How Many Lies Can A Politician Stuff Into A Single Sentence About NSA Surveillance?

from the is-this-a-new-record? dept

In a recent comment on the site, reader PT pointed us to a statement from Representative Joe Heck explaining why he voted against the Amash Amendment. The statement was from back in July, soon after the Amash Amendment to defund certain NSA activities was narrowly defeated. While the statement is now a couple months old, what amazes me is the statements of fact that are flat out false in there. And we're not just talking about statements that were later proven to be false. These are things that were known to be false at the time -- from a Representative who is on the House Intelligence Committee and who must have known these statements were lies. Just for simplicity's sake, let's focus on the main one and stand back in amazement at just how many flat out lies Rep. Heck told in a single sentence:

The Amash amendment would have eliminated Section 215 of the Patriot Act which we know has thwarted 54 terrorist plots against the US (and counting).

This is a lie. It's not a half truth. It's not a misstatement. It's not confusion. It's an out and out lie. Actually, it's a whole series of lies. Almost nothing in that statement is true. In fact, I can't find anything in that statement that is true. Every single part is a lie. At no point has anyone in the Intelligence Community stated that Section 215 thwarted 54 terrorist plots against the US. First off, the 54 number, which was first released by the NSA's Keith Alexander, wasn't about "terrorist plots" but rather "potential terrorist events." Yes, that language is purposely broad and opaque. What counts as a "terrorist event"? A meeting? A party? It's not at all clear that these were actual "terrorist plots." In fact, a month before Heck's totally bogus claim above, the NSA clarified that only 42 "plots" were involved in that 54 number. The other 12 weren't plots, but rather "material support to terrorists" whatever that might mean.

Second, Alexander wasn't talking about Section 215 of the Patriot Act for most of those "events." He admitted that 53 of the 54 cases actually involved Section 702 of the Patriot Act (the PRISM program) which wasn't the part that was up for a vote in the Amash Amendment. So Heck is, once again, lying in claiming that Section 215 stopped those plots.

Third, at no time did Alexander or anyone at the NSA say they were all targeted against "the US" as Heck falsely claims. The very same day that Alexander shared the 54 number, he also admitted that only about 10 involved the US -- a number that was quickly clarified a few days later: only 13 "had a homeland nexus." So, already, it's pretty clear that the claim of "54 thwarted terrorist plots against the US" is completely bogus (and, remember, all of this was public a month before Heck's statement).

Fourth, of those 13 that "had a homeland nexus," almost none required the NSA's surveillance efforts. When confronted by Senator Leahy in a Senate hearing, the NSA's deputy director John Inglis admitted that the surveillance merely "made a contribution" to the efforts against 12 of those plots, but wasn't particularly key to stopping them. Inglis admitted that the surveillance programs were actually only "critical" in a single case: the Zazi NYC Subway case.

So now we're down to just one plot in the US -- and we're not even talking about Section 215 any more, but Section 702. Oh, and as for that one case, multiple press reports have pointed out that the claim that NSA surveillance was needed to catch Zazi just isn't true, because traditional police work was able to do the brunt of the work in identifying Zazi and the plot.

Oh, and finally, the Amash Amendment would not have "eliminated Section 215." It merely would have defunded using Section 215 to justify collecting metadata on every phone call. Section 215 would still be in place, and the government would still be able to use it to access "tangible things" and various "business records" so long as they were actually related to a counterterrorism operation.

So there you have it. A Congressional Representative who is on the Intelligence Committee, who voted against the Amash Amendment, and defended it with a cascading series of flat out lies. While the Amash Amendment would have defunded the data collection of metadata on all phone calls, it did not get rid of Section 215, which was not used to thwart 54 terrorist plots (not even one!) and many of those "plots" weren't "plots" and very few were actually in the US.

What gets me, however, is that few people seem willing to say that he flat out lied. This isn't a case of a misstatement or confusion or even things that were revealed later. Nearly all of the points that I highlighted above were public knowledge nearly a month before Heck made his untrue statement.

