Misblog

Unfortunately, our Senate appears poised (cloture vote H.R. 6304) to enact the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 which (in)effectively tells our Executive that the FISA Court is really the final arbiter of "intelligence" wiretapping and this time they really mean it!

Additionally, the legislation rewards our telecoms for violating the law by granting them immunity for illegally wiretapping Americans, without a warrant.

Congresspersons voting for telecoms immunity say that if the government violates the law (not obtaining a FISA warrant) and the telecoms violate the law (illegally wiretapping Americans without a FISA warrant) that somehow entitles telecoms to immunity—and they really mean it?!

Why do they think the FISA Amendment Act of 2008 will be treated any different than the FISA 1978, without accountability for violating the FISA 1978 law?

Congresspersons not granting the telecoms immunity will be insuring and assuring respect for the rule of law, the civil rights of all Americans, accountability, and that an effective FISA Amendments Act of 2008 will be respected.

Web: Senate Debates Rewrite of '78 Law That Created Secret Intelligence Court

Blog: FAS Secrecy Blog, FISA Amendments and the Rule of Law. FAS has posted Senator Chris Dodd's interesting comments here—the debate on FISA accountability is about whether we are a nation of laws or men?

Originally published on March 07, 2008; Updated and Republished on May 03, 2008:

FBI Director Muller, appeared before Congress this week promising there will be no more mea culpa for the FBI’s misuse of National Security Letters (NSL)—the "Ouantico Circuit" has been working better than expected.

Web:

• UPDATED 05/03/2008 Seattle Post-Intelligence, Expectation of privacy a precious right (opinion by Babak Pasdar) Turns out Muller has more data than he knows what to do with—only one problem he needs a way to legally use it.

  NSLs have likely been nothing more than cover for using already intercepted data, but what if an NSL cannot provide cover?

  Look for Muller et al. to propose legislation "blessing" the current method of intercepting data, without probable cause, AND to grandfather in the billions of bits already illegally intercepted!

• WP, FBI Data Transfers Via Telecoms Questioned What a great article by Ellen Nakashima. Describes the issues on a topic of great interest and ramification in a short, precise, and readable way.