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Banned
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Barak Obama could stop this "fear Psy-Op" in a heartbeat.....it will be a true test of the direction in which, if elected, he will lead us. He claims to have been employed as a university level lecturer on Constitutional law.
All Obama has to announce is, that his opponent, John McCain, supports the administrations demand for authority to eavesdrop of the telecommunications of Americans in the US, and read their email and text messages, all without warrants approved by a judge. If it were not so, the administration would not be demanding an "all or nothing", blanket communications surveillance authority.
All that would be needed to take the "fear" out of this "Psy-Op", would be a revision to FISA that permits warrantless surveillance of telecommunication originating and ending outside the US, that is routed through an internal US telecomm switch. The administration absolutely refuses to settle for this revision, because, via the use of the compliant neo-fascist corporate owned media, and a "DINO" democratic house and senate leadership, they believe that they still have the influence to trash the Constitution, compleletly, when it comes to passing into law, authority for unaccountable, secret domestic, warrantless, telecomm surveillance:
The White House passed this piece of distorted, falsehoods filled, blatant fear mongering propaganda, to a NY TImes stenographer yesterday:
Quote:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/06/w...not-about.html
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
What the FISA Debate is Not About
Marty Lederman
...The Attorney General is quoted as saying that a return to the FISA legal regime would be "unthinkable." But why? It is very difficult to figure out, either from the Times story or from other public sources, just what the big deal would be. Here's what the Times has to say about the possible "degradation" of intelligence capabilities:
Quote:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search
Impasse on Spying Could Lead to Tighter Rules - NYTimes.com
A senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration was concerned that reverting to the older standards and ...
....Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey has described the idea of reverting to the older standards of foreign surveillance as “unthinkable,” adding, “I still hope and actually think that it won’t happen.”....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/wa...gewanted=print -
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....It is exceedingly difficult to make any sense of this debate without access to nonpublic information, but I think it is possible to clarify several things, which cumulatively render the "crisis" considerably less acute than Administration officials would have us believe.....
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Quote:
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/...008-06-10.html
Lawmakers see progress on FISA talks
By Manu Raju
Posted: 06/10/08 02:12 PM [ET]
Congressional Republicans are reviewing a Democratic proposal to break the logjam on electronic-surveillance legislation by allowing federal district courts to determine whether telephone companies seeking legal immunity received orders from the Bush administration to wiretap people’s phones.
That differs from a plan that Republicans, with support from the White House, floated right before Memorial Day that would give that authority to the secret court that operates under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In both cases, the courts would not decide whether those orders constitute a violation of the law, according to people familiar with the language. The plan was floated by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and has the support of Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the chairman of the Intelligence Committee.
GOP aides said that Republicans would likely suggest more revisions, but saw the proposal as a step in the right direction.
“While several issues still remain, Sen. Bond believes he and Hoyer are making progress on crafting an ultimate compromise and remains hopeful that a bill to keep American families safe can be signed into law before the August expiration moves the intelligence community back to 1978,” said Shana Marchio, communications director for Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.).
Rockefeller said he is “mildly optimistic” that the plan could yield agreement, and added that the status of negotiations is “getting pretty darn good.” ....
...The new plan appears unlikely to win over civil libertarian groups. They sent a letter to Capitol Hill Monday calling on Congress to reject the Republican proposal and saying it would allow the FISA court to “rubber stamp” a grant of immunity for surveillance operations.
Their allies on Capitol Hill also might be skeptical of the latest Democratic plan. Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) sent a letter to congressional leaders asking them to reject immunity for the telephone companies.
“As we have explained repeatedly in the past, existing law already immunizes telephone companies that respond in good faith to a government request, as long as that request meets certain clearly spelled-out statutory requirements,” Dodd and Feingold wrote Tuesday......
