Judge Orders White House To Produce Wiretap Memos 178
sv_libertarian sends this excerpt from the Associated Press:
"A judge has ordered the Justice Department to produce White House memos that provide the legal basis for the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 warrantless wiretapping program. US District Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. signed an order (PDF) Friday requiring the department to produce the memos by the White House legal counsel's office by Nov. 17. He said he will review the memos in private to determine if any information can be released publicly without violating attorney-client privilege or jeopardizing national security. Kennedy issued his order in response to lawsuits by civil liberties groups in 2005 after news reports disclosed the wiretapping."
Cue Whitehouse ignoring Court.... (Score:1, Insightful)
3....2.....1.....
Accountability ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Assuming an Obama win on Tuesday and a serious shift towards Democrats (what polls largely suggest), are we finally going to see some serious investigations and accountability for this current administration?
I know the wheels of justice are often rather slow. But I do hope the courts eventually get around to reeling back in the egregious power-grabs of the current executive. I also hope the next executive doesn't attempt to maintain such.
Too long (Score:5, Insightful)
Posted [...] on 2008-11-02
Kennedy issued his order in response to lawsuits by civil liberties groups in 2005 after news reports disclosed the wiretapping.
It has taken three to four years, roughly a whole term, to get a judge to dig up this bit of the current administration's {,mis,ab}use of power.
What will the consequences for the Bush et al. be, if their practices are found to be unconstitutional? Is there a real incentive to uphold the constitution if it takes so long to dig up the dirt?
I still don't get why this is neccessary (Score:5, Insightful)
FISA - The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [wikipedia.org] - of 1978 provided the president a method to tap communications without a warrant in a "Ticking Time Bomb" situation. FISA allows investigators begin surveillance without proper documents as long as the activities are reported to a judge for review within 72 hours. In any Time-Bomb scenario, 72 hours should be ample time for the investigators to gather the needed information to prove that their hasty wire-tap was legitimate. The judge will sign the warrant and everybody is happy.
In any other case, the judge will surveillance must be shut down and the records sealed immediately. This law has been so effective that out of the hundreds of FISA taps exactly ZERO have been denied.
This is why the Bush administrations new warrantless wiretapping is so distressing. The system wasn't broken! It worked very well. This is simply yet another attempt by the administration to do an end run around due-process. Bush and Cheney have done more to erode the constitution than any other duo in this country's history.
Lets all hope that our next president will restore some order to the land and respect the laws that provide his power. If we allow our executive to choose which laws he will follow, we're on a short trip to the disaster that won't be unlike Russia's "Democracy".
Not exactly "accountability" or a "win" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I still don't get why this is neccessary (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say that tapping millions of calls simultaneously is going too far to protect from terrorism, and should be rejected.
A wire tap is a tool used to pin down one guy, or see who picks up on a specific phone, to stop crime. Monitoring a million calls at once is not wiretapping, it's surveillance, and should be, would be, and is prohibited by the 4th amendment. Bush's new laws essentially nullify the 4th and Bush's actions go beyond the bill he himself requested!
Re:Treason? (Score:4, Insightful)
Attacking the legal government... setting off IEDs... That would make the Republicans... TERRORISTS!!!
I like how a self-professed Republican's response to (hopefully) losing a democratic election is to call it a coup and threaten setting off IEDs. I mean, that is really high-quality irony.
How did Bush put it? "If you're not with us, you're with the Ter.. err.. us."
"Won't get fooled again!"
Re:Too long (Score:5, Insightful)
roughly a whole term
now you're catching on. They're waiting till almost everyone that was ever involved is out of office so that the backlash on the state is far less severe than the backlash that will happen on the individuals involved.
once bush is out of office, they don't care if the people lose faith in him anymore because he doesn't represent the country any longer.
Re:I still don't get why this is neccessary (Score:5, Insightful)
If indeed Bush and friends trampled on your beloved Constitution and laws in doing so, I say they're more dangerous to you than what they claim they were protecting you from.
If they could have justified it, why didn't they just push the law through Senate et all first? It's not like they have had that much difficutly in pushing through lots of crappy laws.
The fact that they didn't even bother (and only did the retroactive BS later) shows you how much contempt they have for the Law and the People of the USA.
Re:Too many wire taps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which after having done any test engineering, which I have, or reading practically anything by Bruce Schneier, which I also have, then you see that the percentages are against you on mass dragnets like this.
If you're looking for say, a dozen terrorists, looking through 120,000,000 phone calls, that's well under 1 part per million. A really good false positive rate might be 0.01%. That's still 1 part per 10,000 - you're looking for 12 terrorists in 12,012 hits. That's even assuming that your dragnet is 100% effective, that it's 12,012 hits and not 12,011 or 12,006. (12,000 false positives and 12, 11, or 6 true positives.)
