White House Says Phone Wiretaps Will Resume For Now

austinhook brings us news that the U.S. government has resumed wiretapping with the help of telecommunications companies. The companies are said to have "understandable misgivings" over the unresolved issue of retroactive immunity for their participation in past wiretapping. Spy agencies have claimed that the expiration of the old legislation has caused them to miss important information. The bill that would grant the immunity passed in the Senate, but not in the House.

Comments

How do they know?

[duffetta]

How do they know that they've missed important information, if they aren't wiretapping?

Re:How do they know?

[ExecutorElassus]

Sorry, that information is classified for reasons of national security. You have an inappropriately strong interest in questioning the Terrorist Monitoring Program's scope; just whose side are you on?

Re:How do they know?

[Vellmont]

Assume they recorded a conversation that was important, and part of that conversation was let's talk every Thursday. Or they said we're putting everything in place, we'll contact you shortly with the time.

Yah, that would be true if the current wiretaps were to expire when the legislation expired. But the law was written to specifically say they didn't. Any existing wiretaps expire when they were originally set to expire.

Re:How do they know?

[Zeinfeld]

It's not that hard to presume that they know they are missing information. Assume they recorded a conversation that was important, and part of that conversation was

That is the White House line and its a lie. Existing authorizations continue to be in force for a year. That takes us past the next inauguration.

The only case where the administration could not conduct a warantless tap is if there was an entirely new terrorist organization to emerge in the next twelve months. And they could still get a wiretap, they just have to get a warrant.

The issue here is not providing immunity to the telcos, it is providing immunity to the Administration. They want to be able to shred all the evidence of their criminal activities before a Democrat takes over. And they are willing to hold the security of the country hostage till they get their way.

Up till now it has been sufficient for the Bushies to cry National Security and the Democrats would run frightened to hide. Now they have accidentally called the Administration's bluff they have discovered the consequences of standing up to Bully Bush - absolutely nothing. Bush's approval ratings dropped by ten points to 19%. The wiretap issue was gone after a single media cycle.

Re:How do they know?

[evil agent]

Up till now it has been sufficient for the Bushies to cry National Security and the Democrats would run frightened to hide. Now they have accidentally called the Administration's bluff they have discovered the consequences of standing up to Bully Bush - absolutely nothing.

I think you're wrong, something quite significant has come out of this: Bush has proved himself wrong. The gov't has been, and still is, saying that without this warrantless wiretapping, we are no longer safe. By calling their bluff, they forced Bush to say that he would veto the bill if it didn't include telecom immunity. In effect, and in his on words, he has put the well-being of the telcos over the safety of the American public! If this wiretapping is so instrumental to our safety, why would he threaten a veto, or in this case, let the legislation expire?

Re:How do they know?

[dzfoo]

>> I'm not sure I follow what you're saying.

He means that Bush's argument goes something like this:

1. The warrantless wiretapping program is essential for our national security.
2. We must not let it expire and we must enhance its regulation or else the country will be unsafe.
3. Oh and by the way, we could use retro-active immunity for the telcos in order to ensure their cooperation.

His focus when speaking to the American people has been on #1 and #2, in essence playing the "fear card".

By threatening to veto a bill that provides #1 and prevents #2 (his primary argument), just because it does not contain #3 (an auxiliary argument), he is conveying the message that retro-active immunity is more important than national security itself.

Now, you can argue -- as you you seem to do in your comment -- that it is Bush's opinion that retro-active immunity is essential for national security, and that may very well be the case. However, whether it is more important than having the program in the first place is debatable, and understood by many to be an indefensible position; and at the very least gives the appearance of a strawman to the first two arguments I mentioned.

            -dZ.

Resuming wiretaps

[Ice Wewe]

...that the U.S. government has resumed wiretapping with the help of telecommunications companies.

Which just goes to show you that they never had any intention to stop wiretapping, just to throw a big tantrum over it and then go back to spying on Americans the good old fashioned way, illegally.

