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?

[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?

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.

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 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.

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?

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

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.

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: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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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.