Isn't it time that someone actually called out elected officials when they state things that are clearly lies to constituents?

Filed Under: amash amendment, joe heck, justin amash, keith alexander, lies, nsa surveillance, patriot act, prism, section 215, section 702, surveillance, terrorism, zazi

Rep. Darrell Issa, Who Voted Against Amash Amendment, Now Wants To Bring It Back For Another Vote

from the flip-flopping dept

When the Amash Amendment to defund aspects of the NSA's spying was narrowly defeated, one of the somewhat unfortunate no votes was Rep. Darrell Issa, who has proven to be really good on important tech issues. Of course, since that vote, there have been a series of increasingly stunning revelations about just how deep the NSA's surveillance efforts go, and quite a few Representatives have suggested that they were totally unaware of the extent of the surveillance. Others have suggested that if the Amash Amendment was voted on again today, the vote would be different.

So, it's interesting to see that Rep. Issa is asking for exactly that:

In recent weeks, concerning reports have been made public about the scope and depth of the National Security Agency's (NSA) surveillance programs and serious legal violations in those programs. In particular, the recent declassification of a 2011 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ruling has revealed that the Agency unlawfully gathered and held the contents of emails for tens of thousands of Americans between 2008 and 2011. Additionally, there are concerning allegations that officials at the NSA may have misrepresented to the FISC the scope of a collection program conducted under Section 702 of the ISA Amendments Act.

Prior to earlier votes on the House floor on amendments to limit NSA intelligence gathering programs, members of Congress were given assurances that there would be a substantive legislative review of their scope and function. Now that it has been publicly acknowledged that the communications of Americans were included in the NSA's data collection program, likely violating their Fourth Amendment rights, Congress must respond in a manner that both increases the transparency of the Agency's programs and reinforces the constitutional protections of our citizens.

Now that the House has come back into session, I respectfully request that you move legislation to the floor, including the language of the Amash Amendment that was narrowly defeated on July 26, 2013 during debate on the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, as quickly as possible. Government actions that violate the Constitution cannot be tolerated and Congress must act to ensure the NSA and the rest of the intelligence community permanently cease such acts and hold the appropriate individuals accountable.

This is a fairly surprising move. While there have been a number of other bills offered up in response to the NSA's activities, to have a highly visible member of Congress who voted against the Amash Amendment suddenly ask for it to be brought to the floor again suggests that the tiny majority that the NSA had in the House on this issue is long gone. It's also noteworthy that Issa directly notes that the NSA's actions "likely" violate the 4th Amendment. While plenty of people outside of Congress have been pointing this out, people inside Congress have mostly been tiptoeing around the Constitutional issue.

Filed Under: amash amendment, darrell issa, justin amash, nsa, nsa surveillance, patriot act, section 215

Rep. Morgan Griffith: If Latest Leaks On NSA Had Come Out Earlier, NSA-Defunding Amendment Would Have Passed

from the time-to-focus-on-the-future dept

Hindsight being 217-205 and all that, but one of the reps voting for Justin Amash's NSA-defunding amendment has noted that had last Thursday's revelation of widespread domestic spying broken a little earlier, the amendment would have sailed through easily.

"We only needed seven votes to switch and I think there were at least seven, probably more like 20-30, who had their concerns about the program but were prepared to give the intelligence agencies the benefit of the doubt," Rep. Morgan Griffith, Virginia Republican, told The Washington Times after the NSA rules violations came to light.

That would have been nice and would have sent another message that everyone's a bit tired of the NSA's "inadvertent but completely lawful and relevant' schtick. What would have been even better is if some of this information had been discovered by those charged with overseeing the NSA. It's rather troubling that our legislators are discovering more about the NSA from journalists than from the oversight committees.

Instead, the oversight committees have taken an almost-antagonistic approach to disseminating information. Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger have, on multiple occasions, withheld information from other members of Congress. And what's not being withheld is being actively lied about by intelligence officials.

Mr. Griffith says that the intelligence community, which defended the program and worked to preserve it against the legislation onslaught, misled Congress.