Re:Resuming wiretaps

[Phroggy]

Seriously. Is it illegal to eavesdrop on overseas conversations? That is what we are talking about here. These calls we are tapping have at least one party overseas. Please, tell me: What law designed to protect non-Americans are we breaking? Take a look at the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. The language is a bit archaic, but the gist of it is, the government can't go snooping through your stuff, unless they can show probable cause and get a warrant that says what they're looking for and where it is. Obviously telephones didn't exist at the time, but if they did, it's reasonable to assume that telephone conversations would have also been included along with "papers and effects", so that's how we interpret this.

So it's perfectly OK for the government to wiretap someone's phone, if they get a warrant. However, this raises three concerns: first, if they get a tip, they need to act immediately, and getting a warrant from a judge normally takes time. Second, it may be difficult to explain to a judge who hasn't dealt with matters of national security before why the government really should be wiretapping this person's phone. Finally, warrants are normally a matter of public record, and we wouldn't want terrorists to know which phones we're wiretapping!

So, Congress addressed these concerns by passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It establishes a secret court that can issue warrants without making them public; the judges have a ridiculously high security clearance and have training and experience dealing with matters of national security, and the warrants issued by the FISA court are retroactive for 72 hours - so the government can start eavesdropping immediately, then file the paperwork a couple days later and everything is OK. As it turns out, the FISA court is little more than a rubber stamp (apparently out of thousands of warrant applications, they've only ever rejected five). But this allows the government to comply with the Constitutional requirements laid out in the fourth amendment.

The problem is that the Bush administration is ignoring the law and wiretapping people's phones without getting warrants from the FISA court.

You mentioned that these calls have at least one party overseas. Even if you interpret "the people" to include only US citizens on American soil, if only one party is overseas, you're still eavesdropping on a conversation involving an American, so it's still illegal regardless of who they're talking to (if you don't have a warrant).

Also, how do you know the conversations the government is wiretapping all involve foreigners? Sure, that's why President Bush says he wants the power to wiretap without a warrant, but with no oversight whatsoever, all we have is his word, which most of us don't hold in high esteem at the moment.

Does this clear things up?

Well that answers the immunity question...

[TheRaven64]

Retroactive immunity is now a moot point. Previously they could argue that they weren't aware that they were operating illegally. Now they surely have no such defence. I'm sure some of the lawyers on Capitol Hill will start using words like 'wilfully' now.

Re:Well that answers the immunity question...

[htnprm]

BS. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Telcos are well aware of the details under FISA. Honestly. The fact that your average American does nothing as a result of the evidence that this administration has been illegally wiretapping since 2002, if not before (Well before the Protect America Act was passed) says so much. People I speak to are waiting for Obama to change things. Well. Wait for this to change:

If Obama is elected - "I haven't had enough time in four years to change anything, so elect me again".
At the next congressional elections - "We haven't had enough time with a Democrat as President, so elect us again". ...What will you all do when nothing changes? I'm taking bets if anyone is interest.

(Note, this post is not a message against Obama, or for any other candidate. Just pointing out details regarding a candidate who everyone thinks will change things, but who is simply another politician, and an individual person, up against the whole of the political machine).

I call B.S.

[christurkel]

Spy agencies have claimed that the expiration of the old legislation has caused them to miss important information.

Riiiiiiiiight. If you can't illegally wiretap, how could you possibly know what you missed? Besides, there is a perfectly good FISA court still around; you can even wiretap and get a warrant 72 hours later.

Fear mongering sucks. We're a better nation than this.

Re:I call B.S.

[johnsonav]

The real question for me is, why not get FISA warrants? By all accounts, they are a rubber stamp that will grant most any warrant. The FISA court was set up for exactly the type of activities that they say they are doing. So by circumventing that process, I can only conclude that the real program is much more broad, and illegal, than they are letting on.

Re:I call B.S.

