We Have No Privacy, We Are Always Being Watched.

Senators: End Secret Law
Bipartisan Group of Senators Introduce Bill to Declassify FISA Court Opinions
June 11, 2013

Washington, DC - Today, Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), accompanied by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Dean Heller (R-NV), Mark Begich (D-AK), Al Franken (D-MN), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR), introduced a bill that would put an end to the “secret law” governing controversial government surveillance programs. This bill would require the Attorney General to declassify significant Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinions, allowing Americans to know how broad of a legal authority the government is claiming to spy on Americans under the PATRIOT Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“Americans deserve to know how much information about their private communications the government believes it’s allowed to take under the law,” Merkley said. “There is plenty of room to have this debate without compromising our surveillance sources or methods or tipping our hand to our enemies. We can’t have a serious debate about how much surveillance of Americans’ communications should be permitted without ending secret law.”

“This bipartisan amendment establishes a cautious and reasonable process for declassification consistent with the rule of law,” Lee said. “It will help ensure that the government makes sensitive decisions related to surveillance by applying legal standards that are known to the public. Particularly where our civil liberties are at stake, we must demand no less of our government.”

"For years, I have pressed for information about the business records program authorized by the PATRIOT Act to be declassified,” Leahy said. “I am proud to join in this bipartisan legislative effort to increase openness and transparency so that we can shed further light on the business records program authorized by this law."

“Of course, ensuring Americans’ safety is one of our government’s most important responsibilities, but there is a careful balance between protecting Americans and honoring the Fourth Amendment,” Heller said. “This legislation is a measured approach that will bring more transparency to the FISA court and respect the American people’s right to know how and when the government may be accessing their personal information.”

"I remain deeply concerned over the reports of the government obtaining millions of Americans phone records. I’m pleased to co-sponsor this bill because we need greater transparency and accountability in our government to prevent overreach and to protect against an invasion of Americans’ privacy,” Begich said. “In the coming weeks I will continue to push for a better balance between protecting our safety and protecting our Constitutional rights.”

“There needs to be a balance between Americans’ right to privacy and the government’s responsibility to keep Americans safe,” Franken said. “And ensuring that the court overseeing surveillance programs is as transparent as possible is a key step toward reaching that balance. This legislation will help make the process more open to the American people and to the people of Minnesota.”

“We must find the right balance between protecting our nation and protecting the civil liberties that make America the greatest country in the world,” Tester said. “This bill will help Congress do a better job securing that balance, while maintaining the rights guaranteed to all Americans in the Fourth Amendment.”

“It is impossible for the American people to have an informed public debate about laws that are interpreted, enforced, and adjudicated in complete secrecy,” Wyden said. "When talking about the laws governing Intelligence operations, the process has little to no transparency. Declassifying FISA Court opinions in a form that does not put sources and methods at risk will give the American people insight into what government officials believe the law allows them to do.”

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) is a special U.S. federal court tasked with authorizing requests for surveillance both inside and outside the United States. Because of the sensitive nature of these requests, the FISC is a “secret court.” The FISC rulings, orders, and other deliberations are highly classified. The Court’s rulings can include substantive interpretations of the law that could be quite different from a plain reading of the law passed by Congress, and such interpretations determine the extent of the government’s surveillance authority. There is certainly information included in the Court’s orders and rulings that is necessarily classified, related to the sources and methods of collection used by intelligence agencies. However, the substantive legal interpretations of what the FISC says the law means should be made public.

This legislation would accommodate national security concerns. If the Attorney General determines that a Court opinion cannot be declassified without undermining national security interests, then the Attorney General can declassify a summary of the opinion. If the Attorney General determines that even a summary of an opinion would undermine national security, the Attorney General is required to provide a report to Congress describing the process to be implemented to declassify FISA Court opinions including an estimate of the number of opinions that will be declassified and the number that are expected to be withheld because of national security concerns.

Last December, Senator Merkley offered this bill as an amendment to the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. The amendment would have covered declassification of rulings related to the provisions used to authorize the controversial Verizon telephone records metadata collection and the PRISM program collecting information from tech companies, both of which were disclosed last week. Thirty-seven senators supported the effort.

On Saturday, the New York Times editorial board endorsed the Senators’ efforts to declassify the opinions, saying, ”Congress should … require the court to be more public about its decisions.” The bill is also endorsed by the American Association of Law Libraries, The Constitution Project, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), CREDO Mobile and OpenTheGovernment.org.

http://www.merkley.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/?id=5D5997D9-4BA1-46C3-BA86-D208EC82A31E

The New York Times
June 18, 2013
Details on Spying, Not More Assurances
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Battered by weeks of criticism about surveillance abuses, President Obama has embarked on a reassurance offensive. The spy programs have been used narrowly, he said on PBS’s “Charlie Rose” program on Monday, and have been effective in stopping several terror plots.

He promised to press for more declassification of intelligence work, and he said he would energize a dormant civil liberties board. Despite all the existing oversight, he said, “the public may not fully know, and that can make the public kind of nervous, right?”

