Tag: FISA (page 5)

Great read today, in the Nation: Data Mining Our Liberties. Aziz Huq examines the recently passed "Protect America Act of 2007." The Brennan Center says:

Azi believes the law "is a dramatic, across-the-board expansion of government authority to collect information without judicial oversight," and "an open-ended invitation to collect Americans' international calls and e-mails."

Huq breaks down how and why this law came into being and notes that, in truth, the law actually does not expire in 6 months. Ultimately it gives the Administration "power without responsibility" and "allows the government to spy when there is no security justification."

Just a few of the points:

We know that our Unitary Chief Executive is The Decider of all questions in the executive branch. Now it appears that President Bush is also The Decider of issues before the legislative branch.

President George W. Bush said Friday that Congress must stay in session until it approves legislation modernizing a U.S. law governing eavesdropping on foreigners. ... The president said that lawmakers must not leave for their August recess this weekend as planned unless they "pass a bill that will give our intelligence community the tools they need to protect the United States."

They must, must they? What constitutional provision empowers the president to order the legislature to remain in session so that it can enact another one of his bad laws?

Update: Myths and Facts About FISA.

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Republicans have been pushing to amend FISA before the August recess. A hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence at which Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell was scheduled to testify today has been canceled.

Yesterday, for the first time, McConnell briefed Sen. Arlen Specter on the NSA program. While Specter hasn't discussed what he learned at the briefing, after it he labeled attempts to impeach or bring perjury charges against Alberto Gonzales "premature."

We need to slow down this train. FISA doesn't need to be gutted or amended. It needs to be followed.

"FISA was enacted to ensure that no president could unilaterally decide who to secretly and indefinitely wiretap under the guise of national security. These bills would allow terrorism to be used as a pretext for undermining our basic Fourth Amendment rights. Congress should not pass the bills which give the president a blank check to violate the rights of innocent Americans."

Congress should just say no to gutting FISA.

Update below: FISA action may not be off the table after all:

The Administration, after violating FISA for years while claiming the President as Commander in Chief during Wartime is a King, now wants the Congress to codify violations of the Fourth Amendment:

The Bush administration yesterday asked Congress to make more non-citizens subject to intelligence surveillance and to authorize the interception of foreign communications routed through the United States. Currently, under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, individuals have to be associated with a foreign terrorism suspect or a foreign power to fall under the auspices of the FISA court, which can grant the authority to institute federal surveillance. . . . The proposed revisions to FISA would also allow the government to keep information obtained "unintentionally," unrelated to the purpose of the surveillance, if it "contains significant foreign intelligence." Currently such information is destroyed unless it indicates threat of death or serious bodily harm.

This would run afoul of the Fourth Amendment. In U.S. v. Duggan the Second Circuit explained why FISA as currently written is constitutional: