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Paging Senator Rockefeller. Senator Jay Rockefeller to the illegally bugged white courtesy phone, please.
No one - except, you know, us dirty hillbilly bloggers and pretty much everyone else - could have predictedthis:
The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews.
...
E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.
A Justice Department inspector general's report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.
But I'm sure it was all in emergency circumstances when there was no time to apply for legal warrants to do this, right?
FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni said in an interview Monday that the FBI technically violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act when agents invoked nonexistent emergencies to collect records.
"We should have stopped those requests from being made that way," she said. The after-the-fact approvals were a "good-hearted but not well-thought-out" solution to put phone carriers at ease, she said. In true emergencies, Caproni said, agents always had the legal right to get phone records, and lawyers have now concluded there was no need for the after-the-fact approval process. "What this turned out to be was a self-inflicted wound," she said.
The story goes on to say the agents were working "under stress" to stop terrorist attacks. The problems with that kind of rationalizing are that it allows for lazy investigators to take unnecessary shortcuts and those who do not safeguard liberties in the name of security are surely to not have or deserve either.
Longtime readers know many of us believe Rockefeller was an absolute disaster for the country as Senate Intelligence chairman, rolling over and abetting on telecom immunity for the administration's illegal wiretaps and failing to provide proper oversight on intelligence gathering, including the use of torture. As part of this, Rockefeller will be leaving Senate Intelligence committee.
But Commerce seems like a much better fit for Rockefeller in the first place. While he was a disaster at Intelligence, he might actually do a good job at Commerce.
Remember that 1985 comedy "Spies Like Us?" OK, probably not. It starred Dan Akyroyd and Chevy Chase and even as much as I liked SNL in the early 1980s, I thought it stunk.
Guess who else doesn't like Spies like us, only the real-life kind? Sam Brownback.
Foreign-owned hotels in China face the prospect of "severe retaliation" if they refuse to install government software that can spy on Internet use by hotel guests coming to watch the summer Olympic games, a U.S. lawmaker said Tuesday.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., produced a translated version of a document from China's Public Security Bureau that requires hotels to use the monitoring equipment. . . . .
Brownback said several international hotel chains confirmed receiving the order from China's Public Security Bureau. The hotels are in a bind, he said, because they don't want to comply with the order, but also don't want to jeopardize their investment of millions of dollars to expand their businesses in China.
Hahaha. That's funnier than Chevy Chase -- I know, what isn't these days.
Remember this Sammy that you and our very own Jay Rock helped approve and give immunity to?
The National Security Agency and other government agencies retaliated against Qwest because the Denver telco refused to go along with a phone spying program, documents released Wednesday suggest. . . .
The secret contracts -- worth hundreds of millions of dollars -- made [Qwest CEO Joseph] Nacchio optimistic about Qwest's future, even as his staff was warning him the company might not make its numbers, Nacchio's defense attorneys have maintained. . . .
Nacchio planned to demonstrate at trial that he had a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., to discuss a $100 million project. According to the documents, another topic also was discussed at that meeting, one with which Nacchio refused to comply.
The topic itself is redacted each time it appears in the hundreds of pages of documents, but there is mention of Nacchio believing the request was both inappropriate and illegal, and repeatedly refusing to go along with it.
The NSA contract was awarded in July 2001 to companies other than Qwest.
So suddenly Sam Brownback is all opposed to government spying by listening in to phonecalls and reading emails and tracking web sites...except for when he is for it.
Glenn Greenwald:
The idea that the U.S. can exert meaningful leverage on China's surveillance behavior is laughable for reasons wholly independent of what the U.S. Government itself does with regard to spying on its own citizens. Nonetheless, to watch U.S. Senators like Sam Brownback actually maintain a straight face while protesting China's warrantless spying on the email and telephone communications of foreigners, and lamenting that private companies feel unfairly pressured to cooperate with China's government spying out of fear of losing lucrative business opportunities, is so surreal that it's actually hard to believe one is seeing it. How many days do we have to wait before we get to read a righteous Fred Hiatt Editorial condemning China's Communist tyrants for their outrageous spying intrusions? Maybe Jay Rockefeller can co-sponsor Brownback's Senate Resolution condemning China's surveillance activities and demanding that they stop it at once.
Yes, the U.S. under the Bush administration is leading the world.
After President George W. Bush signed the Congressional capitulation known as the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, who was the first hand he reached for--None other the Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
I think every West Virginian should take a good look at this picture, and then give the Senator a good piece of your mind. 202.224.6472
Also, send this picture to everyone you know. The Senator needs to know there are consequences for this kind of behavior.
For more on where the ACLU is taking this fight, click here.
Given that Congress failed (Senator Byrd and Congressman Mollohan not included; And a big thank you to both for standing up to FISA fear mongering), we find the time has come to honor a tradition as old as the capitulation of Congress under George W. Bush.
We, the American Civil Liberties Union, are suing over the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 because it is an unconstitutional mess.
In today's New York Times, James Risen -- who won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing Bush's illegal NSA spying program -- has an article reporting on Obama supporters who are criticizing Obama for his FISA reversal and who are attempting to defeat the bill which Obama supports. The article quotes Jane Hamsher, Markos Moulitsas and myself and features the very innovative effort by Obama supporters to use his campaign's social networking tools to urge Obama to oppose the FISA bill (more on that campaign here). For his article, Risen spoke with Obama adviser Greg Craig, a partner at the Washington law firm Williams & Connolly, and this is what Craig told Risen:
Greg Craig, a Washington lawyer who advises the Obama campaign, said Tuesday in an interview that Mr. Obama had decided to support the compromise FISA legislation only after concluding it was the best deal possible.
