The Blue State

You're no longer a U.S. citizen when making an international call

The wiretap legislation allows the Bush Administration to spy on you without a warrant if you make an international call.  What's next: spying on Americans who visit non-U.S. web sites?  Talk about isolationism!

Arlen Specter's (D-PA) wiretap bill is on the verge of possibly sneaking through the Senate by the slimmest of margins.  But according to a Justice Department spokesman, the bill would allow the NSA to conduct warrantless wiretaps of American citizens:

The program approved by Mr. Bush “does allow for the interceptionwithout court order of international communications where one end iswithin the United States, and this agreement would provide thisauthority and would establish a process for moving to individualizedcourt orders with respect to individuals within the United States,”said Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman. He declined toelaborate.

See, here's the problem.  Arlen Specter is trying to make this look like a compromise -- in that if it's a U.S. call a warrant is required, but if it's an international call then a warrant is not required to wiretap.  Fair deal, right?

But it should have nothing to do where the call is going, but instead who is making the call.  If there is an American citizen at a U.S. phone, then that person should have full privacy protections under the constitution.  According to the 1978 Foreign Surveillance Act, no calls -- regardless of whether one or two on the line are from the U.S. -- can be wiretapped unless there is warrant.  That is the law.  But under this bill, things will be changed drastically.

So instead of one side getting something out of this deal, the Administration manipulated Specter to give the White House exactly what they wanted, while at the same time making it appear like a compromise. We're taking a giant leap backward by telling Americans that they are no longer entitled to the same protections under the law once they place an international phone call. 

What's next: the Administration monitoring all Americans on the internet because it's the "world wide web?"  Not to sound too much like John Stossel, but give me a break!

Let me be even more clear: my objection is not with warrantless wiretaps themselves, but with the consistency of the law.  If you are going to make it legal for warrantless wiretapping of Americans who place an international call, then why not legalize such wiretaps on Americans making U.S. calls as well?  What's the difference?  Are we not supposed to be talking with foreigners?  Now there's a isolationist mindset if I ever saw one!

Oh, and did you know that the GOP want to put the wiretap and torture bills together into one giant legislation?  That is a topic for another debate.
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Other progressive sites blogging about this issue: The State Roots Project, Liberty for All, The Unknown Candidate, Unclaimed Territory, Daily Kos, Swift Speech, The Real Spiel, Disgrunt, Saving the World.

Mehlman lies about Democrats' position on eavesdropping

Chairman Ken Mehlman used the Republican National Committee's summer meeting as a forum to distort the Democrats' national security stance.  On the issue of government eavesdropping, Mehlman claimed that the Democrats oppose eavesdropping on terrorists:

"America faces a critical question," Mehlman said. "Will we electleaders who recognize we're at war and want to use every tool to winit, or politicians who would surrender important tools we need to win?"

He singled out House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi  (D-Calif.) and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.

"As foreign jihadists call into the United States, do we use [NSA]technology to stop sleeper cells before they hit us? Or do we surrenderuse of this technology, as Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean would have usdo?"

Actually, Mehlman should be criticizing Republican Arlen Specter, who to an extent challenged the President by citing that in order to spy on Americans in this country, the NSA must first obtain a warrant from a FISA court.

But let's get to the heart of the matter.  The Democrats do not oppose eavesdropping on terrorists.  What Mehlman said is a down-right lie, and he knows it.  All he cared about was saying something that cable channels would repeat over and over.  No one opposes eavesdropping on terrorists.  What is in question is how to combat terrorism inside this country when it involves spying on taxpaying Americans.  Do we give the President unrestrained power by mortgaging the very check and balance system that we are trying to promote throughout the world, or do we follow the law?  The 1978 Foreign Surveillance Act law says that whenever the NSA needs to eavesdrop on Americans, they must go to a FISA court to get a warrant, which is normally rubber stamped almost 100% of the time anyway.  That's all.  Why are the Republicans so stubborn to follow the law that was passed down by their predecessors?