"We were being told there were 'some' errors, like a few," Mr. Griffith said, referring to sworn congressional testimony about the domestic programs from senior intelligence, FBI and Justice Department officials. "They gave everyone the impression these [errors] were very rare. If [my colleagues] had realized how many [violations of privacy protection or legal rules] there were, I think more than seven of them would have switched."

At this point, it would seem any further debriefings or inquiries would be pointless. Those questioned have lied in the past and have refused to stop lying even when faced with the possibility that new evidence will be revealed that exposes their lies. A more forward-thinking agency might start offering up other problematic tactics in hopes of controlling the narrative when the next leak hits. Instead, it seems content to send out rehashed rhetoric as "statements" in response to each new leak, hammering the meaning of its favorite buzzwords: relevant, collecting, legal, oversight.

On the plus side, the revelations may generate more support for Rush Holt's attempt to kill off the PATRIOT Act and wind back the overreach of the FISA Amendments Act. In addition, Justin Amash is looking to introduce another bill to pick up where his narrowly defeated amendment left off. Every little bit helps and last week's bombshell pretty much destroyed the NSA's claims of internal controls and "no evidence of abuse."

Filed Under: justin amash, morgan griffith, nsa, nsa surveillance, violations

White House Knew That Mike Rogers Withheld Details Of NSA Surveillance From Others In Congress

from the it's-the-coverup-that-gets-you dept

In the last week or so it's come out that Rep. Mike Rogers, the head of the House Intelligence Committee has actively blocked requests from members of Congress to review details of the NSA's surveillance program -- showing that the claim that everyone in Congress was informed about these programs isn't just a lie but a duplicitous one. And then it got worse. Rep. Justin Amash pointed out that Rogers' committee actually withheld key information from all incoming Representatives in the class of 2010, who had to vote on the Patriot Act's reauthorization, which renewed the program to collect data on all Americans in bulk.

Amash highlighted a document showing that the White House had sent a letter to Rogers, telling him that he should make the document available to all members of Congress, and then noted that he had not actually done so in 2011 (though he had in 2009). Marcy Wheeler has pointed out that if you actually closely read the DOJ's paper that was released on Friday defending this program, you'd see that the White House was well aware that Rogers never made the document available to Congress.

Of course, you have to read the document very, very, very carefully to spot that. The paper first talks about the document that was provided to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in 2009, and then notes that both committees made those documents available to all of their colleagues:

In December 2009, DOJ worked with the Intelligence Community to provide a classified briefing paper to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees that could be made available to all Members of Congress regarding the telephony metadata collection program. A letter accompanying the briefing paper sent to the House Intelligence Committee specifically stated that “it is important that all Members of Congress have access to information about this program” and that “making this document available to all members of Congress is an effective way to inform the legislative debate about reauthorization of Section 215.” See Letter from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to the Honorable Silvestre Reyes, Chairman, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (Dec. 14, 2009). Both Intelligence Committees made this document available to all Members of Congress prior to the February 2010 reauthorization of Section 215. See Letter from Sen. Diane Feinstein and Sen. Christopher S. Bond to Colleagues (Feb. 23, 2010); Letter from Rep. Silvestre Reyes to Colleagues (Feb. 24, 2010)

But, when it came to the similar document in 2011, the White House report only notes that the Senate Intelligence Committee made the document available, and never says anything about the House. And of course, the letter that Amash highlighted points out that the White House was clearly urging Rogers to make it available as well -- and he did not do that.

An updated version of the briefing paper, also recently released in redacted form to the public, was provided to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees again in February 2011 in connection with the reauthorization that occurred later that year. See Letter from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to the Honorable Dianne Feinstein and the Honorable Saxby Chambliss, Chairman and Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (Feb. 2, 2011); Letter from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to the Honorable Mike Rogers and the Honorable C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, Chairman and Ranking Minority Member, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (Feb. 2, 2011). The Senate Intelligence Committee made this updated paper available to all Senators later that month. See Letter from Sen. Diane Feinstein and Sen. Saxby Chambliss to Colleagues (Feb. 8, 2011).

