Eavesdrop “Compromise”: I Smell a Rat
Back on July 14, I declared myself “cautiously optimistic” on the deal reached between the Administration and Senator Specter on the NSA eavesdrop program. I cannot say that is the case anymore. After yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the issue, it appears that the Administration is seeking even more power outside the FISA framework.
While the agreement would still submit the eavesdrop program to the FISA court for review, it would also provide a Congressional blessing for the extralegal activity: “the White House had insisted that the bill include language implicitly recognizing the president’s ‘constitutional authority’ to collect foreign intelligence beyond the provisions of the 1978 law,” as Eric Lichtblau reports in this morning’s NYTimes. To accept such a formulation is to say that the president can go beyond FISA basically any way he wants, any time he wants … just because he can.
What really bugs me about this entire discussion is that the Administration’s arguments for ignoring the FISA requirements are incredibly lame. Yesterday NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander told the Judiciary Committee it would be a “tremendous burden” if his agency had to pursue a warrant for each target: “You would be so far behind the target, if you were in hot pursuit, with the numbers of applications that you would have to make and the time to make those, you could never catch up.” And that is exactly why FISA allows 72 hours in which the surveillance can occur before a warrant is sought (if that period needs to be extended slightly, fine, make it a week or something).
Walter Pincus, on the story today for the Washington Post, notes that Senator Feinstein (no fool on intelligence matters) said that “based on what she had learned in secret briefings about the number of U.S. citizens subject to wiretaps, the surveillance program ‘is easily accommodatable to an individual warrant for U.S. persons.’” Of course the NSA folks disagreed.
But there’s more – the loopholes have only begun to rear their ugly heads. Assistant Attorney General (aciting) Steven Bradbury noted that the Specter-(Bush) legislation “would ‘encourage’ – but not require – Bush or a future president to present any future surveillance program to the secret FISA court for approval.” Also, according to Pincus, “Bradbury stressed that the president retained authority to institute such a program on his own and that Bush’s pledge to submit the program for judicial review was only ‘if the chairman’s legislation were enacted in its current form or with the further amendments sought by the administration.’”
And that’s even before we get to the signing statements. I have to say, I smell a rat. While I appreciate what Senator Specter’s tried to do here, I think he got a raw deal.
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9 Responses to “Eavesdrop “Compromise”: I Smell a Rat”
Again, people are acting like the government hasn’t been eavesdropping on the average citizen for DECADES. Anyone remember COINTELPRO? Yessir…
C.Prez,
I’m beginning to understand that the reason most of the people in this blog can’t remember these things is because A. They’re like MVDG 22 year old kid that wasn’t alive during the time of, and/or B. They are too pigheaded party like busy popping their mouths off here to go out and find things out for themselves.
J Edgar Hoover started having the FBI gather data on every U S Citizen from the first day of his appointment as Director of the FBI and by the time that old fart died there WAS an FBI file on every U S Citizen that kept records from birth, grade school, religious/political affiliations, insurance company preferences, doctors seen, military service, neighbor/associate/coworker/employer opinions, and other innocuous information that in reality added up to zilch.
Edgar Hoover not only utilized FBI agents to gather data, but thousands of private investigators, and wasted tens upon tens of billions of tax dollars in backdoored appropriations that were channeled into the FBI Agency through other government departments.
The OSS, now called CIA, supposedly responsible for foreign intelligence, did the same thing, duplicating, wasting more billions.
Then came NSA, FEMA who’s powers are not yet fully understood, Homeland Security, and some other black box intel gathering administrative departments the public is unaware of, creating and acting in still more duplicity wasting more billions.
Then when the age of the computer and internet came about…the IT, or Information Technology, the buying and selling of information, eavesdropping on just about everyone on the planet exploded ending any sembalance of privacy, other than what one has in their head and never utters. And the new “chips” now being developed and to be placed into the human body are intended to end even that little bit of internal privacy we have left.
Orwell had the foresight and predicted all this happening…and we are getting to see Orwells predictions come to fruition, and the majority of the people in this blog are the ending result products of purposfully designed propaganda developed for completely duping them, through intel gathering that began long before rotary dial telephones were invented.
Trust my government and the straight faced devious liars running it anymore? Not a chance in hell.
Just because it has happened in the past and because things we don’t know about are most likely still happening, does that mean we should let these things that we know about continue? They are at best circumventing laws that are put in place to protect the rights of this country’s citizens. The President does not have the authority to declare these laws unconstitutional and it’s a real shame that Congress is going to roll over on this one instead of making slight modifications to the law, if deemed necessary, to make it work better.
I smell a rat too, and that rat is Arlen Specter.
He didn’t get a raw deal. He did what he has done repeatedly. He announced a “tough on the administration” plan then introduced exactly the legislation the President wanted.
I agree completely, Eclectic. He has used this pattern over and over. To me, it just indicates that when the same party controls all three houses of government, there are no checks and balances.
This Congress in particular has abdicated its oversight responsibility, and allowed an incompetent executive branch unprecedented power. This presents an ever increasing danger to our liberty, but most Americans are too complacent to notice or care.
AND he’s in MY state and is MY senator. GEEZ, Penn. needs to get its act together. VOTE CASEY FOR SENATE (cuz he’s the lesser of two evils).
Sorry to hear that C Prez – Weldon, Sanctorum and Spincter. When you going to join Weldon and help dig up all those WMD’s in Iraq?
Ugh- Santorum hopefully is on his way out-he’s been a big rubber-stamper for Bush. And he also tried to claim the 20-year-old WMD’s found were still viable today. Pennsylvania is working-class should really be a blue state like Maryland, anyway.
Eclectic Floridian, you are correct.
Specter is playing maverick (much like McCain) but always finds his way home to whatever the GOP angle is. Why Penn. voters keep sending this obvious fake back to DC is beyond me.
PING:
TITLE: The Con and Con Law
BLOG NAME: The Heretik
At least they came out and said it: The Fourth Amendment protections on warrants and searches are too much of burden when you are in hot pursuit of terrorists. And the 1978 FISA law has not “kept up” with these tough times.
We’re ju…