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."
Re:I still don't get why this is neccessary (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, if you think in terms of tapping an individual line, FISA worked. Now, what if you want to tap thousands or millions of calls simultaneously?
I suspect that Bush's primary reason for the warrantless wiretapping simply boils down to they didn't know exactly who/what/where to look and wanted to perform a dragnet on foreign calls. Something that would have been impossible to do under FISA.
Re:I still don't get why this is neccessary (Score:1, Interesting)
This law has been so effective that out of the hundreds of FISA taps exactly ZERO have been denied.
"Between 1978 and 2004, according to the Washington Post, the FISA court approved 18,748 warrants--and rejected five." - Senator Dodd
But you're right.. it shows the existing FISA laws worked however...
From the all knowing wikipedo...
In 2004, FISA was amended to include a "lone wolf" provision. 50 U.S.C. 1801(b){1)(C). A "lone wolf" is a non-US person who engages in or prepares for international terrorism. The provision amended the definition of "foreign power" to permit the FISA courts to issue surveillance and physical search orders without having to find a connection between the "lone wolf" and a foreign government or terrorist group.[21]
So FISA now lets them spy on people linked to anything dodgy and also spy on people even if theres no connection to any illegal activity.. and thats still not enough??
Re:Accountability ? (Score:5, Interesting)
... are we finally going to see some serious investigations and accountability for this current administration?
I'm not holding my breath. On the one hand, the party in power generally prioritizes the things it wants to get done over the things it would like to see punished. On the other hand, if you dig too deeply into anything in Washington, you're going to find wrongdoing on both sides. And on the other other hand, presidents don't generally act to limit their own power.
There may actually be an opportunity here to break the back of the Repbulican party, but it's not clear that that would benefit the Democrats. The timesharing arrangement they've got going now seems to work out pretty well for them. How much do you think they want to face a wave of conservative activists energized to build a new party?
Too many wire taps? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Stasi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi), East Germany's secret police, ended up collecting so much information on its citizens that it was impossible to process and analyze it all. "Some calculations have concluded that in East Germany there was one informer to every seven citizens."
Sure, the NSA has all kinds of wizz-bang gadgets to sort and process their stuff, but I wonder if the same thing is happening with them?
Re:Accountability ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Or maybe the courts are just being "allowed" to draft in restrictions now because the Reps have already figured that they're not going to be in this time around...
Re:Too many wire taps? (Score:5, Interesting)
They still couldn't figure it out. Somehow now with a deluge of information of the sort they now have access to, they are going to do any better? Me thinks not...
Re:Treason? (Score:3, Interesting)
Some people always believe that anything bad is the result of a conspiracy by the groups they are not part of (and which they claim have the exact opposite stance on everything)...
Re:Accountability ? (Score:3, Interesting)
if the Democrats were to do anything it would just lead them to having to try their own members, so it is far better for them to stay quiet and let the rumors spread that something illegal was done.
Re:Too long (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Accountability ? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure that Echelon has a far worse bark than bite.
I haven't changed my sig (which is also my email sig) since 1998.
Re:I still don't get why this is neccessary (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
And that doesn't sound like a rubberstamp court to you? That's not broken? If the lawyers putting together the FISA requests are so unbeatable, they should be taken off the job and set to uncovering this administration's wrongdoings. Who the hell believes there are so many lawyers that good in any one place? They must be a world of Denny Cranes.
Actually there were a few requests denied by the FISA court, but they were all approved after "further documentation". What shit.
One of the big arguments for bypassing even FISA advanced by the Bushies was that the paperwork was "too burdensome" and terrorists would remain at large while the paperwork was pushed around. Again -- crap -- the surveillance can begin immediately with paperwork to follow in due, but not unreasonable, time. Again I say -- what shit.
Have any of you ever gotten a house loan or a refinance? There are a couple of inches of documents to deal with. Maybe twenty pages require a signature.Do you really think the whole stack is tailored to your situation? Bullcrap -- it's likely 95% or better boilerplate, little more work than putting together a mailmerge in your favorite word processor. Just input a small list of facts (names, property addresses, amounts and dates of payments, etc.) Most of the variable information is on one or two pages of disclosure fees -- prorated rents and taxes, document processing fees and the like. Once those few bits of information are assembled, it's just hit print and go get a beer while the stack of paperwork is pumped out by the printer.
Similarly, most of the pleadings to FISA is legal boilerplate certifying all required legal procedures have been followed and the like.
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".
Since you brought it up, have you noticed that a 100% rate of acceptance is roughly the margin by which communist/fascist dictators are usually elected?
What about preior to 9/11 (Score:3, Interesting)
Qwest lost pentagon contracts for refusing to illegal wiretap [washingtonpost.com] when it was asked to in February 2001 [fiercetelecom.com] . The 9/11 attacks are a strawman argument for the executive branch grabbing as much power as they can.
As to impeachment, Pelosi has said impeachment is off the table [nytimes.com] for quite awhile. Kucinich has tried to start impeachment hearings but they got killed in subcommittees. The two parties may bicker at some level but they wouldn't actually want to oh, follow the law or anything when it comes to trampling personal liberties.
Re:Accountability ? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a lot more nuanced than that.
The idea of a single chief executive is really useful when decisions have to be made fast, especially in wartime. The founding fathers thought a lot about how to properly balance government, and basically decided that congress was to be a slow and deliberate body, and the executive was to be able to make quick decisions. (it's also more nuanced than that, but I think my version is closer to the mark.)
That it worked well in 18th century diplomatic circles was a happy side effect.