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Senator Russ Feingold, the only senator who voted against Patriot Act I, and who sponsored a senate resolution to censure president Bush in 2006, and Senator Chris Dodd sent the following letter to the ridiculously compromised and manipulated democratic house and senate leaders, yesterday, it reads:
Quote:
http://static1.firedoglake.com/28/fi...6-10-08ltr.pdf
June 10, 2008
The Honorable Harry Reid The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Majority Leader Speaker of the House of Representatives
S-211, U.S. Capitol H-232, U.S. Capitol
Washington, DC 20510 Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Steny Hoyer
Majority Leader
H-107, U.S. Capitol
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy The Honorable John Conyers
Chairman Chairman
Committee on the Judiciary Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building 2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20510 Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable John D. Rockefeller IV The Honorable Sylvester Reyes
Chairman Chairman
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence House Permanent Select Committee on
211 Hart Senate Office Building Intelligence
Washington, DC 20510 H-405, U.S. Capitol
Washington, DC
20515
Dear Majority Leader Reid, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, Chairman Leahy,
Chairman Conyers, Chairman Rockefeller and Chairman Reyes,
As you work to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the FISA
Amendments Act of 2008, we urge you to include key protections to safeguard the privacy of
law-abiding Americans, and not to include provisions that would grant retroactive immunity to
companies that allegedly cooperated in the President's illegal warrantless wiretapping program.
With respect to immunity, we are particularly concerned about a proposal recently made by
Senator Bond, and want to make clear that his proposal is just as unacceptable as the immunity
provision in the Senate bill, which we vigorously opposed. As we understand it, the proposal
would authorize secret proceedings in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to evaluate
the companies' immunity claims, but the court's role would be limited to evaluating precisely the
same question laid out in the Senate bill: whether a company received "a written request or
directive from the Attorney General or the head of an element of the intelligence community …
indicating that the activity was authorized by the President and determined to be lawful."
Information declassified in the committee report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
on the FISA Amendments Act, S. 2248, confirms that the companies received exactly these
materials:
The Committee can say, however, that beginning soon after September 11, 2001, the
Executive branch provided written requests or directives to U.S. electronic
communication service providers to obtain their assistance with communications
intelligence activities that had been authorized by the President.
… The letters were provided to electronic communication service providers at regular
intervals. All of the letters stated that the activities had been authorized by the
President. All of the letters also stated that the activities had been determined to be
lawful by the Attorney General, except for one letter that covered a period of less
than sixty days. That letter, which like all the others stated that the activities had been
authorized by the President, stated that the activities had been determined to be lawful
by the Counsel to the President.
In other words, under the Bond proposal, the result of the FISA Court's evaluation would be
predetermined. Regardless of how much information it is permitted to review, what standard
of review is employed, how open the proceedings are, and what role the plaintiffs' lawyers are
permitted to play, the FISA Court would be required to grant immunity. To agree to such a
proposal would not represent a reasonable compromise.
As we have explained repeatedly in the past, existing law already immunizes telephone
companies that respond in good faith to a government request, as long as that request meets
certain clearly spelled-out statutory requirements. This carefully designed provision protects
both the companies and the privacy of innocent Americans. It gives clear guidance to
companies on what government requests it should comply with and what requests it should
reject because the requirements of the law are not met. The courts should be permitted to apply
this longstanding provision in the pending cases to determine whether the companies that
allegedly participated in the program should be granted immunity.
We also urge you to correct the significant flaws in the FISA provisions of the Senate bill,
some of which were addressed in the House version. The Senate bill authorizes widespread
surveillance involving innocent Americans and does not provide adequate checks and balances
to protect their rights. First, it permits the government to come up with its own procedures for
deciding who is a target of surveillance, and provides no meaningful consequences if the FISA
Court later determines the government's procedures are not even reasonably designed to
wiretap foreigners. Second, even if the government is wiretapping foreigners outside the U.S.,
those foreigners need not be terrorists, suspected of any wrongdoing, or even be of any
specific intelligence interest. That means the government could legally collect all
communications between Americans here at home and the rest of the world. Third, the Senate
version version of the bill failed to prohibit the practice of reverse targeting – namely, wiretapping a person overseas when what the government is really interested in is an American here at home
with whom the foreigner is communicating. Fourth, the Senate version of the bill failed to
include meaningful privacy protections for the Americans whose communications will be
collected in vast new quantities. We strongly believe that these problems should be corrected
as the legislation moves forward.
