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The Unitary Executive Congress On Wednesday July 9, the Senate voted to pass the FISA Amendments Act. This was a new law the Democratic majority in Congress had opposed in principle for the last five months in defiance of President Bush. They had suffered no political harm for taking the stand. Indeed, they defied him with as much success here as in opposing the privatization of social security. The collapse of the Democratic leadership on FISA was thus a sheer political calculation; yet the panic of the reversal ran ahead of any visible threat. It betrayed an embarrassment at the leadership's complicity with the president -- but in a manner that only increases the embarrassment and only tightens the complicity. The collapse also reflected a weakness of collective character. The fourth amendment sets up a law no executive may stand above: a law that forbids the trawling by the government for information against citizens without probable cause. It says every warrant must be supported by an oath or affirmation which particularly describes the place to be searched, and the things to be seized. Under pressure (but a very general not a particular pressure), the Democrats showed that, for them, the fourth amendment is dispensable in a way in which social security is not dispensable. The new law has these important effects: (1) It reaffirms the president's right to order individual taps as well as massive data mining, on foreign targets and on American citizens with foreign contacts whom the president finds suspicious. (2) It extends from three days to a week the period during which he can spy on a person or many people, abroad or in this country, without telling anyone. (3) It contracts the authority of the FISA court from approval of individual warrants to approval of the general procedures used in surveillance. (4) It replaces the FISA court, as the single approver of individual warrants, with the inspectors general at the government agencies and departments; most of all (it would seem) the inspector general of the NSA. (5) It narrows the investigation around the telecom immunity lawsuits from a sifting for possible violations of the law by the president in seeking warrantless wiretaps -- and by the telecoms in supplying those wiretaps -- to the bare question whether the president had attached a note from a legal authority in requesting help with his searches and seizures. Not "Was it illegal and did the president and telecoms know it was illegal?", but rather, "Did he get a lawyer to sign for it?" has become the question for a court to decide. (6) Not the FISA court but a district court will answer that question for all the lawsuits covering the years 2001-2005....
The Bipartisan Surveillance State The Democratic Congress passed and Bush signed the "FISA Amendments Act of 2008," legalizing the president's longstanding illegal wiretapping program. The law allows broad warrantless surveillance of Americans in the United States, so long as the call or e-mail is thought to be international. Eavesdropping on domestic communications is legal for a week before court papers even have to be filed. The telecom companies that cooperated with Bush are immune from civil lawsuits. Most important, the administration's illegal conduct has been retroactively approved and future administrations have wider powers than ever to spy on Americans. The Democratic leadership and virtually all Congressional Republicans approved the law. In a complete reversal of his campaign promise, so did Senator Barack Obama. Last October, his campaign announced, "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." Instead, he voted to prevent a filibuster and then he voted for the bill. Democrats and Obama supporters defend the betrayal with hollow claims that the law actually protects civil liberties. Why then was Bush so eager to sign it? Missouri Republican Senator Christopher Bond, a leader in this “compromise,” says “the White House got a better deal than even they had hoped.” Two years ago, the Democrats seemed outraged after we learned Bush had ordered the National Security Agency— a military outfit—to spy on Americans without warrants, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Now they control Congress with good odds at the presidency. Power and the hope for more power corrupt. As Salon.com civil liberties expert Glenn Greenwald notes, “in 2006, when the Congress was controlled by [Republicans], the administration tried to get a bill passed legalizing warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, but was unable. They had to wait until the Congress was controlled by [Democrats] Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to accomplish that.”....
The New FISA Compromise: It's Worse than You Think Last month, the House of Representatives passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, Congress's latest response to President Bush's demands for expanded eavesdropping authority. The Democratic leadership, seemingly intent on avoiding real debate on the proposal, scheduled the final vote just a day after the bill was introduced in the House. Touted by Democratic leaders as a "compromise," it was supported almost unanimously by House Republicans and opposed by a majority of Democrats. The 114-page bill was pushed through the House so quickly that there was no real time to debate its many complex provisions. This may explain why the telecom immunity provision has received so much attention in the media: it is much easier to explain to readers not familiar with the intricacies of surveillance law than the other provisions. But as important as the immunity issue is, the legislation also makes many prospective changes to surveillance law that will profoundly impact our privacy rights for years to come. Specifically, the new legislation dramatically expands the government's ability to wiretap without meaningful judicial oversight, by redefining "oversight" so that the feds can drag their feet on getting authorization almost indefinitely. It also gives the feds unprecedented new latitude in selecting eavesdropping targets, latitude that could be used to collect information on non-terrorist-related activities like P2P copyright infringement and online gambling. In short, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 opens up loopholes so large that the feds could drive a truck loaded down with purloined civil liberties through it. So the telecom immunity stuff is just the smoke; let's take a look at the fire....
The Worst of All Worlds Why did nearly half the Democrats in the House vote for the "FISA Amendments Act" that's now pending in the Senate, when most of them had opposed warrantless spying and telecom immunity before? The answer is that they were bribed, using your tax dollars. The Washington Post claims a deal was cut: the Democratic Leadership would support the FISA bill if the President would agree to add $95 billion in DOMESTIC spending to the latest Iraq appropriation. In other words, House Democrats voted to continue the war and sold the Fourth Amendment for $95 billion. Republicans say they want less spending. Democrats say they want less war. What's their compromise? More spending and more war....
