FISA Court Sides With ACLU Against Administration

jamie caught a breaking news story this evening: the secret FISA Court has ordered the Bush administration to respond by August 31 to an ACLU request for orders and legal papers discussing the scope of the government's authority to engage in the secret wiretapping of Americans. The ACLU's press release calls it an "unprecedented order."

Comments

Re:Interesting ...

[bmo]

"so a secret court takes steps towards transparency."

No, a secret court has had enough of being called irrelevant. EVERY president since Carter (Carter created it) has actually gone to get warrants from the court and the court has generally granted them. This administration, however, has wilfully ignored them _and_ said out in public that the FISA court system is an obstacle.

Anyone who has been paying attention to this _knows_ that the FISA judges are pissed off.

I am not one bit surprised that they sided with the ACLU.

--
BMO

Re:I am extremely confused.

[DavidTC]

The administration likes to claim it's only applying to international traffic, so that's how some people refer to it.

However a) the NSA has repeatedly admitted it doesn't have the technology to just intercept international calls, b) there is no oversight, and c) the Bush administration just rammed a bill through Congress letting them tap people without a warrant as long as the target is not in the US.

For those who don't know what that means, 'targets' of a tap do not, in fact, have to be at either ends of the actual tap. If they are targetting someone who might call you via unknown means, they can tap all your incoming phone calls, even when that person is not, in fact, calling. Aka, if you know a non-citizen, they can tap all your calls if they want, even domestic ones.

And there's actually quite a lot of evidence to suggest they are, in actuality, tapping whoever the fuck they want to at any time at they want to. The top of the Justice department doesn't threaten to resign because you're tapping foreigners.

After Bush leaves (ever thought of that?)

[Danathar]

Being all up in arms about this stuff is fine. But I have SERIOUS concerns that people are SO foamed up at the mouth with Bush that when the next Democrat wins the presidency everybody will be so happy that nobody will pay attention like they are now.

I predict that with the exception of some high-profile non-productive executive orders the next prez (no matter which party) will keep most the powers that Bush has acquired via executive orders.

I may sound jaded, but let's not delude ourselves.

Re:The quote was from a Dem House Whip, dumbass

[Doc Ruby]

No, Anonymous Republican fascist Coward, Clyburn did not say what you are claiming he was quoted as saying. The WP reporter interpreted it in paraphrase to suit his own typically Washington Post Republican bias. And you are lying to say that Clyburn was quoted as saying that.

What Clyburn actually was quoted as saying:

"I think there would be enough support in that [rightwing Democrats] group to want to stay the course and if the Republicans were to stay united as they have been, then it would be a problem for us [to easily change course in Iraq]" Clyburn said. "We, by and large, would be wise to wait on the report."
[...]
Clyburn said that [a generally positive report] would be "a real big problem for us."

Which the WP reporters paraphrased as:

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Mond, ay that a strongly positive report on progress on Iraq by Army Gen. David Petraeus likely would split Democrats in the House and impede his party's efforts to press for a timetable to end the war.
[...]
Without their [rightwing Democrats'] support, he said, Democratic leaders would find it virtually impossible to pass legislation setting a timetable for withdrawal.

Balz and Cillizza are two Republican boosters writing for the Republican corporate media Washington Post. The simple fact is that Democrats have a small (but larger than their majority margin) fifth column faction, the "Blue Dog Democrats", who vote with Republicans, and who wait for any pro-Bush propaganda Bush manufactures as excuse to vote with Republicans. Balz and Cillizza have turned that propaganda problem for the Whip, who marshals Democratic votes on bills, into a material problem for Democrats, implying that Democrats would find winning to be a problem. When the problem is that Bush, not Petraeus, is writing the report to lie about progress when it's still a worsening catastrophe.

And of course you pick up that propaganda victory and run with it, Anonymous Republican Coward. Because you are a coward. You let Bush scare you into invading, when we needed to capture Osama (where is he, anyway, tough guy?) and destroy the Taliban, who your DC boys are letting retake Afghanistan and threaten the (nuclear) Pakistan that harbors them.

I'd point out that Vietnam's fate, after we stopped propping up its fake government to massacre its people, was to next successfully defend itself from the China (now among our greatest "allies" with Pakistan) we pretended was going to engulf the world in Communism. Next Vietnam shut down the Cambodian genocide we created with our covert war there. And since then, Vietnam has finally lived in decades of peace after centuries of the colonialism your favorite US buddies (including specifically Cheney, Rumsfeld and their cronies) fought so hard (though not in person, of course, but in air-conditioned remote control offices) to keep for themselves. But lost, and lost horribly, at such terrible, irreparable cost to America. Instead of just accepting Ho Chih Minh's post-WWII plea for a Marshall Plan for SE Asia, which would have given the US the same leverage there against China that we had in Europe against Russia. But the Vietnam War was too profitable for US corporations and Cold War fearmongering to Republican cowards like you to pass up. Exactly like those same Republican mass murderers are doing with Iraq right now. I'd point it out, but what's the point? You Republican cowards can't hear the truth about the blood on your hands and the piss in your pants. You need to kill more people to distract yourselves from your record of failure.

You sick bitches have got everything about Iraq wrong, just like you alzheimers fucktards got Vietnam so horribly wrong last time around. You should never be let anywhere near decisionmaking power. O