Snowden Gets Some Respect

In a rare moment of candor, the director of the NSA James Clapper acknowledges Snowden as having a little positive impact and the judges of the FISA court overseeing the NSA have ordered the declassification of more of their rulings to advance the public debate.

The Fisa court ordered the Justice Department to identify the court's own rulings after May 2011 that concern a section of the Patriot Act used by the NSA to justify its mass database of American phone data. The ruling was a significant step towards their publication.
It is the second time in a week that a US court has ordered the disclosure of secret intelligence rulings. On Tuesday, a federal court in New York compelled the government to declassify numerous documents that revealed substantial tension between federal authorities and the surveillance court over the years.
On Thursday, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, conceded that the NSA is likely to lose at least some of its broad powers to collect data on Americans.
He acknowledged that Snowden's disclosures had prompted a necessary debate: "As loath as I am to give any credit to what's happened here, I think it's clear that some of the conversations this has generated, some of the debate, actually needed to happen.
"If there's a good side to this, maybe that's it."

What Clapper didn't acknowledge is the fact that he and his agency have done everything they could to prevent that debate from ever happening, and still would love to bury Snowden in a small cell.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of the ACLU there will probably be more information revealed as a result of their FOIA requests filed in 2011.  The DOJ has tried to stonewall and obstruct the process every way they could, but cracks in the wall are finally appearing.

"We are pleased that the surveillance court has recognized the importance of transparency to the ongoing public debate about the NSA's spying," said Alex Abdo, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "For too long, the NSA's sweeping surveillance of Americans has been shrouded in unjustified secrecy. Today's ruling is an overdue rebuke of that practice. Secret law has no place in our democracy."

Congress, Your Civil Rights, and Money

The defeat of an amendment to eliminate the NSA dragnet of all phone call records in the US failed by only 12 votes (217-205), and an analysis by Wired Magazine found that the supporters of continued spying got twice as much in contributions from the Defense lobbyists as those who opposed the massive spy program.

The numbers tell the story — in votes and dollars. On Wednesday, the House voted 217 to 205 not to rein in the NSA’s phone-spying dragnet. It turns out that those 217 “no” voters received twice as much campaign financing from the defense and intelligence industry as the 205 “yes” voters.
That’s the upshot of a new analysis by MapLight, a Berkeley-based non-profit that performed the inquiry at WIRED’s request. The investigation shows that defense cash was a better predictor of a member’s vote on the Amash amendment than party affiliation. House members who voted to continue the massive phone-call-metadata spy program, on average, raked in 122 percent more money from defense contractors than those who voted to dismantle it.
Overall, political action committees and employees from defense and intelligence firms such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, Honeywell International, and others ponied up $12.97 million in donations for a two-year period ending December 31, 2012, according to the analysis, which MapLight performed with financing data from OpenSecrets. Lawmakers who voted to continue the NSA dragnet-surveillance program averaged $41,635 from the pot, whereas House members who voted to repeal authority averaged $18,765.
Of the top 10 money getters, only one House member — Rep. Jim Moran (D-Virginia) — voted to end the program.

I no like, this is corruption...

Wyden Will See the Fight to the End

Wyden says "I want it understood that we're going to stay at this until we win." He did an interview with Rolling Stone on the struggle to gain transparency of the secret FISA rulings and the dragnet surveillance activities of the NSA.  

The way we deal with this best, in my view, is to recognize this is a unique time in our constitutional history. These digital technologies have grown so rapidly, and we really can't even get our arms around it. It used to be that the limits on technologies were to a great extent a form of protection for the American people. A lot of that seems to be going to the wind. We're sitting here with computers in our pockets, smartphones, with the ability to track people 24/7. These issues are as important as it gets. And Americans have a right to real debate [on] the way you deal with the constitutional teeter-totter of liberty and security. It's hard to think of anything more important to our country and our bedrock values. And I think what will protect people now will be the laws that we write to rein in this omnipresent, ever-expanding surveillance state. And if we don't do it now – if we don't recognize that this is a truly unique moment in America's constitutional history – our generation's going to regret it forever.

