USA - warrantless wiretaps

[jux]

so im sure a lot of you have seen the disscussions on the patriot act we have been having on this board. a few of us have mentioned the dangerous precedent the patriot act sets...well, the next step in this dangerous legislation trend has finally appeared.

a couple of days ago, bush passed a law extendending the power of the patriot act (and arguably one of the more contraversial parts)....warrantless wiretaps. the laws states that you no longer have to be a suspected terrorist or criminal for the government to tap your phone.

read that last sentence again.......anyone in the us can now have their phone tapped without any suspected criminal activity whatsoever.

nice.

bush is killing the constituion and no one seems to care.

[Broshious]

Originally Posted by jux

so im sure a lot of you have seen the disscussions on the patriot act we have been having on this board. a few of us have mentioned the dangerous precedent the patriot act sets...well, the next step in this dangerous legislation trend has finally appeared.

a couple of days ago, bush passed a law extendending the power of the patriot act (and arguably one of the more contraversial parts)....warrantless wiretaps. the laws states that you no longer have to be a suspected terrorist or criminal for the government to tap your phone.

read that last sentence again.......anyone in the us can now have their phone tapped without any suspected criminal activity whatsoever.

nice.

bush is killing the constituion and no one seems to care.

Not that I like Bush, but doesn't Congress pass laws?

[old hippie 56]

They(Congress) gave it to Bush on a silver platter, very little fanfare. Guess they don't want the voters to find out.

[jux]

Originally Posted by Broshious

Not that I like Bush, but doesn't Congress pass laws?

yeah, bush signed it into law


New law expands power to wiretap

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | August 6, 2007
WASHINGTON -- President Bush signed a new law yesterday that expands the government's power to wiretap phone calls and e-mails on American soil without court oversight, capping a sudden victory for the White House despite loud criticism from advocates of civil liberties and privacy rights.

Just before midnight on Saturday, Congress passed the Protect America Act of 2007, which was largely drafted by the White House and received no committee hearing. The bill carves out a broad exemption from a 1978 law that requires the government to obtain a judge's permission to monitor calls and e-mails on US soil.


The new law allows the National Security Agency to spy freely on foreigners overseas when they communicate with Americans. It enables the NSA to resume a form of the once-secret warrantless wiretapping program that Bush launched after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that ended when it was brought under court oversight last January.
The law also makes clear that the NSA does not need to obtain a judge's permission to monitor phone calls and e-mails if both parties are overseas, even if the communications happen to be routed through switching hubs on US soil. Such telecommunications networks did not exist in 1978, when the warrant law was originally written.
In a statement issued after he signed the bill, Bush praised Congress for giving his administration the extra power he said it needs "to defeat the inten tions of our enemies" and "to prevent attacks in the future."


"Today we face a dynamic threat from enemies who understand how to use modern technology against us," he said yesterday. "Our tools to deter them must also be dynamic and flexible enough to meet the challenges they pose. This law gives our intelligence professionals this greater flexibility while closing a dangerous gap in our intelligence-gathering activities that threatened to weaken our defenses."
But privacy rights groups said the new law goes too far by allowing the NSA to evade warrant requirements for calls and e-mails involving Americans. They accused Democratic leaders of "spinelessness" in the face of Republican threats to blame them for any coming terrorist attack if they did not give the president the new power before leaving for their annual August recess.
"We are deeply disappointed that the president's tactics of fearmongering have once again forced Congress into submission," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
In two respects, the law grants the executive branch even broader warrantless wiretapping powers than the ones Bush said he had a right to exercise under his original program.
First, the law requires telecommunications companies to make their facilities available for government wiretaps, and it grants them immunity from lawsuits for complying. Under the old program, such companies participated only voluntarily -- and some were sued for allegedly violating their customers' privacy.

Second, Bush has said his original surveillance program was restricted to calls and e-mails involving a suspected terrorist, but the new law has no such limit.



Instead, it allows executive-branch agencies to conduct oversight-free surveillance of all international calls and e-mails, including those with Americans on the line, with the sole requirement that the intelligence-gathering is "directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States." There is no requirement that either caller be a suspected terrorist, spy, or criminal.
The law requires the government to delete any American's private information that it picks up, but it contains an exception allowing agents to maintain files of information about an American that has foreign intelligence value or that may be evidence of a crime.
As a check against abuse, the law requires Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, to design procedures for the program and to submit them for review by a secret national security court that normally approves warrant applications for intelligence-related wiretapping on US soil.
The court can reject the procedures only if it decides that the executive branch officials' plan for complying with the statute is "clearly erroneous." The program will be able to continue for a year, although the law will come up for renewal in six months. In any case, the warrantless eavesdropping can start immediately, even before the security court signs off on the procedures.