Domestic spying quietly goes on With Congress on the verge of outlining new parameters for National Security Agency eavesdropping between suspicious foreigners and Americans, lawmakers are leaving largely untouched a host of government programs that critics say involves far more domestic surveillance than the wiretaps they sought to remedy. These programs - most of them highly classified - are run by an alphabet soup of federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies. They sift, store and analyze the communications, spending habits and travel patterns of U.S. citizens, searching for suspicious activity. The surveillance includes data-mining programs that allow the NSA and the FBI to sift through large databanks of e-mails, phone calls and other communications, not for selective information, but in search of suspicious patterns. Other information, like routine bank transactions, is kept in databases similarly monitored by the Central Intelligence Agency. "There's virtually no branch of the U.S. government that isn't in some way involved in monitoring or surveillance," said Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian and fellow at the National Security Archives at The George Washington University. "We're operating in a brave new world."....
Want some torture with your peanuts? A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser®. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal, Inc. website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers (video also shown below). This bracelet would: • Take the place of an airline boarding pass • Contain personal information about the traveler • Be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage • Shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes The Electronic ID Bracelet, as it’s referred to, would be worn by every traveler “until they disembark the flight at their destination.” Yes, you read that correctly. Every airline passenger would be tracked by a government-funded GPS, containing personal, private and confidential information, and would shock the customer worse than an electronic dog collar if the passenger got out of line....
U.S. defends laptop searches at the border Is a laptop searchable in the same way as a piece of luggage? The Department of Homeland Security believes it is. For the past 18 months, immigration officials at border entries have been searching and seizing some citizens’ laptops, cellphones, and BlackBerry devices when they return from international trips. In some cases, the officers go through the files while the traveler is standing there. In others, they take the device for several hours and download the hard drive’s content. After that, it’s unclear what happens to the data. The Department of Homeland Security contends these searches and seizures of electronic files are vital to detecting terrorists and child pornographers. It also says it has the constitutional authority to do them without a warrant or probable cause. But many people in the business community disagree, saying DHS is overstepping the Fourth Amendment bounds of permissible routine searches. Some are fighting for Congress to put limits on what can be searched and seized and what happens to the information that’s taken. The civil rights community says the laptop seizures are simply unconstitutional. They want DHS to stop the practice unless there’s at least reasonable suspicion....
Gun stolen? Report it Reporting a lost or stolen gun to police seems pretty logical to Mayor Michael Nutter. Not doing it in Philadelphia now comes with a cost — $1,900. Nutter and other city officials yesterday announced that the lost-or-stolen reporting requirement passed by City Council in April and upheld in court early last month will go into full effect Aug. 8. Nutter suggested residents take the next month to take inventory of their firearms in preparation of the new law and report any missing guns to police. “If you lose your piece, call police,” he said at a press conference. “We are serious about aggressively enforcing public safety laws.” The hefty fine will be imposed as a first penalty upon anyone who through the course of a police investigation or any other city investigation has been identified as failing to report their firearm missing within 24 hours, officials said. Second and third offenses by the same person will result in jail time and alleged law breakers will have their cases heard in civil court, Nutter said. The National Rifle Association has already filed an appeal to Commonwealth Court to have the lost-or-stolen law and two other city gun laws, the group’s attorney said yesterday....
While Bloomberg frets about our guns, NYPD can’t keep track of theirs Anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg should “mind his own store before telling others how to operate theirs,” said the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, after an audit found that the New York Police Department lost track of dozens of guns in its own storage lockers. “While this guy has been bullying gun dealers around the country about so-called ’slip-shod’ operations,” chuckled CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “his own police department seems to be slipping quite a bit on its own. Bloomberg needs to back off, shut up and get his own house in order before telling others how to operate.” According to the New York Times, “nearly one out of three handguns and rifles that had been turned in to the police could not be immediately accounted for in a Manhattan property clerk’s office.” “We’re waiting for Bloomberg to send a team of undercover vigilante investigators down there to find out what’s wrong,” Gottlieb said. “Can one of his infamous lawsuits be far behind?” Bloomberg dispatched non-police “investigators” to run stings on gun shops in several states more than two years ago, ostensibly to show how easy it is to illegally obtain guns in other states. He then sued gun dealers in five states....
Suing George W. Bush: A bizarre and troubling tale On July 3, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court in California made a ruling particularly worthy of the nation's attention. In Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. v. Bush, a key case in the epic battle over warrantless spying inside the United States, Judge Walker ruled, effectively, that President George W. Bush is a felon. Judge Walker held that the president lacks the authority to disregard the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA -- which means Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program was illegal. Whether Bush will ultimately be held accountable for violating federal law with the program remains unclear. Bush administration lawyers have fought vigorously -- at times using brazen, logic-defying tactics -- to prevent that from happening. The court battle will continue to play out as Congress continues to battle over recasting FISA and possibly granting immunity to telecom companies involved in the illegal surveillance. The story of how Al-Haramain's lawyers negotiated the journey thus far to Judge Walker's ruling -- a team of seven lawyers that includes me -- sheds light on how much is at stake for the Bush administration and the country. It is a surreal saga, involving a top-secret document accidentally released by the government, a showdown between Bush lawyers and a federal judge, the violent destruction of a laptop computer by government agents,....You should take the time to watch the ad and then read this article.