I think most Americans agree that the last thing we need now, especially after this disastrous leadership on Iraq, is to give the Executive Branch unrestrained power without any oversight.  We can fight terrorism and follow the law at the same time.  Mehlman's continuous distortions of the sort are not helpful for an open and honest debate.  Yes, I happen to think that the Democrats are stronger on national security.  But at the very least, let's conduct a debate of the issues by using nuance, not manipulated rhetoric. 

Then again, these are the Republicans we're talking about here.  From judging how they went after Max Cleland in 2002 and John Kerry in 2004, Mehlman's outburst signals just the beginning of yet another dirty campaign to divert attention away from issues that most Americans deem relevant.  If this is an election on the issues, the Democrats win.  So it will be the jobs of Karl Rove, Ken Mehlman and Frank Luntz to change the subject.

(Senator Joe Biden's speech last December on warrantless domestic wiretaps pretty much sums up theprogressive consensus on this issue.)

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Other sites blogging about this issue: Fight Bad Policy, Americablog, OK Blue Notes, 2008 Presidential Campaign Blog, Progressive Gold.

Whistleblower subpoenaed ahead of his testimony before Congress

Alberto Gonzales and President Bush are using NSA whistleblower Russel Tice as an example to all those who might want to leak anything to the press in the future.  Tice says that nothing he leaked was classified.  Still, the FBI showed up at his door:

NSA whistleblower Russell Tice says he was visited on Wednesday by twoFBI agents who handed him a federal subpoena instructing him to appearbefore a grand jury next week in Virginia.

Tice is being charged with violating Title 18, United States Code, Section 793.  This comes right before he is set to testify in front of Congress about the unconstitutional use of power by the Executive Branch:

Tice says he considers the subpoena a form of intimidation by thegovernment to keep him from testifying before Congressionalinvestigators about what he knows about the surveillance systems.

According to the conservative National Review, it may have been Tice who tipped off Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R) about NSA procedures that President Bush failed in his constitutional obligation to brief the Congress on.  But until that is proven, the whole Hoekstra-Tice connection is nothing more than a conspiracy theory.

Russell Tice is scheduled to appear before a 23-member grand jury in Virginia this week.

It should also be said that a few months ago the Supreme Court ruled that government whistleblowers are no longer protected from retaliation from their employers.

Hillary Clinton tries to get back progressive support with privacy bill

New York Senator Hillary Clinton has realized, with all the latest buzz about Al Gore and Barack Obama possibly running for president, that the Democratic base is second-guessing her as a likely national candidate.  Her speech this week that rejected the idea of a troop withdrawal drew large booes from the crowd on hand, as well as resentment from the blogosphere.

So in an effort to re-energize her support among the progressive base, Clinton is unveiling a piece of legislation that would set up a privacy bill of rights.  For the reasons above, she chose a liberal justice group called the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy as the venue to announce this legislation:

"Modern life makes many things easier and many things easier toknow, and yet privacy is somehow caught in the crosshairs of thesechanges," Clinton said in a speech to a left-leaning legal group.

Clinton's speech on protecting consumers from identity theft andcitizens from government snooping was the latest in a series of talksbilled as "major addresses" by aides. Previous speeches were on energyand the economy.

Part of the bill would also consist of creating a cabinet level post in the White House that would protect privacy and report back to the President.

In my view, the great part about this bill is that it would help protect medical privacy.  As far as warrantless NSA wiretaps are concerned, an issue that is at the forefront of debate, it is not clear as of now how far the bill will go to protect Americans in that regard.  It seems like the Privacy Rights and Oversight for Electronic and Commercial Transactions Act of 2006, which is what Hillary's "privacy bill or rights" is actually called, is more concerned with consumer protections from identity theft and not from wiretaps.

Hillary Clinton put out her own press release on her web site about what the bill contains.

