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The Future of Tech And NSA Wiretaps
Tyler Too writes "Is there more to last week's story about President Bush authorizing wiretaps without court review? Ars Technica writes about what's going on behind the curtains with the National Security Agency's technology: 'When the truth comes out (if it ever does), this NSA wiretapping story will almost certainly be a story not just about the Constitutional concept of the separation of powers, but about high technology.'"
The problem for the average American isn't necesarily that liberties are being taken with regard to surveillance of fringe elements who might be prone to terrorism. The real problem is in defining what is a fringe element and who might be prone to become a terrorist. The recent news that groups like Greenpeace and PETA are being investigated leads me to believe that the authorities consider anyone with an opinion about anything as being involved in a fringe element. Strangely, the NSA, FBI and other institutions harbor people who think like this regardless of the current administration and political climate. It seems that we have to clarify to them what is acceptable every couple of decades or so.
What's the real difference between spying and restriction? Spying is, of course, a necessary prerequisite for restriction as the government needs to know what you're up to in order to prevent you from doing it. So what the president ordered wiretaps? If the president ordered wiretaps in violation of his Constitutional duties then he violated his oath. If you allow one president to violate the Constitution for "security", then you are saying the President is above the law. That, unfortunately, is a prerequisite for dictatorship.
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If the article in question is to believed, and they are scanning 1% of all US calls, they probably aren't distinguishing between foreign and citizen conversations. They're simply eavedropping on everybody and then trying to figure out what's going on.
Ignoring civil liberties is almost never warranted, and every time we do it, it turns out that not only do we regret it, but most important *it was never necessary to do in the first case*.
Didn't we learn anything from the internment of Japanese citzens during WWII?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
That's the problem. This particular action is worthy of the worst of the Soviet Union. It's as unamerican as you can get -- secretly taking away "oversight" when the oversight mechanism itself was already as secretive as possible, and every bit as accessible as oversight can be. 72 hours AFTER the monitoring isn't enough? There can be no reason for dodging the FISA court, no excuse. If the court wasn't fast enough, he could have extended the FISA approval process to two weeks, or a month. But to remove oversight for the sake of executive secrecy? Is he implying that the FISA judges are leaking secrets to Al Qaeda? Are the oversight boards populated by "terrarists?" I don't even think any of the likely FISA judges are anything but Republicans!
I seriously believe this is treason. This action DEFINES treason. Not some weak "censure" or "impeachment." This is stand-before-a-judge-jury-and-firing-squad serious.
John
Did you RTFA or are you just here to dog Bush? The article mentions a variety of situation where taps might be needed and useful, but could not be used by FISA under the pre-emptetory clauses because it is not narrow enough.
(Needed + Useful) != Legal
On top of that, it clearly falls into line with the supreme court's standards for intellgence (must be linked to a foreign power) as well as historical executive orders issued by Clinton, Regean and Carter and even then can easily be read into the 9/11 bills.
You cannot make up new laws and "read them into" real laws that have actually been passed. Democracy doesn't work that way.
Look. The word "terrorist" has a rather specific meaning. Raiding a mink farm and freeing the mink doesn't qualify as terrorism. Sabotage, economic warfare, street theater, whatever, but it isn't terrorism.
Even if they killed the mink farmer, that's just murder. (My point is not to minimize how horrible murder is!) But it's not terrorism.
The real problem is that "terrorism" is getting stretched to mean "anything law enforcement wants to have an easier time checking into". This trivialization of the word "terrorism" means that pretty soon, we're going to need a new word for the real thing...
When was this ever challenged in court?
There is a law that specifically forbids spying on American citizens without a court order, in this case an exceptionally easy to get court order. The fact that they didn't do so tells me that they were doing more than conducting surveillence on suspected terrorists and have moved on to spying on political enemies.
What other reason can you think of?
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
If you believe the Bush administrations definition of fast food as "manufacturing" jobs, you can start speculating what "international" and "terrorist" means.
