Category Archives: Congress

"Oblique References" Only Raise More Questions

August 3, 2007 – 12:00 am

Newsweek reports that some four or five months ago, a FISA judge held illegal parts of the revised warrantless wiretapping program. Revised, in that this was the program after the Administration decided to present it to the FISA court. Newsweek:

The order by a judge on the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court has never been publicly acknowledged by administration officials—and the details of it (including the identity of the judge who wrote it) remain highly classified. But the judge, in an order several months ago, apparently concluded that the administration had overstepped its legal authorities in conducting warrantless eavesdropping even under the scaled-back surveillance program that the White House first agreed to permit the FISA court to review earlier this year, said one lawyer who has been briefed on the order but who asked not to be publicly identified because of its sensitivity.

The first public reference to the order came obliquely this week from House Minority Leader John Boehner—one of a number of senior Republicans who have been leading the White House-backed campaign to persuade Congress to rush through an expanded eavesdropping measure before it leaves for August recess at the end of this week.

So, this FISA court ruling supposedly explains the “emergency.”

But instead of answering questions, an “oblique reference” to a secret opinion about a secret program written by a nameless judge only raises more questions. Were there other aspects of the surveillance program (remember - apparently cleaned-up in the hopes of passing FISA court muster) that the FISA judge determined violated the law? The only information leaked to the press is that which selectively bolsters the administration’s sudden insistence on a specific revision of the FISA statutes. Unfortunately, oblique references and self-serving leaks may prove sufficient in moving Congress toward unquestioningly revising the FISA statutes.

And if Congress’s fear of not looking “tough on terrorism” is not enough to move them, the Capitol’s subjection to one of Michael Chertoff’s “gut feelings” may better drive the administration’s point home.

More at WaPo:

Since March, the administration has quickly tried to build a case for the legislation, while concealing from the public and many in Congress a key event that appears to have driven the effort.

“It clearly shows that Congress has been playing with half a deck,” said Jim Dempsey, policy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology. “The administration is asking lawmakers to vote on a very important piece of legislation based upon selective declassification of intelligence.”

By Matthew Frederick | Also posted in War on Terror, government secrecy, the President | Comments Off

False Emergency

August 1, 2007 – 11:49 pm

NYT:

Under pressure from President Bush, Democratic leaders in Congress are scrambling to pass legislation this week to expand the government’s electronic wiretapping powers.Democratic leaders have expressed a new willingness to work with the White House to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it easier for the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on some purely foreign telephone calls and e-mail. Such a step now requires court approval.

It would be the first change in the law since the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants became public in December 2005.
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The administration says that digital technology and the globalization of the telecommunications industry have created a legal quandary for the intelligence community. Some purely international telephone calls are now routed through telephone switches inside the United States, which means such “transit traffic” can be subject to federal surveillance laws requiring search warrants for any government eavesdropping.

Under the program of wiretapping without warrants, which began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, the N.S.A. eavesdropped on the transit traffic without seeking court approval. But in January, the administration placed the program back under the FISA law, which meant warrants were required for surveillance of the transit traffic.

After years of the administration saying that FISA need not be amended to accommodate “terrorist surveillance,” suddenly there is a just-discovered hole in the FISA statutes? And members of Congress, in the words of the NYT, are scrambling to speedily amend the statutes? How familiar this sounds.

Wired’s Ryan Singel writes a thorough piece seriously questioning the “sudden emergency” of this FISA “reform” drive, as well as the potential for abuses especially prevalent in the administration’s proposed bill. The piece is well worth reading in its entirety, but here’s a snippet:

… the Administration’s proposed bill would let the government order the nation’s telecoms and internet providers to open their networks so that the government can build out spying complexes on their networks. The law would only require that foreign intelligence gathering be a “significant purpose” of the installation. So in essence the government could order the nation’s backbone providers to let the government turn the internet into one giant monitoring device and examine internet traffic for signs of copyright infringement, domestic political dissent, pornography and parking ticket violators, so long as the NSA’s computer algorithms also scan packets for the term “Al Qaeda.”

By Matthew Frederick | Also posted in War on Terror, government secrecy | Comments Off

House Passes "Lily Ledbetter Act"

August 1, 2007 – 9:27 pm

WaPo:

The Democrats’ legislation would allow employees to sue within 180 days of their last affected paychecks. Senate Democrats are working on a similar bill.

Ledbetter, who will not be helped by the legislation, said she hopes it helps other people. “I just want to open the doors for women in the future so they can be treated fairly,” she said in an interview.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill, and has enough votes in the House to make it stick.

As John Sweeney says in the article, this legislation wouldn’t even be necessary if the five justices in the majority hadn’t “bent over backwards, ignoring both precedent and common sense.”

By Matthew Frederick | Also posted in Supreme Court, gender equality | Comments Off