In other words: in 2009, this information was made available to everyone in Congress. In 2011, Rogers chose not to make it available to House members, meaning that (in particular) the 65 new members of Congress who voted for the reauthorization that year had no idea about this program, completely contrary to the later claims of Rogers and the White House that every member of Congress was fully aware of this program. (Updated to clarify that the 65 members were new, not briefed on this and voted for reauthorization).

Given all of this, the calls are getting louder and louder both inside and outside of Congress to get Mike Rogers to explain why he actively withheld critical information on NSA surveillance from Members of Congress who were tasked with reviewing and voting on the continuation of the program. And, it's now becoming quite obvious that Mike Rogers is not representing the interests of the American public, but rather his friends and former colleagues within the intelligence community:

"The congressional committees charged with oversight of the intelligence community have long been captive to, and protective of, the intelligence agencies," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight.

"Many of the congressional staff, in fact, come from those agencies. This latest revelation demonstrates the harm caused by that conflict of interest. When the congressional oversight committee is more loyal to the agency it oversees than to the legislative chamber its members were elected to serve in, the public's interest is seriously compromised."

We've talked about regulatory capture for years, but this is an extreme form, and when it reaches the point that the head of the Committee charged with oversight appears to be proactively seeking to block critical information from other members of Congress, and the White House looks the other way (while claiming something entirely different in public) it should be obvious that there is no oversight at all. There is, instead, a government that is helping the intelligence community at the expense of the American public.

Filed Under: congress, house intelligence committee, justin amash, mike rogers, patriot act, section 215

Rep. Justin Amash: House Intelligence Committee Withheld NSA Documents From Incoming Congressmen

from the Mike-Rogers'-streak-of-'dick-moves'-continues-unabated dept

Defenders of the NSA's program always point to two things: it's all legal and it's all subject to oversight. Part of the "oversight" is the FISA "thumbs up" system that has approved every request for two years in a row. The other part of the "oversight" is Congress itself.

Unfortunately, members of Congress have been lied to directly about the extent of the collections occurring under Section 215 (and 702), so that's one strike against the "oversight." Now, it appears that members of Congress are being selectively provided with information about the programs.

Rep. Justin Amash, (attempted) NSA defunder, posted this to his Facebook wall last night. It's a recently declassified document addressed to Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger. This cover letter accompanied documents detailing the bulk collections authorized by Sections 215 and 402 (pen register/trap and trace). [Click through to enlarge.]

At the beginning of the second paragraph, the cover letter (dated Feb. 2, 2011) notes:

We believe that making this document available to all Members of Congress, as we did with a similar document in 2009, is an effective way to inform the legislative debate about the reauthorization of Section 215.

There's your "oversight" for you: the assistant attorney general calling for these documents to be shared with all Congress members in order to give them the oversight capabilities NSA spokesmen keep claiming is keeping the agency in check. Except, as Amash points out on his FB page, Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger never bothered sharing these documents.

Less than two weeks ago, the Obama administration released previously classified documents regarding ‪#‎NSA‬'s bulk collection programs and indicated that two of these documents had been made available to all Members of Congress prior to the vote on reauthorization of the Patriot Act. I can now confirm that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence did NOT, in fact, make the 2011 document available to Representatives in Congress, meaning that the large class of Representatives elected in 2010 did not receive either of the now declassified documents detailing these programs.

It appears the Committee was extremely selective (hence its name?) about who it would share these documents with. Incoming Congress members need not apply.

So, when Feinstein and others greeted the leaks with a shrug and a blase "We've known about this for years," there was probably some truth to those claims. Certain Representatives and Senators knew. Some even tried to warn the public. Still others had no idea, not until the details began appearing, not in security briefings, but at The Guardian and Washington Post.

Maybe the NSA really thought every representative was on the same page. Maybe it knew there were "gaps" in the oversight but didn't care. Considering its position as the most secretive of intelligence agencies, it probably figured the smaller the loop, the better.