The president is right that many Americans are nervous about what they have recently learned, and his assurances will have to go much further to allay those fears. His promises lacked specificity, and some of his descriptions of domestic spy work verged on the misleading.

Mr. Obama said that no phone or Internet conversation can be monitored without a warrant from the court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Asked whether that process should be more transparent, Mr. Obama responded with this astonishing statement: “It is transparent, that’s why we set up the FISA court.”

Perhaps the court is transparent to him and the intelligence agencies, but it is utterly opaque to the public. All decisions by the court are top secret. The court has refused to release its interpretations of federal law, even in summary form, and without identifying details.

If the president is serious about declassifying some secrets, he should have said he would start with the court. And at the top of the list should be its opinion that broadened the Patriot Act to allow the collection of every phone record, a power that surprised even the Republican lawmakers who wrote the act. The opinion is the subject of a federal lawsuit, and the Obama administration has fought its release. Mr. Obama should publicly support a bill, sponsored by a bipartisan group of at least eight senators, that would require the court’s opinions to be made public.

The president acknowledged that the vast collection of call records “has enormous potential for abuse,” but he promised that it wasn’t being used to spy on innocent citizens. But, if that’s the case, why not promise to end the mass collection, acquiring records only in cases of suspicion? It doesn’t seem particularly effective as it is. At a hearing on Tuesday, Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, said that 90 percent of the foiled terror plots were found through requests for Internet traffic, not through the call records.

Mr. Obama didn’t mention that he waited three years to name a full slate to the civil liberties board; Republicans delayed it by another year. The board is now up and running, but its recommendations won’t mean anything unless the president is willing to break free of the secretive intelligence world and stand for real transparency.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/opinion/details-on-spying-not-more-assurances.html?hp

But that wasn't a high enough body count for you, was it? Not enough people injured and maimed to satisfy you?

Your "foreign route" for sending your internet traffic only makes it possible for US services to get their intel about you from other countries.

An that is enough to throw the bill of rights away in your opinion?

American people are ******* STUPID!

American people are ******* STUPID!

Does the Bush/Cheney administration still have "any credibility at all" now? That's the "government" you're talking about.

Several officials said the judges on the largely-secret court rigorously examine applications for surveillance and often insist on changes, even though the court almost always approves them in the end.

No one has thrown the Bill of Rights away.

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/02/surveillance-state-unchecked-secret-spy-court-rejected-zero-requests-in-2012/

The report, signed off on by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik, indicates:

During calendar year 2012, the Government made 1,856 applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (the “FISC”) for authority to conduct electronic surveillance and/or physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes. The 1,856 applications include applications made solely for electronic surveillance, applications made solely for physical search and combined applications requesting authority for electronic surveillance and physical search. Of these, 1,789 applications included requests for authority to conduct electronic surveillance.

Of these 1,789 applications, one was withdrawn by the Government. The FISC did not deny any applications in whole or in part. The FISC made modifications to the proposed orders in 40 applications. Thus, the FISC approved collection activity in a total of 1,788 of the applications that included requests for authority to conduct electronic surveillance.

You do realize that includes you, BillRM

They are already making moves in the Senate to address that issue of the secret court. That's the bi-partisan Bill that was just introduced. They want more information on the secret court's rulings declassified.

We will see what come out of it ...

Pay more attention to how the government responds now.

government claims are of course worthless on their own.

As are yours.

American people are ******* STUPID!

You do realize that includes you, BillRM.

You're not coming up with any concerns that other people haven't thought about--and thought about in considerably more depth than you do.

Senator Connie Mack
517 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C.
20510


Dear Senator Mack:

Enclose in this letter you will find a 3.5 disk containing a program
so dangerous that the power of the federal government,by way of a
California Federal Grand Jury, is threatening to come down on the author
Mr. Philip Zimmermann [please see attach letter from Prof. Miller].

The name of the program is PGP, standing for Petty Good Privacy, and
it allow the public to protect the privacy of their electronic mail
and computer files in general from even the government!

I know that like me you trust the federal government agents completely
and if you encode your computer files at all you will only use the
government new clipper chips that the government agents can read at
will. Did I hear the words Hoover, watergate etc? No that all in the
past and we would be better off if the government have a copy of all
our keys and our safe combinations and we should only be allow to mail
our letters on post cards in the future.

There is one little problem that even after we hang Mr. Zimmermann and
burn all the millions of copies of PGP floating around the country will
not be solve. Number one there are more "free countries" in the
world that do not so rightly fear their people having a right to
privacy, fool that they are. We must check all communication between
those countries and our, or better yet cut off all communication so no
such programs as PGP can enter the USA.

There are million or so people able to produce programs like PGP in
this county and they should have their computers taken away from them.
All computer programming courses should be ended.

Yes, it will be hard but we can stop our citizens from having privacy
from our wonderful government!

All the above aside, the government should get off Mr. Zimmermann
back, no later then yesterday and congress should put an end to blocks
on our right to privacy. Oh and stop wasting money on such junk, as the
clipper chip.

My public key is included on the disk, so if any one wish to send
me private mail by way of internet, you may do so. My internet address