(Related news)

Negroponte puts NSA legal troubles ahead of preserving citizens' rights

President Bush wants to throw out all the NSA domestic spying lawsuits because such lawsuits would force classified information to be revealed in a closed court room:

In papers filed late Friday, Justice Department lawyers said itwould be impossible to defend the legality of the spying programwithout disclosing classified information that could be of value tosuspected terrorists.

National Intelligence Director John Negroponte invoked the statesecrets privilege on behalf of the administration, writing thatdisclosure of such information would cause "exceptionally grave damage"to national security.

As a political science/history student, I cannot help but draw parallels between what we are seeing today and the propaganda during the Cold War.  The House hearings during the late-40s and early-50s involving Hollywood screenwriters accused of being communists were part of a sustained effort to snoop into the lives of anyone nuanced enough to ever question the domestic-driven U.S. foreign policy.  We are watching the same thing unfold today.  Although the a very legitimate battle against terrorism continues abroad, there are a few individuals heading government agencies here that are trying to get the government to wage war against its own law-abiding citizens.

Domestic surveillance by the NSA is supposed to occur with the oversight of both the legislature and our judicial system.  If a U.S. citizen feels that his or her privacy is being violated, then that is where our Judicial system comes in to at least hear the cases of those people.  If there is no way for those people to be heard, then there is absolutely no check on the Executive agencies in question.

Like during the Cold War, today National security is the ultimate trump card being used to outweigh all other matters in government.  What it comes down to is one question: is it more important to prevent the disclosure of classified information in a closed court room; or is it more important to see to it that every citizen has the right to be fully represented by our judicial system?  You make the call.

The low-down on the NSA's "secret rooms"

The progressive blogosphere has been abuzz about these reported "secret rooms" that allow the NSA to monitor all "electronic voice and data communications" coming from the AT&T switching center in San Francisco.  Brian Ross and Vic Walter, who have had one busy week, are all over this story:

New details on "secret rooms" allegedly established inside anAT&T switching center in San Francisco have been made public in asworn affidavit filed in court by a former AT&T employee, MarkKlein.

The affidavit was filed in support of a request by the ElectronicFrontier Foundation for a preliminary injunction to shut down the NSArooms.

According to the heavily-redacted eight page document, the NSAequipment is able to divert "the contents of all the electronic voiceand data communications" moving through the AT&T facility.

Klein was briefly given access to the room, which he says the NSA installed in 2002.

Klein describes the AT&T facility as "one of the largest internet switching points in the United States."

The government unsuccessfully sought to stop the lawsuit againstAT&T, but a judge has ruled that details will be kept secret.

Klein has previously provided a short public statement, but thecourt filing represents a more detailed description with broadercontextual details.

A hearing on the request for the preliminary injunction is scheduled for June 8.

An AT&T spokesman gave the following statement, "AT&T will not comment on pending litigation."

So what does all this mean, you ask? 

It means, as Google Watch's Ben Charny explained in his latest column, that the NSA was able to monitor "phone calls, e-mails and Internet sessions since 2003 without a warrant or court supervision" -- all from those secret rooms.  Even more revealing, this was done without complete oversight from the Senate Intelligence Committee.  Republican Chairman Pat Robertson and Ranking Democrat Jay Rockefeller of that committee were given a broad run-down of what the NSA was doing.  It is still unclear whether they were briefed about these "secret rooms."  But the other members of the committee went uninformed, which goes against precedent going back to ever since the passing of the 1978 Foreign Surveillance Act. 

The President is supposed to "consult" Congress on matters such as this.  The definition of the word "consult" means to "get or ask advice from."  Only briefing two out of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate does meet the lawful standard.

Both the NSA and AT&T have a lot of explaining to do about these "secret rooms."

Gonzales stops oversight into his own role in rubber-stamping White House NSA policy

More than ever, especially after the poor planning for hurricane Katrina and the strategic blunder of a war in Iraq, we are learning a lot about how a bunch of allied, power-hungry micro-managers are a whole lot more damaging to this country than having a level-headed, efficiently funded bureaucracy with checks to prevent an abuse power.

