Saturday, April 01, 2006
The President's "good faith" defense
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By Anonymous Liberal
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In its article covering Friday's censure hearing, the New York Times reports:
Quote:Several Republicans argued that whatever the legal status of the spying program, it did not deserve punishment because, unlike Nixon, Mr. Bush had acted in good faith.
"This is apples and oranges," Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told Mr. Dean. "Anybody who believes that Richard Nixon was relying on some inherent-authority argument is recreating history."
Oh really. Here's a passage from the same 1969 Time Magazine article Glenn highlighted yesterday:
Quote:If anything, the Nixon Administration has been less than apologetic about the practice. Last month, in a memorandum filed during the Chicago trial of eight men charged with conspiring to incite acts of violence during the Democratic National Convention, the Justice Department claimed the inherent right to bug or wiretap-without court orders-any time it felt that the "national security" was in jeopardy.
As authority for this broad power, the Government cited the President's oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" from domestic subversion as well as foreign enemies. Contending that every President since Franklin Roosevelt had permitted such wiretaps, the Government went on to imply that they were even more important now because of the growing violence and rioting in the nation's cities and on its campuses.
Not only did Nixon rely on an inherent authority argument, but he had an infinitely stronger case because Congress had not yet passed FISA. Nice try, though, Senator Graham.
I also want to take a moment to address the emerging "good faith" defense of the President, which is being advanced by Republicans like Senators Graham and Specter who are clearly skeptical of the NSA program's legality. The argument seems to be that while Bush may have acted illegally, he did so based on a good faith belief that his actions were legal, and therefore he does not deserve harsh criticism or Congressional sanction.
I can see why Republicans like Graham and Specter have gravitated toward this argument. It allows them to express their genuine skepticism about the legality of the program without having to criticize the President for authorizing it.
But there's a major problem. Everything the administration has done for the past four and a half years indicates that it does NOT have a good faith believe in its own legal arguments. If Bush administration officials had any confidence whatsoever in their legal theories, they could at any point seek judicial blessing of the NSA program. All they would have to do is try to introduce evidence obtained via warrantless surveillance in court, either in a criminal prosecution or in an application for a FISA warrant. Either move would force the court to address the legality of the NSA program. In the latter context, the administration would have the benefit of being able to present its case ex parte and in secret.
But they are unwilling to do this, and for one simple reason: they are pretty certain they will lose. This paragraph from a U.S. News & World Report story last week is particularly revealing:
Quote:White House lawyers, in particular, Vice President Cheney's counsel David Addington (who is now Cheney's chief of staff), pressed Mueller to use information from the NSA program in court cases, without disclosing the origin of the information, and told Mueller to be prepared to drop prosecutions if judges demanded to know the sourcing, according to several government officials.
So they were willing to deceive judges and to drop entire prosecutions rather than test their legal theories in court. If that's not good faith, what is? The article goes on to make the obvious point:
Quote:[John] Martin, who has handled more intelligence-oriented criminal cases than anyone else at the Justice Department, puts the issue in stark terms: "The failure to allow it [information obtained from warrantless surveillance] to be used in court is a concession that it is an illegal surveillance."
But that's not the only evidence that the administration doesn't have much confidence in its own legal theories. The administration has worked feverishly to scuttle any further investigation into its activities and to challenge the standing of litigants (like the ACLU) who have sought to have the legality of the NSA program adjudicated in court.
And, perhaps most glaringly of all, there's the fact that the administration's primary legal argument was apparently conceived years after the program was first authorized. It's pretty hard to have a good faith belief in the merits of an argument you haven't even thought up yet. The administration is so confident in the merits of its legal theories that it won't even release the relevant OLC legal opinions, despite repeated requests.
No, despite what "several Republicans" argue, this administration does not and has never had a good faith belief that its legal theories will prevail in court.
But, you may protest, perhaps Bush did have a good faith believe that his actions would help prevent terrorism, even if he knew they were probably illegal. Isn't this a mitigating factor? Sure, if it's true. And for all I know it is. But there are two points we must not lose sight of.