The debate over surveillance dates back to the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Bush signed a secret order authorizing the NSA to wiretap Americans' international e-mails and phone calls without a court order -- even though the 1978 warrant law prohibited it. Bush asserted that his wartime powers gave him an unwritten right to bypass such a law.
In January 2007, Gonzales announced that the program had been brought under the oversight of the national security court. A judge on the court had issued an unusual classified order allowing some form of the surveillance to continue.
But several months ago another judge on the court ruled that the order was unlawful, shutting down some part of the program and leading to the White House push to get Congress to amend the surveillance law.
The House of Representatives passed the bill late Saturday, following the Senate's approval on Friday night. In both chambers, Republicans voted overwhelmingly for the bill and were joined by enough Democrats to make a majority. It passed 60 to 28 in the Senate with 16 Democrats in favor, and 227 to 183 in the House, with 41 Democrats in favor.
Legal specialists who have criticized the expansion of executive power during Bush's tenure compared the law to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which expanded the White House's power over detainees in the war on terrorism, and the Iraq war authorization in 2002.
Both times, Bush abruptly urged Congress to give him greater national security powers shortly before lawmakers went on recess, warning that there was no time to wait. That strategy was echoed in the White House's sudden rush to enact the Protect America Act last week.
"The new bill shows that the Republican Party can get the Democrats to surrender almost any civil liberty -- indeed, to give the President just as much unchecked power as he might obtain under a Republican controlled Congress-- simply by playing the fear card repeatedly and without shame," wrote Yale law professor Jack Balkin on his blog.
But David Rivkin, a former White House lawyer under President George H.W. Bush, said Congress had acted wisely by restoring presidents' power to wiretap foreigners overseas without warrants -- a power that had eroded because of fiberoptic networks.
"The people who are engaged in scaremongering are the ones ranting about privacy," Rivkin said.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/wa...er_to_wiretap/

[jux]

Bush signs into law warrantless wiretaps

CAMP DAVID, Md. (AP) — President Bush on Sunday signed into law an expansion of the government's power to eavesdrop on foreign terror suspects without the need for warrants.
The law, approved by the Senate and the House just before Congress adjourned for its summer break, was deemed a priority by Bush and his chief intelligence officials.
Bush signed the bill into law on Sunday afternoon at Camp David, Md.
"When our intelligence professionals have the legal tools to gather information about the intentions of our enemies, America is safer," Bush said. "And when these same legal tools also protect the civil liberties of Americans, then we can have the confidence to know that we can preserve our freedoms while making America safer."
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,695198120,00.html






it seems to me that the administration (as the previous article said, the act was primarily drafted by the white house) slipped it through congress in the 11th hour so there would be little to no opposition

[Broshious]

88(60 for) Senate votes and 410(227 for) House votes doesn't seem like it got slipped through. I'm not arguing that it's an awful terrible thing, but Congress could shut Bushie down any time it got the balls to do so.

[jux]

still, 227-183 (with 25 seats not voting) isnt exactly a huge majority

my point was that when legislators put up a bill of this magnitude at the eleventh hour just before summer break (which allows virtually no time for discussion of the bill in question), they are trying to slip something through...if the bill had been given reasonable time on the floor, you can bet at the very least it would have won by a slimmer margin, if it had passed at all (after all, representitives given time to consider the bill may vote differently)....in any case my point was about the intent, not the outcome.

and i absolutely agree that congresses hands are just as dirty as the administrations. the democrats came into office promising to be different than the republicans, but they are just as bad...i have yet to see any improvement in our government whatsoever.

[Broshious]

Originally Posted by jux

still, 227-183 (with 25 seats not voting) isnt exactly a huge majority

my point was that when legislators put up a bill of this magnitude at the eleventh hour just before summer break (which allows virtually no time for discussion of the bill in question), they are trying to slip something through...if the bill had been given reasonable time on the floor, you can bet at the very least it would have won by a slimmer margin, if it had passed at all (after all, representitives given time to consider the bill may vote differently)....in any case my point was about the intent, not the outcome.

and i absolutely agree that congresses hands are just as dirty as the administrations. the democrats came into office promising to be different than the republicans, but they are just as bad...i have yet to see any improvement in our government whatsoever.

If a representative votes for a bill just because they didn't have time to think about it then that's probably a fault with that particular Congressman. I'm not saying I don't agree that it may have been a sleezy tactic, but if the people in Congress weren't total douchebags it wouldn't have a chance in hell of working.

[Divine Winds]

for great reporting on the errosion of civil liberties see

http://www.infowars.com

http://www.prisonplanet.com

Reputation Comments on this post:

Don't spam links to various sites where it isn't justified, this is only one of many you've posted within an hours time.

[Woodman]

I think we should put more effort into enforce existing laws before introducing "New-&-Improved" legislation, designed to do what the old laws couldn't.

It is simply a matter of enforcement; hard to do when you've depleted most of your resources on the never-ending war on drugs.

[Nagognog2]

I think everyone who has no faith in the Bush Regime and believes our rights are being destroyed should, whenever they go out in public, wear a red, round clown nose.

[Woodman]

So you actually want people who oppose Boooossh to go around looking like clowns?

[jux]

Originally Posted by Woodman

So you actually want people who oppose Boooossh to go around looking like clowns?

lol, gotta blend in with the bush supporters somehow (and the store is out of giant asshole costumes...)

sorry...i suppose that was uncalled for....

[Woodman]

I quote myself:

Originally Posted by Woodman

there are two different, and very distinct, types of Bush-bots; there are the ones who mindlessly respond in the defense of the guy, and those who attempt to use every opportunity to vilify and condemn him.

...Idiots, all!

It remains to be seen who will provide valuable input on topics raised in forum. There, the bots will reveal themselves.

Someone hang out a sign for the bots:

"Come adead, Dumb-Ass!
The door is wide open!"

[Nagognog2]

I want press attention and no mistake. They'd also work well for those investing in the stock-market. Rupert Mudoch? Owns the Wall Street Urinal?? AAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!!