Today, we were reminded once again why having a small group of people with a large amount of power runs the risk of allowing potential abuses within the system.  A report in the National Journal explains how Alberto Gonzales squashed an effort by his own Justice Department to investigate his weak, rubber-stamp oversight into Bush's warrantless domestic spy program:

An internal Justice Department inquiry into whether department officials -- including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft-- acted properly in approving and overseeing the Bush administration'sdomestic eavesdropping program was stymied because investigators weredenied security clearances to do their work. The investigators,however, were only seeking information and documents relating to theNational Security Agency's surveillance program that were already inthe Justice Department's possession, two senior government officialssaid in interviews.

It is pretty obvious why President Bush keeps nominating his special counsels, such as Harriet Miers and Alberto Gonzales, for all these high posts.  They are 'yes sir' people with lasting loyalties to the President.  A patronage system like that only invites the possibility of having our Executive Branch being run by a group of allied individuals that make rubber stamping White House policy a higher priority than enforcing the law.

There is nothing wrong with the Executive Branch having their own ideological view about how to fight the war on terrorism.  But to prevent both internal and external oversight into the manner by which the Executive Branch routinely carries out that ideology goes against the very principles that our government was founded upon.

NSA and White House tell FCC to back off

One week after Michael Copps, one of the three FCC commissioners, urged his boss to conduct an investigation into whether it was illegal for a few of the major telephone companies to release caller information to the NSA, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin today rebuked that request, saying it it impossible because the NSA won't let them investigate anything:

"The classified nature of the NSA's activities makes us unable toinvestigate the alleged violations," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said inthe May 22 letter to Markey (Democratic U.S. Rep. from Mass).

 

Verizon and BellSouth have denied turning over telephone callrecords to the NSA. BellSouth has demanded USA Today retract claims inits story.

"We can't have a situation where the FCC, charged withenforcing the law, won't even begin an investigation of apparentviolations of the law because it predicts the administration willroadblock any investigations citing national security," Markey said inresponse to Martin.

FCC Chairman Martin has clear authority to direct the FCC to investigate this matter because all government agencies can check and balance one another.  But it looks like Martin is caving into the request of the Bush Administration to leave this alone.  By this development we can conclude that the Administration considers the NSA and the Pentagon the most dominant agencies in the federal government because they can override any investigation request by using the "terrorism" trump card.

(And this is what democracy looks like?)

Poll: 60% think phone companies handing over information amounts to "invasion or privacy"

The latest CBS poll just released helped reaffirm the fact that Americans do not want their calling information handed over to the feds:

"Not all major telephone companies have agreed to share this information with the government. Do you think phone companies should share information about the calling patterns of their customers with the government, or is that an invasion of privacy?"

Should Share - 32%
Invasion of Privacy - 60%
Unsure - 8%

Yesterday a New Zealand newspaper explained why the NSA warrantless spying program actually puts Americans in danger.

One FCC commissioner demands investigation into phone companies giving out numbers

Last week USA Today published a report confirmed by government sources that the NSA had asked the nation's major telephone companies to hand over tens of millions of phone records of their customers.  All except Qwest complied with that request.

Today, Michael Copps, one of the three commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, wants his agency to get involved by investigating whether it was illegal for phone companies to hand over such information:

Commissioner Michael J. Copps' comments also come as the three phonecompanies allegedly involved — AT&T Corp., Verizon CommunicationsInc. and BellSouth Corp. — face a growing number of lawsuits byconsumers. The latest, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington,seeks billions of dollars in damages for violation of federal privacylaws.

Although, when factoring in all the pressure coming from the White House in support for this program, it is likely that either FCC Chairman Kevin Martin will deny Copps' request, or a half-hearted investigation will take place.  I think that we have all come to expect that.