First, because this surveillance is taking place in secret and without judicial review, we have no way of knowing who is actually being spied upon and why. We must simply take the administration's word. But history has shown that a president's word isn't worth a whole lot in this area. Surveillance authority was abused not only by the Nixon administration, but by his Democratic predecessors. The whole point of FISA was so we wouldn't have to take the president's word anymore. Even if you trust Bush to use this power only on terrorists and never on anyone else, can you really say the same about all future presidents?
Second, even if Bush's motives are as pure as the driven snow, it doesn't justify knowingly violating the law, at least outside of very extreme and short-term emergency scenarios. The viability of our system of constitutional government depends on the willingness of our leaders, particularly the president, to take seriously the concepts of separation of powers and checks and balances embodied in our Constitution. Subverting these concepts is dangerous. AsJohn Dean said at Friday's hearing:
Quote:
I must add that never before have I felt the slightest reason to fear our government. Nor do I frighten easily. But I do fear the Bush/Cheney government (and the precedents they are creating) because this administration is caught up in the rectitude of its own self-righteousness, and for all practical purposes this presidency has remained largely unchecked by its constitutional coequals.
Amen to that.
posted by Glenn Greenwald | 8:00 AM
What the FISA judges really said
Yesterday the Washington Times published an article with the headline: "FISA judges say Bush within law." The article, by Brian DeBose, reported:
A panel of former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges yesterday told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that President Bush did not act illegally when he created by executive order a wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).
Bush's defenders wasted no time jumping to the conclusion that Bush had been vindicated and all this talk of FISA and illegality was utter nonsense. One small problem: the article is complete and utter rubbish. . . .
The transcript of the hearing--which is very long--is only available via subscription, so you're going to have to take my word for now. A total of five judges testified in person, and one submitted written testimony. All of the judges made it crystal clear that they had no intention of opining on the legality of the NSA program ("we will not be testifying today with regard to the present program implemented by President Bush"). The judges were there to testify about FISA and about the merits of Sen. Specter's proposed legislation to amend FISA.
The bulk of the testimony by the judges was in praise of FISA and in praise of Specter's proposed bill (which is clearly why Specter called them to testify in the first place). Although the judges were careful not to opine about the NSA program specifically, it was clear from their testimony that they believe further Congressional authorization is necessary and desirable and that the judiciary has an important and indispensable role to play in overseeing domestic surveillance.
Their agenda, to the extent they had one, was to lobby for the continued relevance of the FISA court. If the DeWine bill passes, the FISA court will be utterly marginalized. These judges realize that some sort of legislation is likely to be passed, and they'd undoubtedly prefer something along the lines of Specter's bill, which would at least require the court to approve surveillance on a program-wide level.
I can assure you, though, that at no point did any of the judges come anywhere close to saying that the president "did not act illegally" or that he acted "within the law" when he authorized the NSA warrantless surveillance program. So the Washington Times story is complete rubbish. It could not possibly be more misleading. . . .
MSNBC.com
Senior House Republican criticizes Gonzales
Sensenbrenner accuses attorney general of ?'stonewalling' on eavesdropping
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:30 a.m. ET April 6, 2006
WASHINGTON - The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee pointedly criticized Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Thursday for "stonewalling" by refusing to answer questions about the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said Gonzales was frustrating his panel's oversight of the Justice Department and the controversial surveillance by declining to provide information about how the program is reviewed inside the administration and by whom.
"How can we discharge our oversight if, every time we ask a pointed question, we're told the program is classified?" Sensenbrenner asked Gonzales near the start of a lengthy hearing on the department's activities. "I think that ... is stonewalling."
Gonzales did not budge, defending the eavesdropping as lawful and telling Sensenbrenner and other lawmakers on the panel that he would not discuss classified matters.
"I do not think we are thumbing our nose at the Congress or the courts," Gonzales said in response to a question from Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the committee's senior Democrat.
Domestic surveillance defended
President Bush confirmed in December that the National Security Agency has been conducting the surveillance when calls and e-mails in which at least one party is outside the United States are thought to involve al-Qaida. Gonzales has been at the center of the administration's defense of the program in the face of criticism from Congress and civil liberties groups.
Gonzales also would not discount that the president could order the NSA to listen in on purely domestic calls without first obtaining a warrant from a secret court established nearly 30 years ago to consider such issues.
