America... Spying on Americans

Two-thirds is a good round number As in, nearly two-thirds of those Americans polled who think the NSA monitoring policy is okay.

JustWonders wrote:

Two-thirds is a good round number As in, nearly two-thirds of those Americans polled who think the NSA monitoring policy is okay.

Note the way the question was worded. I think NSA monitoring of foreign powers is just fine so I am in that 2/3. I think it is ILLEGAL to monitor US persons.

Your argument isn't much of an argument at all JW since it doesn't address the issue of monitoring US persons.

"I think when you suggest that civil liberties are just as much at risk today as the country is from terrorism, you've gone too far if you leave that impression. I don't believe that's true," said Michael O'Hanlon, a national-security analyst at the Brookings Institution who advises Democrats on defense issues. ...

It is both the "how" and the "what" that bothers me.

1. I'm disturbed by what I view as an end-run around the law. Not for the first time, Bush and his administration have sought a way around an inconvenient law instead of upholding the law. That bothers me on a lot of levels.

2. I'm not claiming there are no hypothetical circumstances under which one might need to break the law in order to save lives.

But wiretapping?

Here's my assumptions:
A. They are getting warrants through FISA for any wiretap for which they have a really solid lead.
B. They can't tap every conversation.
C. Their translators (by all reports) are swamped.

What follows from that is that they've got poor or non-existent leads for these warrantless wiretaps; and that if the targets don't speak a popular language then the wiretap is useless anyway. How much good can they actually be accomplishing?

So the Bush administration/NSA has trampled over the rights of people in the US, for no practical gain.

3. Now, even if they could capture and accurately translate every conversation I'd oppose it on general principles. We don't support that kind of activity for fighting domestic crime. Why should we support that activity just because we have a magic label to apply?

JustWonders wrote:

Two-thirds is a good round number As in, nearly two-thirds of those Americans polled who think the NSA monitoring policy is okay.

Note the way the question was worded. I think NSA monitoring of foreign powers is just fine so I am in that 2/3. I think it is ILLEGAL to monitor US persons.

Your argument isn't much of an argument at all JW since it doesn't address the issue of monitoring US persons.

parados wrote:

JustWonders wrote:

Two-thirds is a good round number As in, nearly two-thirds of those Americans polled who think the NSA monitoring policy is okay.

Note the way the question was worded. I think NSA monitoring of foreign powers is just fine so I am in that 2/3. I think it is ILLEGAL to monitor US persons.

Your argument isn't much of an argument at all JW since it doesn't address the issue of monitoring US persons.

What if monitoring that foreign power means monitoring US citizens?
I have called several foreign embassies,looking for some information.
Should my calls be deleted if the govt was monitoring those embassies?

Ticomaya wrote:

kuvasz: Next time why don't you save yourself some time and just post a link to Jack Balkin's blog entry?

oh, those stone casters who live in glass houses.

part of an earlier post, esp. the court transcript of the youngstown case came from that site, and it was referencing Youngstown specifically with executive branch allowances for torture i thought, not FISA.

actually the FISA tie-in was mostly from http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/12/inherent-authority-to-violate-federal.html

and oddly, i found almost verbatim commentary posts you have made here mysteriously appear on another site from which was gleaned additional data in a series of posts from glenn greenwald's site.

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/

one of the series of essays on the issue anyway.

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/bushs-unchecked-executive-power-v.html

so, you might also wish to post the reference links from which you get your own talking points.

Several lawmakers have demanded hearings into the NSA surveillance while others have also said the leak itself is a serious breach.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and one of the members briefed by the administration about the surveillance plan, expressed deep reservations about the program to the vice president in 2003. But he said he also would like hearings into whom leaked the story to reporters at the Times.

Reps. Peter Hoekstra and Jane Harman, the chairman and ranking Democrat, respectively, on the House Intelligence Committee, also condemned the leak, saying it hurt national security.

While Harman, of California, said she believes broader oversight is needed of the NSA program, "its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities."

"These politically motivated leaks must stop," Hoekstra, of Michigan, said in a statement.

A leak investigation could have taken at least two forms: through normal channels within the Justice Department or through a special task force. The investigation could focus on individuals in the media or the government.

Ronald Cass, a legal scholar and former dean of the Boston University School of Law, told FOX News that special investigations can be distractions, and too much pressure will be put on bringing back an indictment.