[Lloyd_Bryant]

The real question for me is, why not get FISA warrants? By all accounts, they are a rubber stamp that will grant most any warrant. The FISA court was set up for exactly the type of activities that they say they are doing. So by circumventing that process, I can only conclude that the real program is much more broad, and illegal, than they are letting on. Even more than a rubber stamp, since the spook agencies are allowed to begin surveillance, *then* apply for the warrant (up to 72 hours later).

But the issue, I think, is the paperwork. For instance, each application must be personally approved by the Attorney General (can you imagine poor Mr. Gonzales having to review and sign hundreds or thousands of such applications at a time?).

The surveillance carried out in support of the "war on terror" is orders of magnitude greater than was contemplated when the FISA court was created. So Bush & Co. simply decided to ignore the problem and proceed without bothering to get warrants from the FISA court.

Re:I call B.S.

[Verteiron]

Fear mongering sucks. We're a better nation than this.

Apparently we are not.

Re:I call B.S.

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

There is not war on terrorism. War is the wrong word. There are military actions against disparate groups around the world, and there certainly was a war against Iraq which we won but had nothing to do with terrorism, before or during, now there is a threat of Terroism from the mistakes made in that war such that an Al Qauda group has formed in Iraq that was not there before. There is an occupation in Iraq but it is not a war. Iraq has a civil war going on and has groups resistant to the occupation but it is not a War.

So I hate to see the Republican Fear Marketing slogan War on Terror used. It is really like the 1984 war with the Northeast (if I remember right). That continuous war that keeps the population under martial law and rallied around the flag. For what, for accumlation of power.

So the War against Terror is just like the War against Poverty or the War against Aids. Its not a war, its a slogan, lets not forget that. It should not invoke war powers for the Executive branch. Actually it did not, the war powers were granted to go to war against Iraq because they were claimed (falsely and brazenly and seemingly with full knowledge of that falsness) have weapons of mass destruction. Valerie Elise Plame Wilson was outed as a CIA agent because that lie was being exposed by her husband.

Lets not forget the War on Terror is just a marketing slogan and get on with the business of cleaning up the mess in Iraq and the mess in Afganistan.

Terrists exist, there are terrorist who are targeting the US and other countries as well, but giving up our Constitutional rights and protections isn't the way to go. The Executive has lead us into improsonment with no charges, lack of due process, torture, rendition, wiretapping, ... and we dont know the entire extent. This blossoming of illegal unconstitional behavior is unprecedented and I feel unwarranted and the scope and type of those behaviors does not make me trust the ones doing those behaviors.

Marketing slogans should be reserved for those selling soap.

Re:I call B.S.

[ardent99]

The exact quote from a letter from U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell is "We have lost intelligence information this past week as a direct result of the uncertainty created by Congress' failure to act," which was in TFA, if you had bothered to read it. Their obvious position is that "intelligence" information is "important" information, or they wouldn't be bothering with this at all.

I find it interesting that rather than address the issue on the merits, you chose instead to make an ad hominem attack on all reporters, say they are unintelligent and shouldn't be trusted, and project an air of arrogance and disdain to further deflect any disagreement.

You seem to be willfully diverting the question from the merits of the administration's remarks to an untruthful characterization of the reporting, a typical tactic of administration apologists. So let's summarize:

1) The administration says something
2) It gets accurately reported
3) You call reporters unintelligent, an ad hominem attack on the messenger,
without actually showing they did anything wrong
4) You assume an air of arrogance and disdain to deflect any questioning of your unjustified statements
5) In the end you have contributed nothing to the discussion of what actually happened

Maybe next time you can actually address the issue rather than mischaracterizing its reporting? What's actually a bit sad is that your comment was modded +3 insightful for making that little bit of flamebait.