He said the administration, assuming the conversation related to al-Qaida, would have to determine if the surveillance were crucial to the nation's fight against terrorism, as authorized by Congress following the Sept. 11 attacks. "I'm not going to rule it out," Gonzales said.
The attorney general acknowledged that there had been disagreement about the monitoring inside the administration. But he took issue with published reports that detailed some of those disputes.
"They did not relate to the program the president disclosed," he said. "They related to something else and I can't get into that."
In written responses to questions from Congress, the Justice Department last month would discuss disagreements among the departments' attorneys about the program or a Newsweek story about a Justice Department controversy over the program in 2004 that led to a visit from senior White House officials to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in a hospital at the time.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
© 2006 MSNBC.com
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12186313/from/RSS/
Now some Republicans are getting pissed as well. Let's see if they have the balls to push further on this issue.
Gonzales also would not discount that the president could order the NSA to listen in on purely domestic calls without first obtaining a warrant from a secret court established nearly 30 years ago to consider such issues.
Whitman disputed critics' assertions that the program amounted to Pentagon domestic spying, although he declined to state the nature of these entries or the people they involved, saying the database's contents are classified. Whitman stressed that to be properly placed in the database, a threat must have a suspected link to international terrorism.
Under the Talon system, Defense Department civilian and military personnel are asked to report on activities they deem suspicious. These reports go in the Cornerstone database, handled by a Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA.
The review was ordered in December by Stephen Cambone, under secretary of defense for intelligence, after revelations that the database included information on U.S. citizens including peace activists and others who did not represent a genuine security threat.
'SUSPICIOUS'
NBC News and defense analyst William Arkin disclosed at the time a sample of the database containing reports of 1,519 "suspicious incidents" between July 2004 and May 2005, including activities by antiwar and anti-military protesters.
This included a military intelligence unit monitoring a Quaker meeting in Lake Worth, Florida, on plans to protest military recruiting in high schools.
The Pentagon is legally restricted in the types of information it can gather about activities and individuals inside the United States.
NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls
Updated 5/11/2006 12:30 AM ET
By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans ?- most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: The NSA record collection program
"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.
For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made ?- across town or across the country ?- to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.
The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.
The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret.
Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program.
The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop ?- without warrants ?- on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.
In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."
As a result, domestic call records ?- those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders ?- were believed to be private.
Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.
Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, declined to discuss the agency's operations. "Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide," he said. "However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."
The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. "There is no domestic surveillance without court approval," said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping.
She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government "are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists." All government-sponsored intelligence activities "are carefully reviewed and monitored," Perino said. She also noted that "all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States."
The government is collecting "external" data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting "internals," a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for "social network analysis," the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.
Carriers uniquely positioned
AT&T recently merged with SBC and kept the AT&T name. Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T are the nation's three biggest telecommunications companies; they provide local and wireless phone service to more than 200 million customers.
The three carriers control vast networks with the latest communications technologies. They provide an array of services: local and long-distance calling, wireless and high-speed broadband, including video. Their direct access to millions of homes and businesses has them uniquely positioned to help the government keep tabs on the calling habits of Americans.
Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said. According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.
Qwest's refusal to participate has left the NSA with a hole in its database. Based in Denver, Qwest provides local phone service to 14 million customers in 14 states in the West and Northwest. But AT&T and Verizon also provide some services ?- primarily long-distance and wireless ?- to people who live in Qwest's region. Therefore, they can provide the NSA with at least some access in that area.
Created by President Truman in 1952, during the Korean War, the NSA is charged with protecting the United States from foreign security threats. The agency was considered so secret that for years the government refused to even confirm its existence. Government insiders used to joke that NSA stood for "No Such Agency."
In 1975, a congressional investigation revealed that the NSA had been intercepting, without warrants, international communications for more than 20 years at the behest of the CIA and other agencies. The spy campaign, code-named "Shamrock," led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was designed to protect Americans from illegal eavesdropping.
Enacted in 1978, FISA lays out procedures that the U.S. government must follow to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches of people believed to be engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States. A special court, which has 11 members, is responsible for adjudicating requests under FISA.