For instance if you place a domestic long-distance phone call, it could go over a satellite link. Well, orbit is international territory. Therefore using Bush administration verbal gymnastics, this would be an international call. And what about cell phones??? Well, all those signals go into orbit, so that could be an "international"
What about terrorists??? Well we already know that the Bush administration considers unions (the NEA in particular), peace activists and environmental activists as "terrorists". And many Democrats subscribe to ideas of unionism, peace and environmentalism. Indeed they believe anyone who opposes this war is aiding and ebetting terrorists. Ergo, Democrats are terrorists.
And what about any businesses that do businesses in country where there may be terrorists? Couldn't they be terrorists as well. Well I'm sure there is a lot of strategic business information that could be learned from "international" calls by "terrorists".
The fact that Bush refused to go through the FISA court leads you to believe that this court was unlikely to approve the wire taps they wanted. This court has a history of rubber stamping pretty much anything an adminstration wants.
The alternative thought is that Bush is asserting a new right of "presidential supremacy". This basically means that the President can do whatever he wants so long as he claims it is pursuit of his "commander in chief" duties. Frankly, this is the more disturbing option. This is the avenue that Hitler took.
If Congress does NOT oppose these actions, Bush will have successfully established a precedent of violating the law simply because "he feels like it". This would transform GW Bush into a dictator. GW Bush could decide to cancel the next election because of "terrorist threats".
If you are a Republican, please think long and hard about giving your approval to this. Now think whether you would approve this if it was Bill Clinton.
Finally, consider Bush's justification. There have been no terrorist attacks since Bush started the program. Well, consider that from the first WTC attacks in '92, Al Queda made no successfull strikes until 2001. A total of NINE YEARS passed between Al Queda attacks against US territory without a SINGLE illegal wire tap (at least during the Clinton administration).
I would submit that there was PLENTY of intelligence available to the Bush administration to stop attacks. Indeed, the Clinton administration managed to thwart multiple Al Queda attacks against the US without using illegal wire-taps (but no doubt using the legal (and secret) FISA court). John Ashcroft de-prioritized anti-terrorism to just under porn and prostitution.
Richard Clarke was screaming as loud as he could to get access to the President and take anti-terrorism seriously. He was ignored. The intelligence fore-shadowing 9/11 was forestalled. Somehow the Bush administration had managed to bring the US airforce to a state of unreadiness whereby it could not intercept a jumbo jet.
Please Republicans, take your party and your Constitution seriously. This man is dragging your party into ignominy. If you are a patriot you MUST support checks and balance. The President is NOT an elected king. The Presidents job is to respect and enforce the laws passed by Congress. The President cannot just "make up" laws.
If you don't support checking the president's power, you are a fascist. If you don't like that label, than you need to change your position. You will bring this country to a state of civil war against those of us who will NOT bear a President affecting the same transformation on the US as Hitler did to Germany.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
This particular action is worthy of the worst of the Soviet Union.
I'm not endorsing this in any way at all, in fact I'm ashamed that he did this, but you are saying that this is worse than murdering 15 million of your own people and depriving them of property and liberty as well? I understand this is a bad thing, but acting in this polarized manner is exactly why today's political climate is as vicious and childish as it is.
I am Spartacus
For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong.
...that they didn't think they could get the FISA court to rubberstamp?
The FISA court has only turned the government down, what, twenty times in thirty years? And the law allows them to wiretap first and get court approval afterwards... and if the court turns them down they can appeal to another secret court, and if that court turns them down they can appeal to the Supreme Court, meeting in secret session with only the government in attendance.
The mind boggles. What could they possibly have been afraid to take to FISA court?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Throwing blood on minks is NOT a "terrorist" activity.
Burning down an empty house is not a "terrorist" activity.
I don't like PETA either and I don't approve of ELF. But property destruction is NOT murder. Terrorist KILL indiscriminately at civilian targets in order to produce a state of fear. As goofy as they are, none of these liberal radical groups do this.