I just don't get it

[websitebroke]

What does the White House, et al. want with this? In the previous system, all you had to do was get a warrant to spy on somebody. There was a special court set up just to issue these warrants, and it was completely confidential. If they really, really had to spy on somebody right this very instant, they could, and just had to make sure that they touched base with the court in the next few hours. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

What does Bush want, other than to spy on everyone with no supervision whatsoever?

Oh, yeah, he wants us to not sue Verizon, AT&T, whoever. Well, sorry guys, you had a responsibility, as citizens of the USA, to tell the government no. I mean, WTF, corporations run this country anyway...

Re:I just don't get it

[drooling-dog]

What does Bush want, other than to spy on everyone with no supervision whatsoever? Exactly this. The FISA court is practically a rubber stamp for legitimate surveillance, and yet Bush's spying needs are so super-sensitive that not even it can be allowed to catch wind of them. Unless you believe that the court has been infiltrated somehow by "the terrorists", there's only one logical reason for this: both the court and the public would be outraged if the real reason for the surveillance became known. Are they collecting commercial intelligence for their closest corporate patrons? Do they intend to tamper with the upcoming elections? Are they going to mess with political and ideological opponents? I'd worry about all three.

Re:I just don't get it

[Lijemo]

Because the previous rubber-stamp system left a paper-trail (albeit one they could claim was "classified for reasons of national security") as to who they were spying on and why, and thus had some amount of accountability, no matter how tiny.

The new system does not.

If there's anything this administration hates, it's accountability.

Re:I just don't get it

[bberens]

My speculation is this:

You get a warrant when you want to spy on SOMEONE. You don't get a warrant when you want to capture all inbound and outbound (from the country) telephone traffic and put it through your NSA analyzer supercomputer thingymajig looking for suspicious activity. You see, for something like this to work, you need a very large sample of data to compare to. You will never be given a warrant for little Felipe who wants to call mommy back in Italy to talk about spaghetti recipes. But you need that data as a base line.

Now he says that?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bush has said he would hold out for a permanent overhaul of the 1978 surveillance law."

Wow, what a brilliant idea! Too bad Bush didn't suggest that BEFORE authorizing an illegal program and goading the telecom companies into going along with it. Had he done so he wouldn't need to get retroactive immunity for them.

I think everybody understands that in the height of an emergency tough decisions have to be made, but the next priority should have been to move for revision to the FISA legislation, not keep the thing secret for several years and then try to bail out the organizations involved once people found out the law was being broken. Don't like constraints of the FISA law? Conform to it, revise the legislation, or break the law and face the legal consequences. There is no other option for a person holding office who has sworn an oath to uphold the law. Well, there isn't supposed to be.

Bush Blows It

[Doc Ruby]

Yesterday, Bush barfed at us in his radio address:

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday that Democratic leaders in the House are blocking key intelligence legislation so trial lawyers can sue phone companies that helped the government eavesdrop on suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Terrorists are plotting new attacks against America "at this very moment," Bush said in renewing his call for the House to pass legislation needed to renew the intelligence law that expired last weekend.

Bush has his new Attorney General lying to back him up, but they can't even keep their stories straight:

The Bush administration said yesterday that the government "lost intelligence information" because House Democrats allowed a surveillance law to expire last week, causing some telecommunications companies to refuse to cooperate with terrorism-related wiretapping orders.

But hours later, administration officials told lawmakers that the final holdout among the companies had relented and agreed to fully participate in the surveillance program, according to an official familiar with the issue.

It's obvious that it's Bush's fault the PAA expired without extension:

But even if telecoms were refusing to cooperate, the reason for their refusal was not because they don't have retroactive immunity, but rather, it's because there is alleged uncertainty over the legality of current surveillance requests, and uncertainty over the ongoing validity of the prospective immunity provided by the PAA, because the PAA expired. If the PAA had been extended, they would be completely protected with prospective immunity for future surveillance cooperation. And, of course, the PAA would not have expired had Congressional Democrats had their way -- they wanted to extend it until they could agree to a new bill. Thus, any alleged refusal on the part of telecoms to cooperate is exclusively the fault of Bush and House Republicans for forcing expiration of the PAA. That's just true as a matter of basic logic.