Over the years, NSA code-cracking techniques have continued to improve along with technology. The agency today is considered expert in the practice of "data mining" ?- sifting through reams of information in search of patterns. Data mining is just one of many tools NSA analysts and mathematicians use to crack codes and track international communications.
Paul Butler, a former U.S. prosecutor who specialized in terrorism crimes, said FISA approval generally isn't necessary for government data-mining operations. "FISA does not prohibit the government from doing data mining," said Butler, now a partner with the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, D.C.
The caveat, he said, is that "personal identifiers" ?- such as names, Social Security numbers and street addresses ?- can't be included as part of the search. "That requires an additional level of probable cause," he said.
The usefulness of the NSA's domestic phone-call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear. Also unclear is whether the database has been used for other purposes.
The NSA's domestic program raises legal questions. Historically, AT&T and the regional phone companies have required law enforcement agencies to present a court order before they would even consider turning over a customer's calling data. Part of that owed to the personality of the old Bell Telephone System, out of which those companies grew.
Ma Bell's bedrock principle ?- protection of the customer ?- guided the company for decades, said Gene Kimmelman, senior public policy director of Consumers Union. "No court order, no customer information ?- period. That's how it was for decades," he said.
The concern for the customer was also based on law: Under Section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies are prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers' calling habits: whom a person calls, how often and what routes those calls take to reach their final destination. Inbound calls, as well as wireless calls, also are covered.
The financial penalties for violating Section 222, one of many privacy reinforcements that have been added to the law over the years, can be stiff. The Federal Communications Commission, the nation's top telecommunications regulatory agency, can levy fines of up to $130,000 per day per violation, with a cap of $1.325 million per violation. The FCC has no hard definition of "violation." In practice, that means a single "violation" could cover one customer or 1 million.
In the case of the NSA's international call-tracking program, Bush signed an executive order allowing the NSA to engage in eavesdropping without a warrant. The president and his representatives have since argued that an executive order was sufficient for the agency to proceed. Some civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, disagree.
Companies approached
The NSA's domestic program began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the sources. Right around that time, they said, NSA representatives approached the nation's biggest telecommunications companies. The agency made an urgent pitch: National security is at risk, and we need your help to protect the country from attacks.
The agency told the companies that it wanted them to turn over their "call-detail records," a complete listing of the calling histories of their millions of customers. In addition, the NSA wanted the carriers to provide updates, which would enable the agency to keep tabs on the nation's calling habits.
The sources said the NSA made clear that it was willing to pay for the cooperation. AT&T, which at the time was headed by C. Michael Armstrong, agreed to help the NSA. So did BellSouth, headed by F. Duane Ackerman; SBC, headed by Ed Whitacre; and Verizon, headed by Ivan Seidenberg.
With that, the NSA's domestic program began in earnest.
AT&T, when asked about the program, replied with a comment prepared for USA TODAY: "We do not comment on matters of national security, except to say that we only assist law enforcement and government agencies charged with protecting national security in strict accordance with the law."
In another prepared comment, BellSouth said: "BellSouth does not provide any confidential customer information to the NSA or any governmental agency without proper legal authority."
Verizon, the USA's No. 2 telecommunications company behind AT&T, gave this statement: "We do not comment on national security matters, we act in full compliance with the law and we are committed to safeguarding our customers' privacy."
Qwest spokesman Robert Charlton said: "We can't talk about this. It's a classified situation."
In December, The New York Times revealed that Bush had authorized the NSA to wiretap, without warrants, international phone calls and e-mails that travel to or from the USA. The following month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T. The lawsuit accuses the company of helping the NSA spy on U.S. phone customers.
Last month, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales alluded to that possibility. Appearing at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Gonzales was asked whether he thought the White House has the legal authority to monitor domestic traffic without a warrant. Gonzales' reply: "I wouldn't rule it out." His comment marked the first time a Bush appointee publicly asserted that the White House might have that authority.
Similarities in programs
The domestic and international call-tracking programs have things in common, according to the sources. Both are being conducted without warrants and without the approval of the FISA court. The Bush administration has argued that FISA's procedures are too slow in some cases. Officials, including Gonzales, also make the case that the USA Patriot Act gives them broad authority to protect the safety of the nation's citizens.
