, John Farina! Well said.
melior wrote on November 15, 2007 10:42 PM:As I understand it, if Bush vetoes this then the PAA expires. Call his bluff!
And remove the retroactive get-out-of-jail-free card for AT&T.