Security and the Constitution

Our voracious security establishment seems to have convinced our legislators that we can have the constitution or security, but not both.  Both Democrats and Republicans are opting to dump the Constitution, turning our day to day life over to the intelligence overlords who'll keep us safe.  Sign Jeff Merkley's petition if you disagree with that.  Counterpunch has a good analysis of the situation, well worth reading.

Constitutions are often needed to guard against political excess, the conscience of a state when its representatives have ceased to have any.  The responses from the Washington elite suggest the anaesthetised state they have fallen into – liberties need to be shredded to protect liberties; legality demands bouts of illegality and so forth.  Nothing to be surprised about, claimed Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga).  “This has been going on for seven years under the auspices of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] authority, and every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this” (Forbes, Jun 6).
Even more striking of the amoral numbness of such surveillance activities is Chambliss’ remark that “we have not had any citizen who has registered a complaint relative to the gathering of this information, and its simply what we call ‘meta data’.”  Give it a cryptic, functional label, and people are bound to go along with it.  That’s if they even know about it.
Senator Diane Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has again made it clear that the mass surveillance of public chatter and communications is entirely appropriate.  The Republic is besieged by enemies external and internal.  “As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the last seven years.” The message: This is normal.  Stop being so wet about it.

What will they do with all those phone records?

What to do with all that data?  Fight terrorists?  Maybe.  Intimidate anybody they don't like?  Maybe that too.

Let's take an ambitious NSA employee and give him a list of all "sex for service" ads in Backpage and another list of all the phone numbers of people in the legislative branch, why heck just for grins let's check out the phone usage of FISA judge Roger Vinson and see who he's been calling lately too.  What do you think they'll find?  Who's going to stop them from doing just that?  Ron Wyden and the ACLU were right to warn darkly about the consequences of illegal spying.

Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, both Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a March 2012 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that most Americans would “stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted section 215 of the Patriot Act.”
“As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows,” the senators wrote in the letter. “This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.”

The blackmail notion has occurred to other bloggers as well.

Blackmailing citizens critical of the government seemed like a distant hypothetical, until we learned that the IRS was auditing Tea Party groups and journalists were being wiretapped. Nefarious actors inside the government like to abuse national security programs for political ends, and that should make us all (even more) suspect of government spying.
Some government secrecy is necessary for national security purposes. But it’s justified based on our trust that the information will be used with care. With every passing scandal, the justification for these types of programs becomes more and more questionable.

 Should you be worried too?

The awesomeness of Ron Wyden

I am sometimes vexed with Ron Wyden, especially when he fails to agree 100% with my thoughts, but I have to hand it to him in his unwavering efforts to preserve our civil liberties in Congress, especially when the government has granted itself the right of warrantless wiretapping and secretive rules on drone killings.  He along with our other Senator Jeff Merkley has kept up the pressure on the administration to provide better oversight and transparency of the rules governing spying on US citizens, and the rules of due process when a US citizen is targeted in a drone strike.  Some recent articles on his efforts are here and here.

Obama Quietly Signs Abusive Spy Bill He Once Vowed to Eliminate

This move extends the life of the warrant-less spying for 5 years, meaning nobody knows who will be in charge after the Obama presidency ends in 4 years.  The ACLU sued to challenge the law’s constitutionality.  Ron Wyden commented “This is the last opportunity for the next five years for the Congress to exercise a modest measure of real oversight over this intelligence surveillance law.”, but his proposed amendment was shot down, along with one by Jeff Merkley.  Here is a record of how the Senate voted on the bill.  Be sure to let your Senator know what you think of their vote.

FISA Secret Government

You Are Being Watched, FISA was about to expire, but in a bizarre bipartisan display of unity in the US Senate and House, it will continue.  I don't know what motivates the sickness that is FISA, but despite amendments offered by Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley to get a modicum of protection for civil rights, the House, Senate, and President Obama all want it to continue operating in total secrecy.  This act is opposed by the ACLU as being unconstitutional and a violation of the 4th Amendment (Illegal Search on innocent citizens).

Shame on Dianne Feinstein, Harry Reid, and President Obama, this is a dark day for US Citizens.  Thanks to Wyden and Merkley for standing up for us.