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FISA Extension Gets a Bipartisan Pass

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Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger

It is always rare in Washington these days when a bipartisan majority passes any bill in the House of Representatives or the Senate.  However, while most of the media interest last week was fixed on the so-called “fiscal cliff” negotiations and the subsequent legislation that was passed and signed into law, maybe the media missed the more important legislation.  That missed legislation was a 5 year extension of the FISA amendments that was granted by the Senate in a bipartisan 72-23 vote last week.  “The Senate voted 72-23 last week to extend the FISA Amendments Act another five years, which President Obama signed Sunday. Unfortunately, the public discussion of George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program may soon fade back into the shadows.”  ACLU

This is a continuation of the same Bush-era FISA bill that was alleged to spy on almost anyone’s electronic communication, all without warrants.  So, instead of sunshine being used to bring some accountability and transparency to this secret spying, for Five more years, American’s phone calls and text messages can be monitored almost at will by the government with little or no judicial restraint.  What is Congress and the Intelligence community hiding from the American people?

The only good news that I can see in the passage of this five-year extension is that a few Senators made significant attempts to amend the bill to provide for more disclosure and review of this secret process.  “Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a long-time member of the Intelligence Committee, valiantly fought for a year- and-a-half for basic information about how this surveillance program affects Americans and put a hold on the bill until a debate and amendment process was scheduled. He finally got a vote to force disclosure of whether the National Security Agency is vacuuming up wholly domestic communications or searching through FISA taps for Americans, yet it failed by a vote of 42-52. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) also went to the mattress over the secret FISA court opinions that determine whether we have constitutional rights to privacy in foreign intelligence investigations. He put the Senate to a vote on whether the administration should be forced to release the court opinions, supply unclassified summaries of them, or explain why they should be kept secret. That one went down 37-54. Simply put, if the public were to find out what the government is doing with our information, or how many of us are affected, the program would be “destroyed,” according to Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).”  ACLU

Mother Jones hit the nail on the head when it described what happened when the Senate voted to extend the FISA amendments.  “As the Senate debated the renewal of the government’s warrantless wiretapping powers on Thursday, Republicans who have accused President Barack Obama of covering up his involvement in the death of an American ambassador urged that his administration be given sweeping spying powers. Democrats who accused George W. Bush of shredding the Constitution with warrantless wiretapping four years ago sung a different tune this week, with the administration itself quietly urging passage of the surveillance bill with no changes, and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) accusing her Democratic colleagues of not understanding the threat of terrorism.”  Mother Jones

Does it amaze anyone else that the only thing that the Hatfields and McCoys of the Senate can get together on with a 72-23 margin is a bill that most of them don’t understand and which allows unfettered spying on ordinary Americans?  Does Sen. Feinstein actually think that Americans don’t realize that we are still under the threat of terrorism?  Why can these Senators come to a bipartisan result on measures that allow Uncle Sam to listen in on anyone’s communications, but they cannot agree with each other when it comes to the universal non-partisan issue of global climate change or necessary and reasonable gun control measures?

Both the ACLU article and the Mother Jones article linked above highlight that fact that common sense amendments to provide more disclosure on what the government is doing with our communications that were made by a few Senators with some support is evidence that we are getting closer to the day when the Senate will draw a line in the sand and require protections for citizens in their communications. The vote total for the vote on the extension bill actually included 3 Republicans voting against the extensions.  I hope Democratic Senator Schumer would explain his vote along with Senator Levin who also voted in favor of extending this warrantless wiretapping.  At some point these Senators and other Democratic Senators need to actually represent the people they claim they are protecting.   Senate.gov  

While I am glad that some of the amendments proposed to the bill garnered 30 or 40 votes, I am not as optimistic as the ACLU in their hopes for an end to these draconian spying measures.  I guess I should be happy that some Senators have begun to question the Intelligence Community and the Obama Administration on these Bush-era FISA amendments, but I will hold my applause until the final act.  What do you think the Senate should do about the proposed amendments?  Can we be protected from terrorists without losing our rights?  I don’t know if we will ever find out!  I hope I am wrong.