According to this document, it was left in the hands of Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger to disperse the information to the other members of Congress. And it appears they chose not to.

"Oversight" like this, based on selective inclusion, is a joke -- something that affects all Americans is guided into the hands of a chosen few, most of whom wholeheartedly support the NSA's programs. Mike Rogers continues to mold the "oversight" into his own image, withholding these documents in 2011 and, more recently, denying crucial information on the FISA court and the PRISM program to representatives who wished to use it to get up to speed before the vote on Amash's NSA-directed amendment.

This isn't "oversight." This is Mike Rogers abusing his position to control the narrative and keep the NSA running smoothly, safely hidden away from those tasked with overseeing these surveillance programs. The NSA and its defenders can talk all they want about "oversight," but this is nothing more than Rogers carving out a fiefdom at the expense of the American public.

Filed Under: congress, house intelligence committee, justin amash, mike rogers, nsa, nsa surveillance, oversight

Amash Amendment Narrowly Rejected After Heated (And Partly Ridiculous) Debate

from the lame dept

So, this isn't a huge surprise, but this evening there was a rather fascinating debate in the House in which Congressional Reps debated and then rejected the Amash Amendment to defund the NSA's Section 215 efforts to collect every bit of data about every communication made by Americans. While it sucks that the amendment lost, the vote was very close -- much closer than most people suspected (which explains why the NSA and the White House had flipped out about the amendment even hitting the floor). The debate about the Amash amendment followed one about an amendment from Rep. Pompeo (which is the same as the Rep. Nugent amendment). As we discussed, the Pompeo/Nugent amendment is a red herring pretending to limit the collection of information, but which really just restates the status quote. The Amash amendment was the important one. The debate was fascinating -- seeing a bipartisan group of representatives speak eloquently about protecting our rights and the rights of Americans. However, the defenders of the NSA program really pushed out some crazy claims. Rep. Mike Rogers insisted that the program stopped terrorism -- something that has not yet been shown at all. He also claimed that without spying on all Americans we might have another 9/11.

The worst, by far, were the claims from Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who claimed that the Snowden revelations "helped Islamic jihadists" and that if we don't keep spying on all Americans there will be horrible results... and then immediately lied and claimed that the NSA data collected was "smaller than a phone book" even though others on her side, like Rep. Tom Cotton admitted it was "billions of records." Bachmann's misleading attempt at making a point was because the NSA database doesn't directly include names and addresses, but just phone numbers (and phone calls, locations, people you're calling). What that leaves out is that the NSA can easily connect its database to a phone book and have that information anyway. Or, as Parker Higgins pointed out, if there's less info than a phone book, wouldn't it have been cheaper and easier to just buy the NSA a phone book.

In the end, the Pompeo/Nugent amendment passed by an unfortunately wide margin: 409 to 12. Oddly, the nays were as high as 20 and bounced around up and down for a while, but at the very end of the voting, it looks like a bunch changed their vote. As for the Amash Amendment it wasn't so lopsided. In fact, it was pretty close: 205 voted for the Amash amendment, with 217 against. While the amendment lost, it was pretty damn close, meaning that a very large percentage of Congress appears to be very concerned about NSA bulk collection of data. That bodes well for future reform to limit the NSA.

Filed Under: appropriations, justin amash, michelle bachmann, mike rogers, nsa, nsa surveillance, privacy, section 215, surveillance

Congress Should Support Amash Amendment Just Because White House Statement Is So Insulting

from the don't-take-that-kind-of-crap dept

Last night, we wrote about the pure insanity of the White House's statement against the Amash Amendment, which would pull funding from the NSA for just the "dragnet" surveillance efforts, in which it collects all metadata on all phone calls. Considering that the very author of the Patriot Act insists the law was never meant to allow this kind of collection, Amash's amendment shouldn't be all that controversial. It's literally him bringing the actual law back in line with what many in Congress thought the law already was. For the Obama White House to hit back by claiming that this clear fix to the law "is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process" is downright ridiculous and insulting, considering that the decision to reinterpret the law in secret was hardly the product of an "informed, open or deliberative process."