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., would not confirm the existence of the program. In a statement, he said, "I can say generally, however, that our subcommittee has been fully briefed on all aspects of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. ... I remain convinced that the program authorized by the president is lawful and absolutely necessary to protect this nation from future attacks."
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., declined to comment.
One company differs
One major telecommunications company declined to participate in the program: Qwest.
According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order ?- or approval under FISA ?- to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.
Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial.
The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information ?- known as "product" in intelligence circles ?- with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.
The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.
Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.
In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.
Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.
The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.
In June 2002, Nacchio resigned amid allegations that he had misled investors about Qwest's financial health. But Qwest's legal questions about the NSA request remained.
Unable to reach agreement, Nacchio's successor, Richard Notebaert, finally pulled the plug on the NSA talks in late 2004, the sources said.
Contributing: John Diamond
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This article is about the spy network; for other uses see Echelon (disambiguation).
Antenna 4 (through the wire) in former Echelon intelligence gathering station at Silvermine, Cape Peninsula, South Africa.
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Antenna 4 (through the wire) in former Echelon intelligence gathering station at Silvermine, Cape Peninsula, South Africa.
ECHELON is a highly secretive world-wide signals intelligence and analysis network run by the UKUSA Community. [1] ECHELON can capture radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, faxes and e-mails nearly anywhere in the world and includes computer automated analysis and sorting of intercepts. [2] ECHELON is estimated to intercept up to 3 billion communications every day.
If the Dems are against the NSA program, why haven't they tried to shut it down? They are merely playing politics.
Conyers, Harman introduce bill to kill NSA phone call database
05/11/2006 @ 4:13 pm
Filed by RAW STORY
Reps. Jane Harman (D-CA) and John Conyers (D-MI) today introduced the "Lawful Intelligence and Surveillance of Terrorists in an Emergency by NSA Act" (The LISTEN Act), RAW STORY has learned.
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The Act would require any attempt to listen in on Americans or collect telephone or e-mail records to be be conducted in accordance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), or Title III of the criminal code. In both cases, court warrants based on probable cause are required. The Act states that FISA is the exclusive way to conduct electronic surveillance of U.S. persons on U.S. soil for intelligence purposes.
It also explicitly states that the Authorization to Use Military Force, passed by Congress in October 2002, did not constitute authority to engage in electronic surveillance outside of FISA.
According the Representatives, the legislation provides tools to expedite emergency warrant applications, and authorizes funds to incorporate standardization, electronic filing and streamlined review procedures at the NSA and Department of Justice. It also requires the President to ensure that resources are adequate to process warrants, and requires the Administration to comply with FISA at all times.
"We need to know if terrorists are plotting to attack us," said Harman, Ranking Member on the House Intelligence Committee. "But we must never retreat from the principle that every intercept requires a warrant based on probable cause. Since some in the Administration claim the FISA process is antiquated, this bill puts the burden on them to request additional resources."
"It is a sad day when the Congress of the United States must compel the President to abide by the Constitution," said Congressman Conyers, the Ranking Member on the House Committee on the Judiciary. "I regret that we have to legislate once again on an issue that was clearly settled by this Congress nearly 30 years ago in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act."
Congressman Conyers added, "This legislation could not be more timely. Today's USA Today article made clear that the Administration's eavesdropping is larger than anyone imagined and sweeps in the activities of millions of innocent Americans. If this Congress does not rein in the President and his Administration now, there is no telling how far it will go."
But beyond that, when the NSA scandal first broke, the administration's principal political defense was to continuously assure Americans that they were eavesdropping only on international calls, not domestic calls. Many, many Americans do not ever make any international calls, and it was an implicit way of assuring the heartland that the vast bulk of the calls they make - to their Aunt Millie, to arrange Little League practice, to cite just a few of the administration's condescending examples - were not the type of calls being intercepted. The only ones with anything to worry about were the weird and suspect Americans who call overseas to weird and suspect countries. If you're not calling Pakistan or Iran, the Government has no interest in what you're doing.