56 thoughts on “FISA Extension Gets a Bipartisan Pass”

  2. Shush….. You’ll now be the target of surveillance …….

    Raff,

    I’m reading a book right now…. It’s about a German uboat commander…… The point I’m at is he’s on leave…. It’s during the last year of WWII….. He’s trying to call his dad…. Who himself was an officer in the Prussian war…..he found that his dad had been arrested, convicted and sentenced to 4 months for sleeping with his maid…..the maid was shipped off to a concentration camp….. Hmmmmm….. Makes one think…..we may have a distinction without a difference today……

  3. The truth seems to be that many, if not most, Americans seem perfectly content with “the way things are.” The truth seems to be that if one hasn’t been personally impacted, then issues like this really aren’t all that important and it’s business as usual.

    “When the public finds out that these secret interpretations are so dramatically different than what the public law says, I think there’s going to be extraordinary anger in the country,” Wyden told HuffPost Live.

    I wonder, as others have noted (Huff Post comments), if we’ll ever see “extraordinary anger in the country”, though we should. For most Americans, this is a non-issue.

    I wonder how Americans will feel when they learn that the government has decided that it’s best to have a camera in every room of every home, with audio of course. Where will the monitoring of Americans stop? Where will Americans draw the line?

    IMO, most Americans only give a damn about being comfortable and feeling safe, which is why this bill passed again. Most Americans buy the line that “if one isn’t doing anything wrong”, it will all be okay, and there’s no need to worry.

    Next time you’re “alone” and stripping down in the privacy of your own bedroom… well, you may not be “alone” at all.

  4. Critically, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 did much more than shield lawbreaking telecoms from all forms of legal accountability. Jointly written by Dick Cheney and then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, it also legalized vast new, sweeping and almost certainly unconstitutional forms of warrantless government eavesdropping.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/28/fisa-feinstein-obama-democrats-eavesdropping

    GOP and Feinstein join to fulfill Obama’s demand for renewed warrantless eavesdropping

    The California Democrat’s disgusting rhetoric recalls the worst of Dick Cheney while advancing Obama’s agenda

    by Glenn Greenwald

    Friday 28 December 2012 07.50 EST

    “To this day, many people identify mid-2008 as the time they realized what type of politician Barack Obama actually is. Six months before, when seeking the Democratic nomination, then-Sen. Obama unambiguously vowed that he would filibuster “any bill” that retroactively immunized the telecom industry for having participated in the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.

    But in July 2008, once he had secured the nomination, a bill came before the Senate that did exactly that – the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 – and Obama not only failed to filibuster as promised, but far worse, he voted against the filibuster brought by other Senators, and then voted in favor of enacting the bill itself. That blatant, unblinking violation of his own clear promise – actively supporting a bill he had sworn months earlier he would block from a vote – caused a serious rift even in the middle of an election year between Obama and his own supporters.

    Critically, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 did much more than shield lawbreaking telecoms from all forms of legal accountability. Jointly written by Dick Cheney and then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, it also legalized vast new, sweeping and almost certainly unconstitutional forms of warrantless government eavesdropping.

    …and the article continues…

  5. Darren,

    Consider how this could disrupt the courts too when privileged conversations can be breached at whim. It will make anything like a fair trial impossible.

  6. I’m sure there is a rule somewhere where these senators and the president are exempted from part of it for their own privacy.

    The federal elected officials do not necessarily represent the will of the people, they do only if it coincidently represents their own self intersts.

  9. With video of Wyden:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/senator-ron-wyden-fisa-reauthorization_n_2404873.html

    “Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.) spoke to HuffPost Live’s Mike Sacks on Thursday about his opposition to the application of the law.

    “When the public finds out that these secret interpretations are so dramatically different than what the public law says, I think there’s going to be extraordinary anger in the country,” Wyden told HuffPost Live. “Because it’s one thing to have debates about laws… but we assume that the law itself is public.””