"This was a deliberative process, and not something that was shooting from the hip," Mr. Craig said. "Obviously, there was an element of what's possible here. But he concluded that with FISA expiring, that it was better to get a compromise than letting the law expire."
Craig's statement is flat-out false. FISA -- enacted in 1978 and amended many times to accommodate modern communications technology -- has no expiration date. The Protect America Act, which Congress enacted last August to legalize warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, had a 6-month sunset provision and thus already expired back in February, restoring FISA as the governing law. Thus, if Congress does nothing now, FISA will continue indefinitely to govern the Government's power to spy on the communications of Americans. It doesn't expire. What Craig said in defense of Obama is just wrong.
And let me make clear, at the outset of this debate, that this is not about domestic surveillance itself. We all recognize the importance of domestic surveillance - in an age of unprecedented threats. This is about illegal, unwarranted, unchecked domestic surveillance.
And that difference-the difference between surveillance that is lawful, warranted and that which is not-is everything.
Mr. President, I had hoped I would not have to return to this floor again under these circumstances - hoped that in these negotiations we would have been able to turn aside retroactive immunity on the grounds that it is bad policy and sets a terrible precedent.
As all of my colleagues know, I have long fought against retroactive immunity, because I believe, quite simply, it is an abandonment of the rule of law. I've fought this with everything I had in me-and I haven't waged this fight alone.
snip
But that's not the question. The question is not whether these companies received a "document" from the White House. The question is, "were their actions legal?" It's rather straightforward-surprisingly uncomplicated.
Either the companies were presented with a warrant, or they weren't. Either the companies and the President acted outside of the rule of law, or they followed it. Either the underlying program was legal or it wasn't.
Because of this legislation, none of the questions will be answered, Mr. President. Because of this so-called "compromise," the judge's hands will be tied, and the outcome of these cases will be predetermined. Because of this compromise, retroactive immunity will be granted and that, as they say, will be that. Case closed.
No court will rule on the legality of the telecommunications companies activities in participating in the president's warrantless wiretapping program.
None of our fellow Americans will have their day in court.
What they will have is a government that has sanctioned lawlessness.
Well, I refuse to accept that, Mr. President. I refuse to accept the argument that because this situation is just too delicate, too complicated, that this body is simply going to go ahead and sanction lawlessness.
We are better than that.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller is right on so many issues, but he's so wrong on FISA. What telecom immunity will do is make this country not ruled by laws, but ruled by imperial fiat. The Founding Fathers warned against abuse of power. Rockefeller and others will sanction it and even give it the veneer of judicial cover. The Senate Democrats either need to stand up for the Constitution or stand up for the corporations and the most corrupt administration in history. They can't do both. It's as simple as that.
Sent to the Honorable Shelley Capito, via email and cross-posted to DailyKos
I am writing as a concerned citizen of both the United States and your district to express my concern over you recent vote for the FISA bill. While I understand that we must act to protect America, we must keep in mind that we must also protect America from ourselves.
Ben Franklin said that the society that gives up a little bit of freedom for the sake of protection will soon have neither. As we go forward in the post-9/11 world, we must keep this mind. Already we have given up too many of our freedoms to the Executive branch, and a compliant congress stood by and did nothing for fear of political retribution.
The House passed a version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) last week that included retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that conspired in Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. And now, as the bill heads to the Senate, it looks like we have one last chance to stop this massive erosion of the rule of law.
Thankfully, we have a few champions, like Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd, who look poised to fight this to the very end, but they can't do it alone. They need both strong support from progressive senators and the vote of those senators currently sitting on the fence. This is where you come in.
Sen. Byrd could be the deciding voice and vote on stopping retroactive immunity. Please take a minute right now to give him a call and ask him to strip the retroactive immunity provision of FISA.
You can call either by dialing the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121, or by using our list of direct number for target senators.
After you are done with the call, please take a moment to let us know how the call went.
Senator Feingold effectively summed up the insanity of retroactive immunity yesterday by saying, "It doesn't simply have the impact of potentially allowing telephone companies to break the law. It may prevent us from ever getting to the core issue...which is the president ran an illegal program that could've been an impeachable offense."
I hope that you'll join me and do what you can to help prevent this from happening.
Everything I see and hear tonight regarding the capitulation of our majority party in the House of Representatives and the presumptive Democratic party nominee for President leads me to believe that neither have faith in the American people and our Constitution. Fear, terror, protecting our country all seem to have been the watch words of the administration and Republicans since September 11th. Now the Democratic led House and Barack Obama have joined George Bush in making sure that an unconstitutional law that immunizes criminal acts by politicians and corporations is sold to the American people. Done in order to delude us into believing that they are actually doing something to protect us from those who would do harm to us unless we give up more of our constitutional rights.
Lets turn back the pages to World War II for a minute and realize that our country bravely fought a war on two huge fronts as millions of our citizens turned out to serve a just cause... no fear on their part, and we won the war in 4 years. President Roosevelt led the country not with the words of terror and fear but by asking people to do their part and defeat a recognizable and very evil foe.
The day is here. Democratic "Leadership" has caved on FISA and is planning to ram an unconstitutional bill through the House of Representatives today rewarding massive telecommunication companies for breaking the law and spying on Americans. If this bill gets through the House, the prospects of stopping it in the Senate are grim. Please call Congressmen Mollohan- (202) 225-4172 and Rahall-(202) 225-3452.
Tell them to vote NO on the so called compromise. More on what is wrong with this bill below the fold.
It seems as if the day of reckoning is finally here. If any of y'all have a quick minute or two, please follow the link to send some emails, especially to Byrd's office, as he has been good on the FISA issue in the past, and keeping him good is invaluable to the fight.
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