Surprise: CIA-Appointed Panel Finds No Real Problem With CIA Spying On Senate

from the show-trials dept

After the CIA's Inspector General basically revealed that not only did the CIA spy on the network of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers who were investigating the CIA, but that CIA boss John Brennan lied about it and that the breaches were much worse than originally detailed, Brennan appointed a panel to "investigate." Take a wild guess what the panel appointed by the guy who lied about the spying has concluded? If you said that it found serious problems and recommended real consequences for those involved and their leadership, you haven't been paying much attention.

Instead, if you said it would do some hand-wavy talk about "mistakes being made" but recommend no real consequences and downplay the severity of what happened, well, you get a gold star and a special tissue in which to weep about the loss of the separation of powers:

While effectively rejecting the most significant conclusions of the inspector general’s report, the panel, appointed by Mr. Brennan and composed of three C.I.A. officers and two members from outside the agency, is still expected to criticize agency missteps that contributed to the fight with Congress.

But its decision not to recommend anyone for disciplinary action is likely to anger members of the Intelligence Committee, who have accused the C.I.A. of trampling on the independence of Congress and interfering with its investigation of agency wrongdoing. The computer searches occurred late last year while the committee was finishing an excoriating report on the agency’s detention and interrogation program.

The message that we keep sending is, if you're powerful enough, there's almost nothing you can do with any actual consequences attached. Is it any wonder that the intelligence community keeps pushing the boundaries further and further?

Filed Under: cia, evan bayh, john brennan, senate intelligence committee, spying

US Senators Propose Bill To Censor Any Sites The Justice Depatement Declares 'Pirate' Sites, Worldwide

from the like-youtube-and-scribd? dept

The entertainment industry's favorite two Senators, Patrick Leahy (who keeps proposing stronger copyright laws) and Orin Hatch (who once proposed automatically destroying the computers of anyone caught file sharing) have now proposed a new law that would give the Justice Department the power to shut down websites that are declared as being "dedicated to illegal file sharing." Other Senators signed on to sponsor the bill are: Sens. Herb Kohl, Arlen Specter, Charles Schumer, Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Amy Klobuchar, Evan Bayh and George Voinovich. Perhaps these Senators should brush up on their history.

They do realize, of course, that Hollywood (who is pushing them for this law) was established originally as a "pirate" venture to get away from Thomas Edison and his patents, right? Things change over time. Remember that YouTube, which is now considered by Hollywood to be mostly "legit," had been derided as a "site dedicated" to "piracy" in the past. It's no surprise that the Justice Department -- with a bunch of former RIAA/MPAA lawyers on staff -- would love to have such powers, but it's difficult to see how such a law would be Constitutional, let alone reasonable. And finally, we must ask, yet again, why the US federal government is getting involved in what is, clearly, a civil business model issue? The Senators quote the already debunked US Chamber of Commerce reports on the "harm" of intellectual property -- which just shows how intellectually dishonest they're being. They're willing to base a censorship law on debunked data.

Oh, and even worse, this proposed law is supposed to cover sites worldwide, not just in the US. For a country that just passed a libel tourism law to protect Americans from foreign judgments, it's a bit ridiculous that we're now trying to reach beyond our borders to shut down sites that may be perfectly legal elsewhere. The way that the law, called the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act," would work is that the Justice Department could ask a court to declare a site as a "pirate" site and then get an injunction that would force the domain registrar or registry to no longer resolve that domain name.

It's difficult to see how this is anything other than a blatant censorship law. I can't see how it passes an even simple First Amendment sniff test. It's really quite sickening to see US Senators propose a law that is nothing less than censorship, designed to favor some of their biggest donors in the entertainment industry, who refuse to update their own business models.

Filed Under: amy klobuchar, arlen specter, censorship, chuck schumer, copyright, dick durbin, evan bayh, file sharing, free speech, george voinovich, orin hatch, patrick leahy, sheldon whitehouse