Thank you for your consideration of these concerns. As this legislation moves forward, please
know that we will strongly oppose any legislation that includes a grant of unjustified retroactive
immunity and that does not adequately protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans.
Sincerely,
Senator Russell D. Feingold
Christopher J. Dodd
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If Obama does not prominently support the honest and direct position of fellow senators Feingold and Dodd on the issue of FISA "reform" we will have a clear confirmation that defense of our constitutional protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, vs. the president and his political party's effort to use fear mongering to diminish our constitutional protections from government intrusion into our lives, we will know it, soon enough.
If there really was any basis for concerns expressed over on the "Ex-White House Press Secretary" thread, that democrats in congress might over zealously target the president for investigation of his deliberate misleading of the American people for the purpose of taking authority they would only grant to him out of fear for their security, all one need do is read this thread's OP and this post, to understand that such concerns are the least of what we face. The president is still trying to control us with "false fear" assertions, even after all the damage it has done to our country and our collective approval of his job performance and his integrity.
We can see from "THE HILL" article excerpt earlier in this post, that the president is still attempting to use his "fear card" so effectively that he has turned the democratic leadership that voters enabled in November, 2006, from reforms and checks and balances, vs. the executive branch, into a useful tool to further the president's "power grab".....
Background: One of the large telecomm companies refused the "letters" from the president, his counsel, and or the attorney general, because they were not warrants signed by a judge, authorizing cooperation with the government in it's attempts at surveillance of communications, as required by law:
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/wa...cnd-phone.html
May 12, 2006
Qwest's Refusal of N.S.A. Query Is Explained
By JOHN O'NEIL and ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, May 12 — The telecommunications company Qwest turned down requests by the National Security Agency for private telephone records because it concluded that doing so would violate federal privacy laws, a lawyer for the telephone company's former chief executive said today.
In a statement released this morning, the lawyer said that the former chief executive, Joseph N. Nacchio, made the decision after asking whether "a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that request."
Mr. Nacchio learned that no warrant had been granted and that there was a "disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process," said the lawyer, Herbert J. Stern. As a result, the statement said, Mr. Nacchio concluded that "the requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act."
A Qwest spokesman, Robert Toevs, declined to discuss anything to do with security issues or the statement by Mr. Nacchio's lawyer.
Qwest was the only phone company to turn down requests from the security agency for phone records as part of a program to compile a vast database of numbers and other information on virtually all domestic calls. The program's scope was first described in an article published on Thursday by USA Today that led to an outpouring of demands for information from Congressional Republicans and Democrats. The article said that AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon had agreed to provide the information to the security agency.
On Thursday, those companies said they were following the law in protecting customers' privacy but would not discuss details of the report. Separately today Verizon issued a statement saying that it provided customer information to a government agency "only where authorized by law for appropriately-defined and focused purposes."_ The company cited unspecified "factual errors in press coverage,"_ about the way it the company handles customer information in general....
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Quote:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/05...spying-program
May 7th, 2008
A New Look at the Hub of AT&T's Spying Program
Posted by Rebecca Jeschke
Our class action lawsuit against AT&T for collaborating with the National Security Agency in the massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications includes powerful evidence of a secret room
in San Francisco.
But the hub of the spying program may be just outside of St. Louis, in a Missouri town called Bridgeton. A special report from local station KMOV puts the pieces together in a comprehensive and disturbing story about this dragnet surveillance, with the help of AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein. Watch the video
on the KMOV site for a fresh look at a key piece of this spying puzzle.
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Isn't it rather obvious that, if one political party has the advantage of keeping it's own communications secure, but has the option of monitoring all of the internet and telecomm communications of the opposing political party, it will enjoy an extremely lopsided advantage in trying to win elections?
Last edited by host; 06-11-2008 at 01:41 AM..
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