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The problem with the current FISA legislation…
…explained in 30 seconds by Russ Feingold:
I lived in France for just under two years. During that time the current version of FISA (which was just extended by voice vote for another 15 days to allow for more time to negotiate the next version) was in effect, and any of my phone calls home could have been monitored without judicial oversight, despite the fact I am an American citizen for whom no probable cause exists for any type of search.
“Trust us” wasn’t good enough for the founders, and it isn’t good enough for me.
12 Responses to “The problem with the current FISA legislation…”
You have a point, though I'm not sure how many would grasp it. That has never been true about government, though advocates of government interventionism actually have the gall often to assume they deserve the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, “trust us” was definitely what the Founders felt should be the rule for the people and the private sector the people compose in our authentic, libertarian, minimalist model of government, where the people and the private sector deserve the benefit of the doubt. I don't see a lot of trust in the people or the private sector.
Why doesn't Feingold repent and defend the First Amendment rather than attack it?
When you enter the country at a point of entry, you, your baggage, and your vehicle can be searched without a warrant. When you mail a package from France to the U.S. the Customs and Border Protection, and the Postal Service can open the package and inspect it without a warrant.
So, why should an e-mail be different than a physical letter?
I wonder if Senator Feingold's staff was smart enough to look up the rules about crossing international boundaries before they sent him out there to demonstrate his lack of knowledge.
““Trust us” wasn’t good enough for the founders, and it isn’t good enough for me.”
great memorable pithy line Jack. Thanks
dr.e
Another one of those great pithy lines that are pleasing to the eye but lack the awareness that the Continental Congress did indeed authorize the Continental Army to read, censor and destroy any mail it could get its hands on merely on suspicion as well as the individual civilian postmasters, especially in Tory areas. These letters were routinely opened and read. One poor soldier had something like twenty letters seized and destroyed throughout the war and didn't find out till much later. Obviously the most noteworthy case was when Major Andre was seized and when the authorities saw that the letters were addressed to Gen. Arnold, immediately opened them, without a warrant. All those little and big signatures on the Declaration of Independence essentially saying in wartime, “..trust us.”
And unless the phone number that was used in France had come up on a terrorist watch list, the successor versions of the Clinton era Echelon Program, the chances of the conversation being arbitrarily monitored veered from unlikely to never.
I think there are clear differences between customs checks and monitoring telephone calls or emails. When you send a package or a person across an international border, an object is entering the country that could be of great harm. Some sort of weapon is the clearest case, but it could be an invasive species or just some good that is damaging to the economy, shipping controlled goods. But with a phone call or an email, the only thing crossing the border is speech and ideas. Speech does not wipe out crops or explode in malls.
Of course, speech and ideas can do harm, no doubt. And so the government should have the ability to monitor it IF there is evidence that the speech could do harm. But I see no reason the government needs the right to monitor any and all speech that it has the ability to (which will continually grow with computer-assistance) simply to find out if someone is thinking or saying the wrong thing.
Nice to know you're still alive, Jack. You post too rarely.
SD & DLS & Pat: There will always be a chasm between an averred principle and real world actions. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, Japanese descendants were interned, etc., but the point is that these are things which, while done, have been repudiated and invalidated by later courts and public opinion. The whole FISA thing, as parcel of the silly Patriot Act, is a sweeping measure that utterly goes against the innocent until proven guilty stance and presumption granted to all citizens.
Paca makes good points in his post.
However, the reality is that FISA/Patriot type activities by the government never ended with the fall of Hoover. 9/11 merely allowed the gov't to brazenly state up front what it always had been doing, and with an increased vigor due to the post-9/11 hysteria.
In short, always assume you are being snooped on, because you just might be right.
Lincoln and FDR took actions that have indeed been criticized yet both actions have held up throughout the years. The Supreme Court took up the issue in 1944 of the internment and supported the governments position though in the 80's a federal court ruled that Executive Order 1099 was issued on false pretenses and suppressed evidence but did not challenge the legality of setting up such camps. While Lincoln's suspension of the “privilege of habeas corpus” has never been successfully challenged in court as Article One, Section 9 refers to several exceptions where the executive may indeed suspend that legal demand.
Well, Pat, I did not state that Lincoln nor FDR did anything illegal, but they were against the stated principles of the country.
Well, Pat, I did not state that Lincoln nor FDR did anything illegal, but they were against the stated principles of the country.
How fascinating to see domestic spying defended as patriotic, and compared to customs inspection. Thought you were moderates. You want to waste my money and yours screening billions of conversations (because it certainly isn't just “foreign” communications)? That means some human has to listen to any conversation in which I say a keyword like “terrorism”, “dirty bomb”, “president”, “whitehouse”, “assasinate”, “fatwah”, and who knows how many other code words? child pornography?, marijuana? single-payer? And I say a human has to screen it, because the computer program can only flag the call as a possible, not a confirmed criminal communication,
So you're going to pay someone in the federal government to read this post? Every Instant message that uses a keyword? Look at all the voice and cam chats wherein someone uses a codeword? Watch some Pakistani jack off because he said something like “why does America hate us?” while camming in some chatroom?
And this nonsense is supposed to make us safer? Come on! How hard would it be to evade that scrutiny? Let's see. We call the next 9-11 “the big game” or “picnic”. We add 91 days to any date discussed and call a dirty bomb a big mac. Just how dumb is our govt to think that actual criminals talk openly on the phone about their crimes?
This policy is costly and worthless in the real world.
BTW, Skype calls are encrypted (oops, another NSA keyword) end to end, so now that I've posted this, NSA has to actually crack my Skype calls from my wife when she's traveling and listen to our intimate cooing and who knows? occasional kvetching about Bush and Cheney?
Pathetic.
How fascinating to see domestic spying defended as patriotic, and compared to customs inspection. Thought you were moderates. You want to waste my money and yours screening billions of conversations (because it certainly isn't just “foreign” communications)? That means some human has to listen to any conversation in which I say a keyword like “terrorism”, “dirty bomb”, “president”, “whitehouse”, “assasinate”, “fatwah”, and who knows how many other code words? child pornography?, marijuana? single-payer? And I say a human has to screen it, because the computer program can only flag the call as a possible, not a confirmed criminal communication,
So you're going to pay someone in the federal government to read this post? Every Instant message that uses a keyword? Look at all the voice and cam chats wherein someone uses a codeword? Watch some Pakistani jack off because he said something like “why does America hate us?” while camming in some chatroom?
And this nonsense is supposed to make us safer? Come on! How hard would it be to evade that scrutiny? Let's see. We call the next 9-11 “the big game” or “picnic”. We add 91 days to any date discussed and call a dirty bomb a big mac. Just how dumb is our govt to think that actual criminals talk openly on the phone about their crimes?
This policy is costly and worthless in the real world.
BTW, Skype calls are encrypted (oops, another NSA keyword) end to end, so now that I've posted this, NSA has to actually crack my Skype calls from my wife when she's traveling and listen to our intimate cooing and who knows? occasional kvetching about Bush and Cheney?
Pathetic.