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

Senators: Why Is Everyone So Worked Up About Verizon Spying? We've All Known About It Since 2007

from the uh... dept

Towards the end of my piece this morning about the administration's ridiculous response to the leaked evidence and confirmation that the NSA is scooping up every single phone record (confirmed from Verizon at least, though you can assume it applies to everyone else as well) was a quick note mentioning that Senator Dianne Feinstein was saying that this was a continuation of the same program that had been going on for seven years. And, now, lots of Senators are coming out and saying the same thing. In fact, it appears that our 100 Senators all knew that this has been going on for seven years without telling us:

"Everyone's been aware of it for years, every member of the Senate," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Chambliss told reporters that the program has been going on for seven years under the auspices of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He said he was not aware of a single citizen filing a complaint about it.

I love that last bit. Yes, since no citizens "complained" about the totally secret program in which their private data was sucked up by the NSA, what's there to worry about? Senator Harry Reid's response is equally ridiculous, suggesting that everyone should calm down because this is nothing new:

"Right now I think everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn't anything that's brand new -- it's been going on for 7 years," Reid said.

Again, it's astounding how out of touch these people are. They're pretending that a secret program that went way, way, way beyond what most people believed was happening now being revealed is no big deal because they knew about it for seven years? Frankly, that makes the whole situation that much worse, because it means they supported it and did nothing to end it for seven years.

I know that Senators Ron Wyden and Marc Udall have been trying to get this fact out to the public for years -- demanding that the NSA say how many Americans they were spying on. It was obvious that Wyden and Udall knew what was going on, but couldn't say anything since such information is "classified." But shame on every other Senator for not standing up against this.

Some are arguing that they didn't know:

"If you're on the intel committee, or if you're in leadership, you might have been briefed. I'm pretty good about attending meetings; I don't remember being briefed," said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). He said he voted for the FISA reauthorization and the Patriot Act but did not intend to grant authority to collect millions of phone records at a time.

"I never voted intentionally for any bill that would grant blanket [authority] to just monitor every phone call," he said.

But that's a lame excuse as well, because Senator Wyden spent an awful lot of time making this very point on the Senate floor, pointing out that very clearly that the NSA was using FISA to spy on tons of Americans (hinting strongly that it was all of them) and saying that the Senate shouldn't approve the reauthorization until the NSA told them how many people were being spied on. If Senator Isakson didn't pay attention to Senator Wyden ringing the alarm bell, that's his own fault.

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, henry reid, johnny isakson, marc udall, privacy, ron wyden, saxby chambliss, senate

Senate Finally Holds Weak 'Debate' On FISA Amendments Act... But Terrorism!

from the and-therefore-we-shouldn't-even-know-what's-going-on dept

While some in the Senate tried to skip over debate of the likely unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act, the Senate finally held a rushed and scripted "debate" today, which did very little to actually explore the issues (and the Senate Chamber was mostly empty during the "debate"). Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley did their best to raise significant issues, but Senator Dianne Feinstein kept shutting them down with bogus or misleading arguments, almost always punctuated with scary claims about how we had "only four days!" to renew the FISA Amendment Acts or "important" tools for law enforcement would "expire." It turns out that's not actually true. While the law would expire, the provisions sweeping orders already issued would remain in place for a year -- allowing plenty of time for a real debate.

Furthermore, Feinstein continued to mislead (bordering on outright lies) about the FISA Amendments Act. While some of the proposed amendments focused on finally forcing the secret interpretation of the FISA Amendments Act to be disclosed, Feinstein held up the text of the bill and insisted there "is no secret law" and that "the text is public." That assumes that "the law" and "the text of the legislation" are one and the same. They are not. As Julian Sanchez notes, imagine that Supreme Court rulings were all classified, how would you interpret the Constitution? You could make guesses, based on what the law said, but without the court's rulings, you would not know what that meant in practice. That's exactly the situation we have with the FISA Amendments Act... and it's made even worse by the fact that those who have seen the still-secret interpretation -- such as Senator Wyden -- have made it clear that its quite different than what most people think the law says.