The bottom line is that Bush's own Attorney General just admitted that he and Bush and the rest are repeatedly breaking the law:

But leave all of that aside for a moment. Since Mike Mukasey himself just said in this letter that spying outside of FISA is "illegal," and since it's indisputable that the Bush administration did just that for years, doesn't that compel him as Attorney General to commence a criminal investigation into this "illegal" conduct?

What does it take to get impeached in this country? Will someome please blow Bush already, so we can finally get it over with?

Re:Bush Blows It

[rpillala]

Yesterday, Bush barfed at us in his radio address:

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday that Democratic leaders in the House are blocking key intelligence legislation so trial lawyers can sue phone companies that helped the government eavesdrop on suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks.

This is a fabrication, as the only case pending right now (am I wrong?) is the one by the EFF, hardly a bunch of trial lawyers looking to get rich. Gleen Greenwald interviewed Cindy Cohn, the lead counsel in EFF's case against AT&T in October of last year.

They're playing to cover their own crimes

[Phoenix666]

If the Whitehouse can bully Congress into passing retroactive immunity to the telecoms for warrantless wiretapping, then they also by extension are exhonerated. So, they get to get a free pass for breaking the law without directly asking Congress to give it to them.

There's a word for this: Fascism

[Ralph Spoilsport]

They could do this legally through the FISA courts, but rather than go bother with even a Ruber Stamp court like FISA and at least pretend they're not spying on American citizens in direct violation of the fourth amendment for which the FISA courts were implemented to supposedly protect, they would rather run rough shod over everyone's privacy and interests for their own ends based out of their own incompetence and ignorance.

The sad part? There is no promise that any democratic administration would stop this.

Why? Because it's fascism, or, as one of the guys who invented fascism (Mussolini) caled it: Corporatism.

The American Empire is dying and it's a sad thing to watch it act, as WS Burroughs said in 1984, as the single greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

RS

It's a smokescreen - you're already wiretapped

[Zollui]

The NSA has been eavesdropping on electronic comms of US citizens including telephone conversations for several decades. It was illegal to do this in the USA so they did it from their base at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, England (MH is the world's largest listening post).

Re:Darwinian M&M duels

[Soft Cosmic Rusk]

I must admit that I don't quite see the connection to TFA, but anyway: Would you please either stop doing that or pay my dentist bills?

Just by way of reminder

[HangingChad]

We were not completely surprised by the 9-11 hijackers, the problem was we didn't act on what we did know. Even then we knew. We knew without the Patriot Act, we knew without wholesale spying on the American public, we knew without the Protect America Act. We knew and did nothing. So now the solution is to spy on Americans. Makes almost as much sense as being attacked by terrorists operating out of Afghanistan and responding by attacking Iraq.

Only a Republican would think it makes sense to fight terrorism by monitoring my 83 year old mom's phone calls.

And, just in case this dust up has interfered with the intelligence community's ability to monitor the activity of Americans, the bake sale has been postponed until next week because the lady running it broke her hip and mom change her hair appointment to 11 am this week because Marge's family is flying in from Montana. And dad still can't figure out why his pineapple plants keep dying in the front yard. Now you're up to date.

Revolution 2.0

[fishthegeek]

Will be fought one vote at a time. If the telecom providers didn't do anything wrong when they assisted the wiretaps then they do not need legal protection from congress. By moving to protect the telecom providers Congress is implicitly admitting that they acted in ways that are probably illegal.

Re:Corporate intrest

[rhendershot]

I was going to moderate you off-topic but, well, then.... my 2 cents.

First, don't minimize the scope of the government of the largest and strongest nation coercing private enterprise to bend to its will and to do illegal acts. That goes WAY beyond the issues of private commerce between individuals and recordings-producers.

