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Bill Bans NSA Eavesdropping
An anonymous reader writes "The US house of representatives today passed a bill outlawing illegal domestic wiretapping by the government. Now government agencies are only allowed to access your private communications under terms of FISA. 'As the Senate Report noted, FISA "was designed . . . to curb the practice by which the Executive Branch may conduct warrantless electronic surveillance on its own unilateral determination that national security justifies it." The Bill ends plans by the Bush Administration that would give the NSA the freedom to pry into the lives of ordinary Americans. The ACLU noted that, despite many recent hearings about 'modernization' and 'technology neutrality,' the administration has not publicly provided Congress with a single example of how current FISA standards have either prevented the intelligence community from using new technologies, or proven unworkable for the agents tasked with following them.'"
Only in a Government do you need to outlaw something that is already illegal.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
This isn't fully baked yet. You need a Senate version, a conference, a final bill... wait for it... and a Presidential signature. Ooops.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
"passed a bill outlawing illegal domestic wiretapping by the government"
Good thing they outlawed illegal wiretapping, since outlawing legal wiretapping would have made it illegal, thus making the above sentence redundant. Wait. I think I hurt my brain.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
Oh.. another veto... just because a bill passes doesn't make it a law
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
This is really about the separation of powers. The President insists that since he has wartime authorization, he has pretty wide authority to break the law. That is, the law is written, and he doesn't have to follow it because another law trumps it. That's what you get when you have a big, complex legal code.
This bill doesn't really change anything legally, but when it comes time for the third branch of government to have their say on the issue, Congress' intentions will be unambiguous: yes, they do mean that FISA is the ONLY way you can do domestic wiretapping.
It would be nice if laws could be simple and unambiguous, like a well-written piece of software. Instead, laws are written over a long time by a lot of different people, just like real software. Software crashes; laws get inconsistencies. You can point it out for laughs but when it's your phone they're tapping, or your right to life/liberty/property sitting in the ambiguity, it's not so funny.
I'm just a bill.
Yes, I'm only a bill.
And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill.
Well, it's a long, long journey
To the capital city.
It's a long, long wait
While I'm sitting in committee,
But I know I'll be a law some day
At least I hope and pray that I will
But today I am still just a bill.
Courtesy of http://www.jacksheldon.com/school.htm
"the administration has not publicly provided Congress with a single example of how current FISA standards have either prevented the intelligence community from using new technologies, or proven unworkable for the agents tasked with following them."
They haven't provided it privately, either, and the reason is simple.
The FISA court is well-known as being basically a warrent rubber-stamping court. Out of thousands of requests sent in the last few years, only a handfull have been rejected, and most of those were accepted with changes suggested by the court. Since the court will issues warrants post-facto, even temporal urgency isn't an obstacle to getting a FISA warrant. Basically in any situation where the request is properly made and has any merit whatsoever the FISA court grants the warrant, it can be done retroactively, and there's pretty much no reason to skip the process. So why would the administration bypass the court in order to conduct a search?
Because the searches had so little merit that even FISA would not grant warrants.
So no, Bush's administration is not going to give an example of a situation where FISA got in the way of conducting legitimate security operations because no such case exists, it could only give examples of illegitimate ones and it isn't going to do that either.
This is a great start, though I hesitate to support the inherent thinking behind it -- which is, the President has the power to do whatever the fuck he wants until Congress specifically steps in and removes one of these infinitely many powers. But that's okay, we have to do something to at least make it explicit that when the President breaks the law, that means it was illegal, not that the Pres can put the pieces back together however he chooses. And I hope they continue to pass laws constraining government power, increasing oversight, and that they do this right up to the point where one of them gets in office and realizes they are subject to those same laws.
The enemies of Democracy are
How do you outlaw something that's already illegal?
By declaring war on it, dummy.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
The problem with this is that the Executive Branch does not have the power to begin with - its an assumed power under executive order.
I just quickly read up on some of the powqers of the Executive Branch and its actually quite scary as to how many powers the President uses during his term in office that aren't actually codified in US law anywhere but seem to be used as wide ranging systems to get around law - executive orders and signing statements are the two most obvious ones, both used to circumvent laws meant to restrict certain acts and both are powers that are not granted by the Constitution nor current US law.
You people really need to do something about that!
No. It is about a power that was never made available to the federal government in the first place. Warrantless wiretapping is unconstitutional, period. That includes FISA. FISA represents exactly the same kind of reasoning as the ridiculous topsy-turvey interpretation of the commerce clause. The premise is that wiretapping itself does no harm, completely ignoring the breach of your security. Here is the fourth amendment:
You'll note the order there - it isn't an accident: first they get the warrant, then then they can search, seize and generally violate you security. This is the basis for telecommunications law that outlaws wiretapping in the first place.