"It's better to leave these matters in the hands of the Justice Department; let them handle it through the ordinary course," Cass said.

But a special prosecution might be needed to speed up the process, said Edward Turzanski, a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a national security analyst at La Salle University.

"We've reached a critical mass," Turzanski told FOX News. "There's too much damage to our national security capabilities, to critical information and to the war-fighting effort. And that is where this urgency comes in."

Devine said at least two laws protect a potential leak source. One is a so-called anti-gag statute that prevents the government from spending money on a leak investigation unless it specifically warned the employee that its gag rules cannot trump good-government laws.

The leak also could be legal if the Whistleblower Protection Act covers it, Devine said, as long as the leaker was not in the FBI, CIA or NSA, which aren't covered by the act. For instance, a civilian Pentagon employee who wanted to expose government wrongdoing would have free speech protections to expose abuses of power or illegal actions.

The laws don't apply to public disclosure of classified information, Devine said, but a government worker could tell an inspector general if wrong-doing involving classified information has occurred. Because it's not yet known if classified information was given to reporters, there's no telling yet if that's a problem in this case.

So far, though, Devine said he thinks everything he's seen published so far is safe from prosecution. "This has been apple pie, protected speech," he said.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, told FOXNews.com undoubtedly the Times story was enabled by a leak. But noting the ongoing investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson's identity, he said politicians will have a hard time meeting the burden of proof of criminality in a leak.

"There's a difference between a leak that that violates, or might violate a specific law against outing an individual who's undercover or whose identity is classified, and an investigation into the more general kind of leaking about operations policies, that goes on, frankly, every day in this town," Rosenstiel said.

Because of that, Washington's press corp doesn't appear to be greatly concerned. But Rosenstiel said it doesn't mean journalists should forget about the ethics of revealing secretive or sensitive information.

Rosenstiel stopped short of saying whether the Times should have run the story; rather, he said, those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis that changes not only by the story but by the people running the newsroom. The Times has said it held the story for a year after the administration told editors it could harm national security

"There is no perfect equation," Rosenstiel said. "We want journalists to be parsing out and not just publishing everything they take in. ... If you're just putting everything you know in the newspaper ... then you're not doing your job."

Georgetown University constitutional law professor Peter Rubin said he hasn't seen anything in the stories that gives terrorists additional information about government operations. It's widely known, he said, that the United States can spy on people via wiretaps without letting the subject of the wiretap know beforehand ?- that's the purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Rubin noted that illegally putting out classified information is still a crime. But regardless of any investigation, he said he thinks that the general public is better off now than it was before the story about domestic spying broke.

"It seems obvious that they're better off by having this story in front of them," Rubin said.

He said the NSA program is "a dramatic step of spying on American citizens in the United States. I think most people were very surprised to hear it," including lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

"That suggests a level of gravity of this," Rubin said. The government has not said who has been the subject of eavesdropping, but that it may have involved American citizens.

Should be entertaining. You wanna go first? (I don't have time right now or I would.)

Since there is no mandate saying who the oversight committee must be,why cant the branch of govt charged with the wiretaps set their own oversight comittee?

If the FISA systems needs to be expanded, all Bush had to do was make the request to congress based on good, justifiable reasons. He ignored FISA, and broke the law.

Quote:

Since there is no mandate saying who the oversight committee must be,why cant the branch of govt charged with the wiretaps set their own oversight comittee?

Because it is directly against the framer's intent of stationing a neutral party inbetween an agent of the governement and his target, in order to ensure the governement does not overreach its legal bounds. They didn't trust the government, and neither should you; there is too much room for individual failure.

The NSA is not a neutral party, they are directly controlled/controllable by the executive branch. Therefore they are, by the Framers' definition, not 'neutral' and cannot be trusted to make neutral decisions. Nor are they responsible to anyone if the wrong decision is made, and it hurts civil rights.

An oversight committee controlled by the same administration who wanted illegal taps in the first place is worse than useless. It directly undercuts one of the basic tenets of our constitution, namely, that an impartial party be placed between an agent of the state and his target.

Cycloptichorn

why cant the branch of govt charged with the wiretaps set their own oversight comittee?

mysteryman wrote:

why cant the branch of govt charged with the wiretaps set their own oversight comittee?

You can't figure that out?