Bush Wants Permanent Warrantless Wiretap Law
In a testimony before Congress on Thursday, J. Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, said public discussion of wiretapping policies costs American lives.
CSM:
By Tom A. Peter
from the September 22, 2007 edition
Politicians are once again debating the legality of the controversial “Protect America Act,” which amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow for warrantless wiretapping. The law’s Feb. 1, 2008 expiration date is approaching. President George Bush and his supporters are pushing to make the law permanent. Meanwhile, opponents are raising familiar concerns about the protection of civil liberties. On Thursday, J. Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, testified before Congress that not only was the law a necessity, but that public debate about it will cost American lives by exposing American surveillance methods to the nation’s enemies. Opponents in Congress were critical of Mr. McConnell’s remarks.
On Wednesday, Bush visited the National Security Agency and called for support to make the Protect America Act a permanent law, reports the E-Commerce Times. The temporary act was rushed into law last month and allows US intelligence agencies to monitor phone conversations between US citizens calling suspected terrorists overseas.
“The threat from Al-Qaeda is not going to expire in 135 days,” Bush warned during a Wednesday visit to the National Security Agency (NSA) in Fort Meade, Md.
“Unless the FISA reforms in the act are made permanent, our national security professionals will lose critical tools they need to protect our country,” he said. “Without these tools, it’ll be harder to figure out what our enemies are doing to train, recruit and infiltrate operatives in our country. Without these tools our country will be much more vulnerable to attack.”
During his testimony to congress McConnell told representatives that “intelligence business is conducted in secret,” and that public examination of these laws had compromised their effectiveness by exposing their inner-workings, reports the Los Angeles Times.
“It’s conducted in secret for a reason,” McConnell told the House Intelligence Committee. “You compromise sources and methods, and what this debate has allowed those who wish us harm to do is to understand significantly more about how we were targeting their communications.”
Asked by Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.) if he thought that congressional questioning of the administration’s intelligence program would lead to the killing of Americans, McConnell said, “Yes, ma’am, I do.”
Eshoo called his assessment “a stretch.”
Democrats also expressed that they want to give the administration the necessary tools to monitor foreign targets, they also want to ensure that checks and balances are maintained, reports the Congressional Quarterly. They also expressed particular concern about the portion of the law that allows for electronic surveillance of foreign terror suspects that results in warrantless wiretapping of US citizens within the country.
Panel Republicans and McConnell then tried to turn the tables on Democrats. They highlighted a case where they said spying restrictions in place prior to passage of the temporary six-month legislation had delayed for 12 hours an attempt to rescue U.S. soldiers captured by insurgents in Iraq.
The tense hearing demonstrated the frayed relations between congressional Democrats and McConnell going into the high-stakes negotiations about permanent changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA, PL 95-511).
Responding to McConnell’s anecdote about the 12-hour delay, Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D- Texas) said that it is “unclear if the new law would help,” reports the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire. McConnell alleges that recent changes in telecommunications make it necessary to obtain more warrants than in the past.
“It gets back to the bureaucracy and the failure to recognize that American lives are at stake,” he said. “I don’t want to leave the perception that people were standing around because of the FISA.”
A warrant had to be obtained to listen to Iraqi communications because they were being routed through communication systems in the United States, making the Fourth Amendment applicable, McConnell said.
In a press release, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) contended that many of the reasons being used to justify the need for the warrantless wiretapping law are mere myths. The ACLU attacked two key justifications, among others, for warrantless wiretapping: that American will not be affected by the law and that FISA needed to be expanded because of new technologies. The ACLU also challenged McConnell’s contention that without the law, bureaucracy made the wiretapping process ineffectually slow.
Myth: McConnell said that it takes 200 “man” hours to get a court order to access a telephone number.
Reality: The math, courtesy of Wired.com. “In 2006, the government filed 2,181 such applications with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. The court approved 2,176 2006 FISA Warrant Applications. That means government employees spent 436,200 hours writing out foreign intelligence wiretaps in 2006. That’s 53,275 workdays.” The numbers have been greatly exaggerated. Also, in a June 2007 article in the Washington Post, Royce C. Lamberth, the presiding judge of FISC on 9-11 said he approved FISA warrants in minutes with only an oral briefing.
Even if it is merely a resource issue, there were and are bipartisan bills that would streamline the application process and grant more resources.
Besides, there is no “too-much-paperwork” exception to the Fourth Amendment.
Under the new law, private telecommunications firms that worked with the government to enable wiretapping and other surveillance methods are freed from any legal liability, reports CNET. Bush hopes to make this law a retroactive policy.
“It’s particularly important for Congress to provide meaningful liability protection to those companies now facing multibillion-dollar lawsuits only because they are believed to have assisted in efforts to defend our nation, following the 9/11 attacks,” Bush said.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has sued AT&T over its allegedly illegal cooperation with the government, says references to the crippling liability posed by such suits suggest that the scope of the wiretapping is “massive.”
“The statutory penalties for warrantless wiretapping are relatively small per person–even if AT&T was ordered to pay the maximum penalty, a few hundred illegal wiretaps would amount to less than a rounding error in the phone company’s quarterly statements,” EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl wrote in a recent blog entry. “If the NSA was truly limiting its spying to suspected terrorists, the potential liability would be like an annoying gnat on an elephant. So why are the companies so worried?”