FISA is based upon the very peculiar notion that they can first tap, and then ask for a warrant, and if a warrant is not issued, then they just "forget" about the tap and - somehow - everything is just peachy. But clearly, it isn't. Your security and privacy was violated, without a warrant. This of course is entirely aside from the fact that FISA is a rubber-stamp organization; just look at the statistics for warrants granted as opposed to warrants refused. Consider further the fact that I am not allowed to put a tap on your phone line. For any reason. I'm not even allowed to listen to a cell phone conversation you broadcast on an analog mode cell connection or an RF-based portable home phone. This is because it is an invasion of your privacy; and because your security is threatened. It isn't because I didn't get a warrant (I can't, as I am a citizen, not a member of law enforcement) and it isn't because I could get a warrant later, if it seemed like I needed to - I still can't. No, it is simply because your security is guaranteed by the constitution, and it is very clear that such an action would be in violation. But this is exactly what the government does with FISA. They don't bother to get a warrant, they just listen whenever they decide they want to. Clearly, FISA is unconstitutional.
Lastly, all arguments that the constitution is irrelevant here somehow because of "need" are false. If there is a real need, the constitution contains the tools required so that it may be modified such that those needs may be met. No, this is simply an end-run around the intent of the document without having to be inconvenienced by its restrictions. Remember, the constitution is the constituting authority for the federal (and state, with regard to amendments 1-10, as per the 14th) government, and any action that is forbidden on the one hand, or not an enumerated power in the case of the feds, is both unconstitutional and lacking any legitimate authority. Don't confuse power with authority.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The FISA itself already makes NSA wiretapping illegal in ways Bush personally ordered for years, as he's admitted. Last year a federal judge found that the NSA had violated the law (and the Constitution), and thereby that Bush had violated the law, in Bush's admitted offenses. The FISA makes it illegal for Bush to ignore the FISA court when wiretapping, and Bush has insisted he will continue to do just that.
Although Bush did lie about stopping his crimes when this issue first blew up in the news, last week he said he'd continue.
FISA was created after Congress (and America) learned about some of the extent to which Nixon had abused his power to spy on Americans without cause or Constitutional process. It has been amended over a dozen times since, to keep pace with changing technology and suspects. But Bush will ignore it all, because he's used to the Republican Congress Nixon lacked to perpetuate his tyrannies.
Bush is a committed criminal. Congress must impeach him immediately. While we still can.
--
make install -not war
Warrantless wiretapping is unconstitutional, period.
And where does the Constitution say that?
It doesn't. Why doesn't it? Because in 1789, there was no such thing as electronic communication.
In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that the protections of the fourth amendment applied to electronic searches as well as physical searches. But you must keep in mind than in 1967, electronic searches pretty much meant having people listen to other people's phone calls.
It's now 2007. Electronic searches mean a lot more than just people listening to other people's phone calls. Whether a computer monitoring all phone calls constitutes an illegal search or not is not a given. It is not unreasonable that the courts could say that computerized monitoring of phone calls is not due the same 4th amendment protections as human monitoring. Or they could say that it is. But neither has happened yet.
In the meantime, a law which says you can't use computer systems to monitor masses of phone calls isn't a bad thing - it makes it illegal now, definitively, without waiting for court interpretation of the scope of 1789's 4th amendment in 2007.
paintball
I support them by respecting the fact that they do their job, even though I don't agree with their orders. Just because I stopped giving extra funds (above my taxes) to them, doesn't mean I don't appreciate their willingness to follow orders as a good soldiers should. I would never insult a soldier for his actions in Iraq if he were under orders.
I guess there are differing levels of support...our retard-in-chief seems to see things in a binary fashion tho.
Blar.
You don't know that.
And the reason you don't know that is that the court providing oversight that would ensure such was specifically avoided.
All you have is their claims about the specifics of the wiretaps.
I would be a little more nuanced than that.
I have had friends who served in Iraq, and one who committed suicide a year after she returned.
There are certainly cases where people involved should be prosecuted and where it is right to insult people for what they took part in. If I knew someone who was involved in Abu Ghraib, or any of the other instances where it looks like war crimes occurred, you can bet I would let them have it and call them all sorts of unpleasent names. Heck I would even accuse them of trashing America's reputation to the world and not living up to any of the ideas of our great republic. I would say that such people are unworthy to call themselves Americans in any way other than whatever their case for citizenship was (probably an accident of birth).
This being said, I think it is wrong to paint everyone who serves with the same brush. THere are many who I believe would turn down illegal orders, and people who would refuse to be part of such war crimes. We need to recognize that war is a supreme test of character and some are not going to pass that test. My friend was among those who I believe would have passed that test. She served out of a sense of duty in a war which she opposed for reasons that were born out later (and not the usual ones either). While I suspect that the war crimes problems are more institutionalized that we can easily prove, soldiers have a duty to respect the laws of war and many take that duty very seriously. Such are true heroes among us and whether or not we agree with this war, those individuals deserve our respect.
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