That has all changed. We now learn that when Americans call their Aunt Millie, or their girlfriend, or their psychiatrist, or their drug counselor, or their priest or rabbi, or their lawyer, or anyone and everyone else, the Government is very interested. In fact, they are so interested that they make note of it and keep it forever, so that at any time, anyone in the Government can look at a record of every single person whom every single American ever called or from whom they received a call. It doesn't take a professional privacy advocate to find that creepy, invasive, dangerous and un-American.
"These are not phone calls within the United States," Bush said. "This is a phone call of an al Qaeda, known al Qaeda suspect, making a phone call into the United States.
It's truly unbelievable, yet unbelievably true, that we live in such times. When I was growing up, the things we do today - torture, spying on our own citizens, lying about evidence for war - was what we accused the Communists of. It was what seperated us, from them; not just our financial success, but our moral success. That's all gone, now. I wonder what our kids are learning from all this?The NSA has your number
This sounds like a vast and unchecked intrusion on privacy
Published May 11, 2006
The National Security Agency has been amassing a vast, secret database with records of tens of millions of telephone calls made by Americans, USA Today reported on Thursday. Telephone companies started to turn over records of millions of their customers' phone calls not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The government has created the largest database ever assembled, according to an anonymous source quoted by the newspaper.
The government apparently has even bigger plans "to create a database of every call ever made within the nation's borders" to identify and track suspected terrorists.
Think about that. Every phone call ever made.
No, not so fast.
This sounds like a vast and unchecked intrusion on privacy. President Bush's assurance Thursday that the privacy of Americans was being "fiercely protected" was not at all convincing.
We need to know more about this. The government, though, didn't offer confirmation or elaboration on Thursday. Based on the newspaper's reporting, this effort appears to go far beyond any surveillance effort that would be targeted at terrorist operations.
At first blush this program carries troubling echoes of Total Information Awareness, a proposed Defense Department "data-mining" expedition into a mass of personal information on individuals' driver's licenses, passports, credit card purchases, car rentals, medical prescriptions, banking transactions and more. That was curbed by Congress after a public outcry. It seems the people who wanted to bring you TIA didn't get the message.
This program seems to be far broader than the NSA surveillance of communications between the U.S. and overseas, which prompted great concern when it was revealed last December. Though that program is more intrusive-it involves eavesdropping on conversations-it is at least focused on communications between people in the U.S. and people abroad who are suspected of being connected to terrorism.
That overseas surveillance effort, this page has argued, could be justified and extended if it included some modest judicial oversight.
But this vast mining of domestic phone records this is something else.
Alarmed members of Congress demanded answers on Thursday. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would summon the phone companies providing the information-AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth-for a hearing. ``We're really flying blind on the subject [of domestic surveillance] and that's not a good way to approach the Fourth Amendment and the constitutional issues involving privacy,'' Specter said.
Yes, we're flying blind.
Why would the government seek and store records of every telephone call to your doctor, your lawyer, your next door neighbor?
Tell us.
Leahey is demandinfg that the Senate get Gonzalez in front of the committee to testify under oath. This is big. Really big. With Specter signing on to this, perhaps, we will finally get the truth.
As the Republicans cut loose Nixon (finally) we might see history repeating itself.
FUN WITH SURVEILLANCE. Turns out the NSA, with the collaboration of every phone company except Qwest, is monitoring all of our calls -- not to listen in to what's being said, but simply to gather data about the calls and draw inferences from that. It's important to link this up to the broader chain. One thing the Bush administration says it can do with this meta-data is to start tapping your calls and listening in, without getting a warrant from anyone. Having listened in on your calls, the administration asserts that if it doesn't like what it hears, it has the authority to detain you indefinitely without trial or charges, torture you until you confess or implicate others, extradite you to a Third World country to be tortured, ship you to a secret prison facility in Eastern Europe, or all of the above. If, having kidnapped and tortured you, the administration determines you were innocent after all, you'll be dumped without papers somewhere in Albania left to fend for yourself.
Once you start in with this business, it's a widening cycle of lawlessness with almost endless possibilities for abuse. Tellingly, the reason Qwest wound up not cooperating with the NSA on this is that the NSA couldn't be bothered to get a court order. Shame on the other phone companies for simply giving in to a request without legal backing.