This just isn't even a good way to start the job. Intelligence on the ground is, then you can refine your wiretaps and such before you even start, so you're not sifting through so much information. Oh, and FISA would be just fine for that scenario.
Re:Accountability ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I still don't get why this is neccessary (Score:5, Insightful)
"If they could have justified it, why didn't they just push the law through Senate et all first? It's not like they have had that much difficutly in pushing through lots of crappy laws."
Because if they had attempted to change the laws, people would have become aware of what they wanted to do. Simpler to invoke "War Powers" and push through immunity after the fact for those that go along with questionable actions, rather than make your intents known and possibly have someone tell you "No, you can't do that".
It's an ugly state of affairs any way you look at it. The amount of money, legislation, rule-bending and even forging wars all in the name of "Fighting Terrorism" is ridiculously out of proportion. As is typically the case with politics, a boogey-man is used to justify increased scope and powers of the state.
Re:Accountability ? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but it means the knee-jerk reaction of "oh, things will be better under the other party" isn't going to work either. If we want real oversight, we need to get a 3rd-party involved. I bet if we had a Libertarian executive would have a whole lot of opening of government.
Re:Accountability ? (Score:2, Insightful)
I bet if you had a libertarian in charge he'd take money from all the same bribes and do the same things.
Re:I still don't get why this is neccessary (Score:2, Insightful)
If indeed Bush and friends trampled on your beloved Constitution and laws in doing so, I say they're more dangerous to you than what they claim they were protecting you from.
This much is obvious. Look at how many Americans died because of Bin Laden's orders. Roughly 3000. How many Americans died because of Bush's orders? Over 4000 in Iraq and over 600 in Afghanistan. How many American dollars were wasted because of the 9/11 attacks? We may have lost half a trillion dollars [navy.mil] in GDP. But the Iraq war will cost us 3 trillion [washingtonpost.com] or more.
So yeah, with friends like these who needs enemies? Even if you care only about American lives and American dollars, Bush has clearly done more harm to the US than Bin Laden. And so, he should be treated no kinder than Bin Laden.
Re:Treason? (Score:2, Insightful)
How can you call us Nazis when Bush accepted every contrary media as part of free speech, and your guys first move is to try and squelch the other side?
In the first place, "your guys" doesn't apply. There are plenty of actual arguments to be made against Obama, including his vote for the telecom immunity act which was an act of treason. Of course, your guy voted for that too, so you're stuck with silly asinine arguments since McCain and the Republican party are far far worse than the Democrats.
I'm essentially a Classical Liberal which means I believe in small government, fiscal responsibility, freedom and all of that. You know, like the constitution lays out. So while I dislike the Democrats and their excesses, looking at just the 2 major parties, absolutely objectively, the Republicans are far worse in every area. Big government? Absolutely. Republicans win this hands down. Reagan beat FDR's record for *growth* of the government and Bush recently beat Reagan's record. Fiscal irresponsibility? Republicans again. They know no restraint and spend like mad at interest on crazy pork bullshit like Moose Fucker's bridge to nowhere. Anti-Liberty? Right, death camps, universal surveillance, kicking down doors of people's homes and dragging patriotic citizens off to jail like at the Republican convention.
How do you even live with yourself, and say the lies you say?
This is completely laughable. You are so far out on the loony fascist fringe that you assume anybody with legitimate complaints about your Fuhrer must be an Obama supporter, when disgust with the Republicans is all over the political spectrum and includes everybody *except* right wing extremists. You know, like the Nazis. That's where you fall on the political spectrum and the system that you are arguing in support of.
Arguing against your disgusting position doesn't constitute communism or even anything remotely near the left. It's called sanity. That's all it takes to see you for the big government police state fascist asshat you are.
Re:Accountability ? (Score:1, Insightful)
Assuming an Obama win on Tuesday and a serious shift towards Democrats (what polls largely suggest), are we finally going to see some serious investigations and accountability for this current administration?
A Democratic administration doesn't necessarily mean a stance against wiretapping.
Democrats aren't necessarily any more opposed to wire-tapping than Republicans but there are two other things to consider here:
First, accountability. The Bush administration has been particularly egregious in its wire-tapping activities. A non-Republican President, and congress, is more likely to hold the (Republican) Bush administration accountable than another Republican president. Specifically, it's not out of the question that McCain would pander to his base and throw a few pardons to the Bush administration but it's overwhelmingly unlikely that the Bush administration will be getting any pardons from Obama.
Second, constitutional law. McCain is a former military man so his focus is on doing whatever needs to be done to "win" the "war". Obama is a constitutional scholar (he taught constitutional law at Chicago) so he's going to be more interested in the general question of how to properly apply the bill of rights in the US constitution to modern technology.
Re:Accountability ? (Score:1, Insightful)