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This is just one part of the immensely succesful allied war on terror since 9/11. How about a recap:
No mega-attacks on US, UK or Australia.
No WMD attack.
Afghanistan liberated. Taliban deposed.
Al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan destroyed. (The bad news is they have moved to Pakistan.)
Afghanistan election.
Iraq liberated. Saddam deposed and executed. Greatest military victory of the West since the end of World War Two in 1945.
After years of post-liberation fighting, Iraqi “resistance” still holds no territory and its popular support has not grown. Thousands of jihad fighters have died for nothing.
Iraq election.
Second Battle of Fallujah
The front in this War on Islamism has been moved from the streets of America to where it should be fought - in the streets of the Middle East.
Lebanon revolution .
Lebanon destroys Fatah al-Islam .
Libya abandons WMD program.
Islamists defeated in Somalia.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state, is now rated “Free”.
Bush re-elected. Kerry defeated.
Blair re-elected.
Howard re-elected. Latham defeated.
Harper elected. Martin defeated. Canada back to normal.
Merkel elected. Schr??der defeated. Germany back to normal.
Sarkozy elected. Royal defeated. Chirac out. France back to normal. “Axis of Weasels” is finished.
Saddam captured, executed.
His sons dead.
Chemical Ali captured, sentenced to death .
Tariq Aziz captured.
Saddam’s intelligence chief executed.
Saddam’s chief judge executed.
Saddam’s vice-president executed.
Saddam’s Defence Minister captured, sentenced to death.
Al-Zarqawi dead (leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq).
Sheikh Mansour dead (religious leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq).
Hamad Jama al-Saedi captured (second in command of Al-Qaeda in Iraq).
Muntasir al-Jibouri captured (leader of Ansar al Sunnah in Iraq).
Muharib Abdul Latif al-Jubouri dead (Al-Qaeda in Iraq).
Khaled al-Mashhadani captured (Al-Qaeda in Iraq).
Abu Jurah dead (Al-Qaeda in Iraq).
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed captured (the Butcher of 9/11, killer of Daniel Pearl).
Shamil Basayev dead (the Butcher of Beslan).
Hambali captured (the Butcher of Bali).
Azahari bin Husin dead (the Butcher of Bali).
Mustafa Nasar captured (the Butcher of Madrid and London).
Abdul Hadi al Iraqi captured (the Butcher of London).
Mohammed Atef dead (the Butcher of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings).
Mushin Musa Matwalli Atwah dead (the Butcher of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings).
Leader of Al Qaeda in Turkey captured (the Butcher of Istanbul).
Abu Ali al-Harithi dead (USS Cole bomber).
Tawfiq bin Attash captured (USS Cole bomber).
Midhat Mursi dead (Al Qaeda).
Abu Zubaydah captured (Al Qaeda).
Mohammed Jamal Khalifa dead (Al Qaeda).
Abu Faraj al-Libbi captured (Al Qaeda).
Abu Hamza Rabia dead (Al Qaeda).
Mullah Dadullah dead (Taliban butcher).
Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani dead (Taliban).
Mullah Brother dead (Taliban).
Taliban defense minister Mullah Obaidullah captured.
Abdullah Mehsud dead (Taliban).
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar captured (Afghan Islamofascist).
Abu Hamza jailed .
Omar Bakri Muhammad expelled .
Abdullah El-Faisal expelled .
Palestinian intifada defeated .
Palestinian civil war begins between Fatah and Hamas. As Charles Johnson says: “I’m rooting for both sides to achieve their objectives.”
Arafat dead.
Abu Abbas dead (Palestine Liberation Front).
Mahmoud Zatme dead (Islamic Jihad).
Yassin dead (leader of Hamas).
Rantissi dead (leader of Hamas).
Gee, the surge is not working? Would that be the Dhimucratz surge perhaps? Or the world wide leftist surge?
September 21st, 2007 at 10:24 amLike Bush et al give a fuck what Eric says on the phone to his boyfriends….
@ that pic though…. “Yes sir President ahwawhatever! Yes we killed him. Yes him too. Yes him too. Yes…..”
September 21st, 2007 at 10:42 amsully:
LOL
September 21st, 2007 at 10:54 amlol sully
September 21st, 2007 at 10:57 am
September 21st, 2007 at 11:10 am*Funny Caption*
September 21st, 2007 at 11:12 am“Senators Reid and Clinton kick back a little at the NYT headquarters building in New York”
I don’t get this at all. The President doesn’t need a law from Congress. Previous court rulings have stated that the President has the Constitutional Authority to intercept messages from foreign locations to domestic locations.
If the Constitution says he can do it, he doesn’t need Congressional approval.
September 21st, 2007 at 11:58 am“….intercept messages from foreign locations to domestic locations.”
He needs it going both ways. Not just from Al Qaeda Central to CAIR but CAIR to AQ HQ.
Funniest thing though. Heard that that CAIR fuck ‘Ibrahim’ Hooper that you always see on TV… the asswipes first name is really ‘DOUG’.
September 21st, 2007 at 12:35 pmsully:
Doug Hooper? LOL.
September 21st, 2007 at 3:48 pmDanInfidel, what an awesome review/summary!! U tha MANN!!
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:51 pm