In fact, as Marcy Wheeler points out, this statement is so insulting to Congress, that Congress should vote for the Amash amendment as a response to the White House's claim. As she notes, this seems to be the White House blaming Congress for not being "informed, open or deliberative" in responsing to the administration's own efforts to mislead Congress by keeping them not fully informed, with a secret process, that guaranteed many were kept in the dark. To then flip that around and blame Congress as if it was Congress who wasn't being open is downright insulting:

Hell, if I were a self-respecting member of Congress, I’d support Amash-Conyers even if I weren’t already predisposed to, if only because this is such a crazy bat-shit claim to reason and openness.

The Executive Branch has had 7 years to have an open debate. It chose not to have that open debate. Now that one has been brought to it by Congress, it pretends Congress is the one at fault for the lack of informed or open process.

Of course, Wheeler makes another good point in that same post. The fact that the White House put this statement out, even after the NSA did a full court emergency lobby extravaganza to convince Congress not to support the amendment, at least suggests that the White House is realizing that there might really be enough votes to get this amendment through.

President Obama claimed he "welcomed this debate." He might want to speed up that process, because it's happening and all he's doing is stalling and blaming others. But the debate is happening without him, and he might not like where it ends up.

Filed Under: amendment, appropriations, debate, justin amash, nsa, nsa surveillance, patriot act, section 215, white house

Irony Alert: Obama Opposes Amash Amendment Because It's A 'Blunt Approach' And Not A Product Of 'Open' Process

from the now-they're-just-fucking-with-us,-right? dept

Okay, someone in the White House just feels like giving people who believe in protecting civil liberties a giant middle finger today. As a quick review, the President and the administration have been hiding behind secret court orders with secret interpretations of the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act to use a very blunt instrument: collecting pretty much all digital data around, and keeping the whole thing totally quiet for years. In response, Rep. Justin Amash is seeking to pull funding from one of the key NSA programs -- the one that involved a secret interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act by a secret court to pretend that language that clearly applied to only limited data now meant the NSA could order AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and others to hand over every call record on every phone call. And, this is a program that no one knew about until Ed Snowden leaked it to the Guardian and the Washington Post.

Okay, having reinforced those basic points, check out the giant "screw you guys" the White House just pushed out in the form of a "statement" in response to the Amash Amendment. I'll bold the key guffaw-inducing lines:

In light of the recent unauthorized disclosures, the President has said that he welcomes a debate about how best to simultaneously safeguard both our national security and the privacy of our citizens. The Administration has taken various proactive steps to advance this debate including the President’s meeting with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, his public statements on the disclosed programs, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s release of its own public statements, ODNI General Counsel Bob Litt’s speech at Brookings, and ODNI’s decision to declassify and disclose publicly that the Administration filed an application with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. We look forward to continuing to discuss these critical issues with the American people and the Congress.

However, we oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our Intelligence Community’s counterterrorism tools. This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process. We urge the House to reject the Amash Amendment, and instead move forward with an approach that appropriately takes into account the need for a reasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation.

Let me repeat that again: This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process. As opposed to the blunt process of collecting all data on everyone which was arrived at via an "informed, open and deliberative process -- known as totally secretly interpreting the plain language of a law in a secret ruling from a secret court to mean something almost entirely different than what the language itself said?

This is a joke, right?

Only someone who really has a sick sense of humor would try to argue that a bill looking to slow down the rampant spying on pretty much all Americans comes from a lack of an "informed, open, or deliberative process" when the process to create that massive surveillance infrastructure was all done in complete darkness.

Filed Under: appropriations, barack obama, debate, irony, justin amash, nsa, nsa surveillance, open, surveillance

NSA Defenders In The Senate Flip Out Over Amash Amendment To Stop Dragnet

from the well,-look-at-that dept

Not surprisingly, the NSA's emergency lobbying to try to stop Rep. Justin Amash's amendment that will stop the NSA from its bulk data collection program under Section 215 of the Patriot Act (while allowing lots of other surveillance efforts to continue) has drawn support from the Senate's two biggest supporters of stomping out your privacy: Senators Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss. Together, they've put out a ridiculous statement defending the trampling of your Constitutional rights to support the efforts of the NSA and giant government contractors to spy on everything you do.

