Letters to the Editor
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My letter to Edwards:
Senator Edwards,
As a contributor to and supporter of your presidential campaign, I fervently hope you will call attention to the FISA debate and the issue of “retroactive immunity” for lawbreaking telecoms.
Retroactive Immunity. It pains me to type it. What a PR coup! Doesn’t it just sound so much better than “breaking the law then getting away with it because you are rich and connected?”
This is a winning opportunity for you; a chance to take the moral high-ground and embarrass your rivals who benefit from telecom contributions and support.
I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that in addition this is a strong issue with the netroots. You will be sure to gain internet exposure. The corporate media can hardly cover you any less so there’s little to lose.
I am confident you will emerge as a leader against special treatment for telecoms.
Best wishes and regards,
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When you write
I am upset this is coming now, in another week I'll have time and it will be too late.
In addition to asking your senator to support Chris Dodd's filibuster, consider asking your senator to go all the way and support either 1) allowing the PAA to expire until the Congress can muster the time, energy, and interest to do this thing right, or, 2) Backing a call to start from the SJC version of the bill.
I've been like a broken record on some of this, and I'm glad the twin issues of databasing/datamining and link analysis have been pointed to by Glenn (thanks too to pow wow -- wow that's a lot of o's in one phrase), but the minimization, targeting, and continuation procedures need your attention. This piece, at least, is done right in the SJC version. Rollbacks are also worthy -- that is, that all 'intelligent' software should be rolled back to its prior state if the intelligence gathered is deemed to be illegally acquired. They are also in the SJC version.
The ACLU favors expiry followed by a new, more careful, bill. I would favor going with the SJC version and working on ACLU concerns -- expiry doesn't deal with rollbacks.
small glossary:
minimization: Procedures that must be filed for a surveillance procedure to specify how the surveillers will minimize the amount of data acquired that was not supposed to be part of the surveillance -- e.g. information about people with whom the target has contacts, but aren't themselves under surveillance. It's supposed to be destroyed, and a court is supposed to approve the method.
targeting: Procedures that must be filed, like the minimization procedures, only these state how the surveillers will properly target the person under surveillance, and avoid targeting others in the process. If minimization is about how to destroy the information you accidentally picked up, targeting is about how to avoid picking it up.
continuation: This is a new clause, whose origin dates to the original 66 page overhaul the President proposed in April. The idea here is that the AG or DNI approves an interim surveillance project, and when they go to court, the court says no. At that point the AG/DNI can ask for 30 days to fix it. If that doesn't work, they can appeal the decision. What continuation does is allow them to continue the court disapproved of surveillance during this whole process. Think of it as proactive immunity for telecoms and spooks. If you go to the White House web site that discusses the SJC version versus what the White House wants, this is the most important part of the bill! Ask yourself why.
rollback: In any artificial intelligence program that learns or adapts, when new information is acquired, parameters are updated. That is the learning process. Those parameters help the next action of the program. In the case where the program is trying to find terrorists, think of the parameters as numerical amalgamations of keywords, links, suspicions, and anything else that would constitute new knowledge about the terrorists we don't know about yet. In a very real sense, it is an abstract, more sophisticated, less individualized version of a police suspicious persons list. Among other things, it enables the computer or the analyst to have hunches about who to suspect. The common feature of such lists is that they never forget. Mandating rollback would force the government to return to the state of not knowing a piece of information if the information was illegally or improperly acquired. Anything else means that it is used to build lists.
Good luck with the discussions, I have to be on the sidelines. Just remember you aren't just protecting Americans from the NSA stepping on the 4th amendment and the telecoms stepping on the rule of law. You're protecting them from corporate intrusion as well. All of these datamining products eventually make it into the hands of marketing departments, where they're used to control your desire for their 'stuff'.
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Constitutionality of immunity/amnesty
Is it unconstitutional for a law to change the law retroactively, and would telecom amnesty/immunity fall under this?
Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution says:
"No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. "
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Mildly interesting exchange
I called Dodd's office to determine whether Sen. Dodd intends to filibuster (YES) and whether Reid has ever given Dodd an answer as to why Reid chooses to ignore Dodd's hold (NO).
Called Reidss office w/ question on why Reid is ignoring Dodd's hold. I'm referred to an online statment from Reid and cut off. Reid's statement does NOT address the question.
Called Reid's office back. I'm told "during the Dec. 14th debate, Sen's. Reid and Dodd AGREED debate would continue in January, so Reid is NOT ignoring a Dodd hold."
I called Dodd's office, and relayed this info. Somewhat surprised, I was, by the response. Something to the effect of, (paraphrasing)"No, we did not know Reid's office was stating that as their position, thank you very very much for calling, I will see that Sen. Dodd receives this information as soon as I can."
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My Senators...
Casey and Specter no longer have "Civil Liberties" as a possible subject line on their web forms.
Weird.
I ended up using "Civil Rights" for Specter and "Clean Government" for Casey.
I don't have high hopes for either of my Senators.
For all of Specter's reputation for being a true independent conservative and believer in small, restrained government, he hasn't done much of anything to stop the President's power-grab and has facilitated it as member and former Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As for Casey, he voted for the FISA bill last time. Then again, he did vote for cloture on restoring habeas corpus rights - so one might infer that he would have voted in favor of said rights. He also votes YES on all of those oh-so-important Support-the-Troops/English-is-the-Common-Language/Christianity Exists-and-is-Historically-Significant pronouncements that take up so much of the Senate's time these days.
(BTW - if you wonder how your legislators have voted in the past, go to votesmart.org.)