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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
pow wow
Published Letters: 304
The parts I've posted I transcribed myself (as part of my struggle to 'crack the code' of the discussion about email, to try to better understand the meaning of the 'foreign to foreign in the U.S.' "modernization" or "intelligence gap" argument). C-SPAN has only the video in their archives, which is my source for the recording (I was pleasantly surprised that they covered the event; my thanks to Mary at emptywheel's for alerting us to that). I checked the ABA site [abanet.org], but didn't see a transcript there; a full transcript would indeed be a good thing for the ABA to make available in this case, because Monday's discussion really added significantly to the content of the FISA debate. [Thanks and kudos go to Suzanne Spaulding for that and for a great job as moderator, and for the timely organization of this event. Especially as James Baker's extensive FISA knowledge is presumably about to 'go dark' publicly - as he takes up a new job as Deputy General Counsel for national security at Verizon Communications in about a month.]
I'm assuming for the moment that the 'pen register' and 'trap and trace' references Kate made are to call detail record (as opposed to actual message content) surveillance - data that's collected to enable the link or pattern analysis that the House Judiciary Committee's RESTORE report pretty explicitly references as being authorized by the House bill.
Your elaboration last thread about the roving-around-a-fixed-center email scenario is an illuminating example of what I think is the cause of the FISC warrant 'backlog' that PAA has since removed. Presumably just about a year ago, various FISC judges were struggling with this very issue in an effort to interpret the Fourth Amendment and FISA in the age of email.
Another excellent letter from Commerce Committee Reps. Dingell, Markey and Stupak went out yesterday, which alerts their colleagues to the eye-opening and detailed new allegations of whistleblower Babak Pasdar (irony of ironies, an Iranian-American...), concerning the wide-open and unmonitored "Quantico Circuit" plugged into a major wireless carrier's data center:
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/03/06
These Members of Congress assert that they are being prevented by the president from speaking to private companies about this issue, and prevented from investigating allegations such as Pasdar's. This is beyond belief. Is it because the House Intelligence Committee under Reyes won't hold closed-door hearings on such matters? Or just that no one in the House is willing to force the issue? No member of our federal legislature should tolerate such bad faith abuse of vital democratic process and Congressional oversight by this, or any, Executive Branch.
If you check my comments from earlier this week, I transcribed a portion of an Armed Services Committee meeting held last week that featured a discussion about the merits of RESTORE vs. the Senate bill (regarding particularly the email collection problem, aka the 'foreign-to-foreign' issue described in my comment late in the preceding thread), between Senator Levin and DNI McConnell's General Counsel Ben Powell.
I followed up on the transcript comments by quoting the language in the RESTORE Act that enforces the obtaining of a warrant when a "specific" U.S. person is being collected upon along with their foreign correspondent. Powell was desperately spinning to cast that provision as unacceptable (it was originally a Jan Schakowsky amendment passed in the House Intelligence Committee mark-up of RESTORE). I assume that language is the key 'reverse targeting' (although I think it's broader than that, actually) provision which is in RESTORE but absent from the Senate bill, as Powell made clear in the Armed Services Committee hearing, that is now being proposed in the new House compromise.
Although, as you note, the Senate bill does have some nice-sounding language about this, it clearly wouldn't do the job the way the House bill provision would, or the ODNI wouldn't be making so much noise about the difference. The House provision provides for the FISA Court to approve Executive Branch guidelines for the obtaining of a probable cause warrant when a specific U.S. person is being collected upon - the Senate provision does not.
The ACLU, I'm sure, has much more information directly comparing the two bills, and Russ Feingold's website may be another good source of information on this.
walter_map - Not in the least (unbelievable that threats may have been applied to Members of Congress). What would be beyond belief, in my opinion, would be their remaining quiet about it, in today's environment. Such threat tactics, if publicly (and credibly) exposed by a Member of Congress, would blow away the "good faith" and "legitimate actor" cover that the Executive Branch thugs work night and day to maintain.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