    Again:

    “When the public finds out that these secret interpretations are so dramatically different than what the public law says, I think there’s going to be extraordinary anger in the country,” Wyden told HuffPost Live.

  11. Good job, raff. I’m kind of surprised the Prof didn’t jump on this one (and as we know from past experience, he might still). As awful as the matter is, it does give an excellent example for the next in the propaganda series (which will address in part analysis of interests). There is way more than enough blame to go around, but this is a perfect illustration of the feckless and duplicitous nature of most in Congress.

  12. Did anyone actually think that they (our oligarchial government) haven’t been ‘spying’ on the entire world since they developed the technology to do so? How else would you keep 6.5 billion people under control or ‘in check’? Interesting enough, not one major tv network covered this event as well! Not even FoxNews!

  13. Swarthmore,
    Thanks for the link.
    Justagurl,
    Thank you for the breakdown on the vote. There is enough blame to go around on both sides of the aisle.

  14. NAYs —23

    Akaka (D-HI)
    Baucus (D-MT)
    Begich (D-AK)
    Bingaman (D-NM)
    Brown (D-OH)
    Cantwell (D-WA)
    Coons (D-DE)
    Durbin (D-IL)
    Franken (D-MN)
    Harkin (D-IA)
    Leahy (D-VT)
    Lee (R-UT)
    Menendez (D-NJ)
    Merkley (D-OR)
    Murkowski (R-AK)
    Murray (D-WA)
    Paul (R-KY)
    Sanders (I-VT)
    Schatz (D-HI)
    Tester (D-MT)
    Udall (D-CO)
    Udall (D-NM)
    Wyden (D-OR)

    ————————————–

    Not Voting – 4

    Boxer (D-CA)
    DeMint (R-SC)
    Kirk (R-IL)
    Lautenberg (D-NJ)

    —————————————

    I find a bit of IRONY in the fact that it was 19 Democrats that voted no
    vs 3 Republicans that that voted no…..

    42 out of 47 Republicans/ 90% of the Republicans Voted Yes..
    30 out of 53 Democrats / 57% of the Democrats Voted yes
    1 out of 2 Independents / 50% of the Independents voted YES

    The Republicans are always talking about smaller government…

    Wouldn’t this be the place to start that SMALL Government????

    By the looks of this… It seems that it is the Democrats that want less intrusion in citizens lives…..

    Of course many of us already knew that being that Democrats support gay marriage and Pro Choice, etc…

    It seems the only place that Republicans don’t want Government intrusion is Guns and Taxes…..

  16. Good topic, raff. Agree with Justice Holmes. Exorbitant amounts of money is being wasted by Homeland Security.

  17. Thanks Dredd and nick. The FISA act was over broad during the Bush years and the war on terror appears to be never ending.
    You could be right JH.

  18. Can we be protected from terrorists without giving up our rights? Of course we can but there is no money in it. As a result we had to set up an apparatus the feeds money into the security industry in truck loads. Its all about the money.

    This is treachery pure and simple. Every time legislation like this is passed the terrorists win big time.

  19. rafflaw, I was afraid the posters here may have missed this curveball during the Holidays. Feinstein is a master @ sliding horseshit through the Senate. A couple years ago she did a voice vote passing a bill imposing draconian sentencing[double guidelines] for the sale of cannabis cookies. suckers[most effective for chemo patients], brownies, etc. The pretext was this was “to protect the children.” Of course the real reason was she is in the pocket of the wine industry. And they loathe edible cannabis because it cuts into their market of women loooking to mildly alter their reality. I always chuckle @ buffons who think pols like Feinstein, or virtually any, have no vested interest in the “noble” actions they take. Good job picking this up and posting.

  20. A man after my own heart rafflaw.

    You caught the real news of the 112 congress.

    I watched UP with Chris Hayes this morning, and they covered it.

    Every bill of this sort, and there were about five or so, had massive bipartisan support if it increased fascist activities.

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