Wyden Proposes Surveillance Limits

Ron Wyden issued a press release Tuesday on new legislation proposed to limit the most objectionable powers the government has assumed that led to mass spying on all American citizens.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), will hold a press conference on Wednesday, Sept. 25 at 4 pm EDT to unveil principles for comprehensive surveillance reform. Their approach will end the bulk collection of phone records of law-abiding Americans, close the “back-door searches” loophole that allows the government to search for Americans’ communications without a warrant, and create an independent constitutional advocate to argue significant cases before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Wyden also had a lot to say about the operation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) as well, in an article published in Ars Technica.

Further, the Oregon senator said that the FISC needs to be far more open than it has been previously. Until this year, nearly all FISC opinions and orders had been secret. That has changed recently, as lawsuits brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and resulting pressure from the Edward Snowden leaks forced a limited number of new documents to be exposed.
“[FISC's] rulings and opinions need to be made public in order for public confidence to exist,” he said. “Secret courts were one of the reasons that we rebelled against the English. Star chambers became a symbol of our reason for revolution, and secrecy should be really an anathema to our judicial process.”
Wyden and his colleagues also pushed the idea of a “constitutional advocate,” or ombudsman, who would act as the government’s judicial adversary in a FISC hearing. He also addressed a likely rebuttal from the intelligence community, that valuable information may be lost if the judicial process is bogged down by appeals.
“There should be no delay from a constitutional advocate because the review can happen while the warrants are ongoing,” he said. “That appeal can be to SCOTUS or to [other] courts of appeals, to [the FISC of Review]. The appeal right now is nonexistent because only the government is represented. The constitutional advocate would have as its clients the rights of American citizens.”

He's got my vote.