The FISA business records program has contributed to disrupting numerous terrorist attacks against our nation.

Name one. Seriously. To date, every example given falls apart under scrutiny, as it shows that the NSA's mass data collection program was not necessary. Furthermore, just because such a program was used doesn't mean the program makes sense. The bigger question is whether or not other, less intrusive methods, would have been just as effective and (more importantly) whether the country is okay with simply tearing up the 4th and 5th amendments. As stated, we'd probably stop lots of criminal activity if the government was able to put cameras in every room of every house. But we don't do that because there are costs involved -- such as giving up our privacy. Why won't Senators Feinstein and Chambliss even address this part of the equation?

It has been reviewed and authorized by all three branches of government and is subject to strict controls.

Except that's not really true. Multiple people in Congress have made it clear that they were not told the full details of the NSA surveillance efforts. And while Congress did "authorize" the program, it was done with a very weak debate and (specifically) public speeches by both Chambliss and Feinstein that were clearly designed to mislead Congress and the American public. As for the "judicial" branch overseeing it, that's just the totally secret FISA court, with all of its judges selected by one man with no oversight or control, and with all of its decisions held in secret. That's not quite the "judicial oversight" that most of the public thinks is legitimate.

Since the public disclosure of the business records program, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has explored how the program can be modified to add extra privacy protections without sacrificing its effectiveness.

They've done so in secret. The public hearings have been a complete joke with heavily misleading statements to outright perjury from intelligence officials.

We believe this debate in the Congressional Intelligence and Judiciary committees should continue and that any amendments to defund the program on appropriations bills would be unwise.

Yeah, sure. We've heard this before. Feinstein got Senator Ron Wyden to drop his hold on the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act (which has been interpreted to allow part of this crazy excessive surveillance) by promising him that there would be a debate in early 2013. That didn't happen.

Feinstein claiming that there will be continued debate over this issue just isn't credible. It's the same line that she's used to shut down previous attempts to hold these programs back.

Feinstein, Chambliss and the NSA still can't show how these programs are actually constitutional or necessary. So they resort to their usual FUD. Hopefully, Congress realizes that the American public have had enough of this charade.

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, justin amash, nsa, nsa surveillance, saxby chambliss

NSA's Keith Alexander Calls Emergency Private Briefing To Lobby Against Amash Amendment

from the what-are-you-afraid-of? dept

So we were just writing about the details of the amendment from Rep. Justin Amash, which would limit the NSA's ability to twist the language of Section 215 of the Patriot Act to pretend it means it's okay to collect information on every phone call made. If you want to know just how important this is, all you need to know is that NSA boss, General Keith Alexander, wasted no time in scheduling a last-minute emergency briefing for Congress to tell them not to vote for the Amash Amendment.

NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander scheduled a last-minute, members-only briefing in response to the amendment, according to an invitation distributed to members of Congress this morning and forwarded to HuffPost. "In advance of anticipated action on amendments to the DoD Appropriations bill, Ranking Member C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of the House Intelligence Committee invites your Member to attend a question and answer session with General Keith B. Alexander of the National Security Agency," reads the invitation.

The invitation warned members that they could not share what they learned with their constituents or others. "The briefing will be held at the Top Secret/SCI level and will be strictly Members-Only," reads the invite.

Of course, the people that Congress is supposed to be representing, the public, don't get the privilege of being able to secure a last minute "briefing" with our elected officials to explain to them why the Amash amendment is important. Instead, we need to rely on things like DefundTheNSA.com or Demand Progress to reach out to our Representatives to let them know that bulk data collection on every American is not acceptable behavior by the NSA.

Filed Under: appropriations, congress, funding, justin amash, keith alexander, lobbying, nsa, nsa surveillance, patriot act, section 215