Even more ridiculous is that the text of the FISA Amendments Act has been set since September. There's been plenty of time to actually debate these issues. Hell, last year's renewal for just one year was conditioned on the promise from the Senate that there would be debate this year. Yet they wait until December 27th to hold this fake "debate" with Feinstein spreading FUD up and down about how not renewing this for another five years means the terrorists win? This is a really shameful display of Congress caving to law enforcement's almost certainly unconstitutional desire to be able to widely spy on almost any information it can get its hands on, so long as they claim collecting that info might possibly somehow help in discovering illegal behavior by non-US citizens.

What's amazing is that those supporting the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act continue to take it on faith that the law is not being abused, even as there's already been an admission that some of the activities violated the 4th Amendment (but no further evidence of what happened or how that would be prevented), and even other tools that we were told were "proven" and "crucial" to the "war on terrorism" later turned out to be expensive boondoggles that were no help at all. Senator Saxby Chambliss was particularly ridiculous in this discussion, insisting that because there was that admission earlier this year that the 4th Amendment was abused, it shows that "oversight is working." This ignores that no further exploration followed to see how widespread the abuse was. Again, Julian Sanchez highlights just how ridiculous this is by noting that the fact that the argument is completely tautological in saying that oversight works because abuse has been discovered.

Congress has both the mandate and the obligation to oversee how law enforcement is using its surveillance powers -- and yet many of its members, led by Senator Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss, appear to be abdicating that job due to OMG TERRRORISM!@#!@#!!

Update: And they just voted on Senator Leahy's amendment, which was a pretty simple one, just shortening the term of this extension from 5 years to 3 years. All it would do is require that the next debate on this happen sooner, rather than later, but it was voted down (52 to 38) by Senators who'd rather not even discuss the fact that they're allowing the NSA and other law enforcement officials to regularly violate the Constitution. Just punt that question as far down the field as possible, I guess.

Update: And, down goes another amendment. Senator Merkley's amendment would have "encouraged" that secret interpretations of the FISA Amendments Act made by the FISA court be made public (in redacted form). This seems like common sense, but the Senate voted it down (54 to 37) -- because, apparently they like secret laws which the public isn't even allowed to know about, even if it means the NSA can snoop on nearly all of their communications without a warrant.

Update: And there goes another one. Senator Rand Paul introduced an amendment clarifying that the 4th Amendment protects all of your communications. The Senate rejected it by an overwhelming margin, 79 to 12, because apparently protecting your privacy and upholding the 4th Amendment is not the kind of thing the Senate supports these days.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, dianne feinstein, fisa, fisa amendments act, jeff merkley, privacy, ron wyden, saxby chambliss

Senator Chambliss Says There's No Reason To Debate FISA Amendments Act; Just Pass It

from the unconstitutional dept

We've been covering in great detail the FISA Amendments Act, which is likely to be renewed before the end of the year. As you may recall, this was the "law" that expanded the ability of federal law enforcement to warrantlessly wiretap Americans -- and then, thanks to a secret interpretation appears to be used to scoop up tons of information on Americans, despite appearing to be limited to only foreign communications. As we noted recently, a former judge has made a pretty compelling case why the whole thing is completely unconstitutional. While Senator Wyden has put a hold on the renewal of the FAA, he's also said he'll lift the hold if the Senate will consider some important amendments and actually debate the law.

And yet... that might not happen. Senator Saxby Chambliss, apparently with no regard to the Constitution or the privacy of the public he's supposed to represent, has apparently complained that any debate is a waste of time after Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to bring up the issue.

Reid wanted S. 3276 to be considered with a limited number of amendments, but Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) objected and said he didn’t understand why the Senate couldn’t just pass the House FISA bill. He referred to a letter stating that the Obama administration supports the House-version.

So, apparently, as long as the White House wants to trample on Americans' 4th Amendment Rights, and there's a House version that was passed because Representatives misrepresented or lied about what was in the bill, the Senate should just approve it? Yikes. We deserve better. We should absolutely demand that Congress debate this issue, and not rubber stamp it.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, debate, fisa, fisa amendments act, privacy, ron wyden, saxby chambliss