With that said; what the fux do you think DRM *is* except a way to "wiretap" the private individual (aka. customer). Without judicial review. Unilaterally.

Personally I think it's a violation of RICO and monopolistic to enforce law through technology when the issues of fair-use are not resolved by a court. That's another rant though.

Resume?

[nurb432]

Did they ever really stop?

Now what?

[EaglemanBSA]

...and just when I thought the administration couldn't be any more open about breaking the law and violating my civil liberties. Honestly, does this piss everybody else off as much as it does me? I'm all for America, and I think we have a good number of good things going on over here, but this is getting ridiculous - we have these controls in place (the representatives of the people) to limit the power of the executive branch, and it's as if the administration doesn't even hear them.

I don't know what's worse, not having any input at all, or knowing that it won't be used in any decisions in the end anyway.

Re:Now what?

[EaglemanBSA]

My fiancee lives in a foreign country, and I call her every other day, you insensitive clod. Perhaps you missed the part where it's totally possible to monitor those phone conversations legally, with a warrant (at which point I would have no problem with it). Why the need for such secrecy, that the tap has to be without the approval of a judge, even 72 hours after the fact?

Beyond that, this isn't just about wiretapping phones. It sets a very dangerous precedent through which the executive branch can bypass the legislative branch's powers and act illegally with no fear of repercussions.

oblig

[PieceofLavalamp]

yeah i've gotta admit i'd rather be constitutionally violated than shot in the face.

Re:Criminal charges

[TheRaven64]

I'm not convinced. The current administration has so completely discredited the office of the president, both domestically and internationally, that it will take a lot to restore it. Pursuing criminal charges would send a message that the President is not a dictator, and that the new incumbent expected to be held to account for their actions.

Re:News at 11

[element-o.p.]

I've got to disagree with you there. The dude's got cojones so large, I'm amazed he can still walk.

Look at it this way. His attorney general when he first announced the program has left the post in disgrace. Congress refused to pass an act providing retroactive immunity to the telcos who first participated in program. The ACLU and EFF have filed lawsuits because of the wiretapping program. People across the county have spoken out against the program. And still he announces that the warrantless wiretapping has resumed. Sounds pretty brazen to me.

On the one hand, I want to believe that he is doing it with the best of intentions but is just to stupid to realize the long-term implications of such a thing. On the other hand, I am very, very afraid that he knows exactly what he is doing. In either case, this program is a (tm) Bad Thing and needs to end, permanently.

AG agrees wiretaps are illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what our Attorney General say, in a letter McConnell and Mukasey wrote to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes:

[You imply that the emergency authorization process under FISA is an adequate substitute for the legislative authorities that have elapsed. This assertion reflects a basic misunderstanding about FISA's emergency authorization provisions. Specifically, you assert that the National Security Agency (NSA) or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) "may begin surveillance immediately" in an emergency situation. FISA requires far more, and it would be illegal to proceed as you suggest]. In other words, in the Administration's own words, what they are doing is illegal. Nixon broke into some file cabinets. Bush and the complicit telcos monitor everything. And the Democrats are so spineless they let it happen. Amazing. One telco refused to comply - Quest - and they were shut out of lucrative government contracts.

Glen Greenwald has been on this beat for a long time now. Read more about Mukasy's recent admissionhere.

LAST TIME - Pay Attention

[not_hylas( )]

LAST TIME - pay attention.

It's wholesale data-mining.

Spying in the Death Star: The AT&T Whistle-Blower Tells His Story
Mark Klein = Patriot
Former AT&T technician

http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/05/kleininterview

In room 641A at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco, California is a SPLITTER that duplicates ALL traffic and diverts it by the way of a proprietary black box to an unnamed acronymed agency.
Mark Klein called it a "Big Brother Machine".
It can't be more clear than that.

For all the folks that still don't get IT, good God!, go back to sleep, and or, quit posting drivel.