By the way, it is quite ironic that while the FBI classifies PETA, Greenpeace and ELF as terrorists, they DO NOT classify white supremacist groups who practice para-military operations and gladly sport their copies of "The Anarchist Cookbook" and "The Turner Diaries".
I have NO DOUBT that the Bush administration is spying on liberal organization by labeling them "terrorists". And I also have no doubt that they are simply asserting another authority that they have not admitted to for domestic calls.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
"court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue [our emphasis], held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." And further that "we take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."
WOW, talking about taking it out of context!
The court was talking about executive branch's ability to gather intelligence on FOREIGN SOIL!!! They deemed that the Fourth Amendment did not extend to foreign governments and their agents. Which is the correct reading and MOST of us here would agree to.
What the courts have CONSISTENTLY ruled against is using that power on US CITIZENS! In fact FISA specifically guards against and makes that illegal. To balance that it makes it easier for authorities to get secret warrants and allows warrantless searches within the first 15 days of a war and allow agents obtain warrant AFTER the tap.
They applied only to calls involving al Qaeda suspects or those with terrorist ties.
LIAR!!! Do you have security clearance? Have you seen the list of warrantless searches? No? Then how do you know? Oh because Bush said so? Oh, and they also said they didn't use Patriot Act on non-terrorist groups and guess what? They used it on Peace groups and PETA!
But the Members of Congress who were informed about this all along are now either silent or claim they didn't get the full story. This is why these columns have long opposed requiring the disclosure of classified operations to the Congressional Intelligence Committees.
LIAR!!! Were you there when they were briefed? No? Then how the FUCK do you know? EVERY senator (Republican & Democrat) said they did not get complete information on this. But you KNOW they are lying??
And NO, this is not a reason to hide things! It is a DAMN GOOD REASON TO NOT HIDE things!!! Because if they didn't then Bush would have some RECORD to bolster his statements.
By contrast, the Times' NSA leak last week, and an earlier leak in the Washington Post on "secret" prisons for al Qaeda detainees in Europe, are likely to do genuine harm by alerting terrorists to our defenses. If more reporters from these newspapers now face the choice of revealing their sources or ending up in jail, those two papers will share the Plame blame.
Man you are just a walking LYINGPALOOZA!!! You mean to tell me that Al Queda DID NOT suspect that this government was TAPPING EVERY PHONE call? Hello? Govt has been tapping Al Queda since the mid-80's. Are you REALLY that dumb to think that Al Queda was SHOCKED! SHOCKED I TELL YA to find this out from NY Times?
Not only are you a liar, you are dumb too...
Read the article...the reason (I'm beginning to believe) they didn't get authorization under FISA was because they couldn't. The wiretapping in question was done using broad analysis of a random sampling of phone calls. How can they go to a FISA judge with that?
They aren't stupid. They could easily have gone to the judges within 72 hours if this were normal wiretapping. It's not.
Osama is powerless to transform the United States into a totalitarian regime. GW Bush is well on his way.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I'm not endorsing this in any way at all, in fact I'm ashamed that he did this, but you are saying that this is worse than murdering 15 million of your own people and depriving them of property and liberty as well? I understand this is a bad thing, but acting in this polarized manner is exactly why today's political climate is as vicious and childish as it is.
But the problem is, they never start with killing 15 million people (side note: it doesn't matter "who's people" they are). They start with a little spying here, a little bending the rules there. Lie a bit a cause a few tens of thousands of people to die. Get your people into the positions of power, eviscerate the press (if it hasn't rolled over already). Come to some accommodation with the "opposition" ("play it our way or we'll ruin you" is always popular).
In short, make it so that no one dares move against you.
Then you can kill 15 million people, or even twenty if you're in the mood.
--MarkusQ
P.S. The polarization isn't causing the problem. The polarization is a consequence of some people realizing what is going on, and others squeezing their eyes shut and hoping it goes away.
Wrong.
We're in charge.
That's the one and only thing that differentiates us from a dictatorship.
The fact that they seem to think that "THEY'RE IN CHARGE" is exactly what's got so many people who love this country so upset at them.
--MarkusQ