While the media in the United States (with some notable exceptions) have been criticized for relatively soft coverage of attacks on civil liberties by the Obama Administration, the British press appears to be filling the gap. The Guardian is reporting on a massive surveillance program by the Obama Administration where the government has ordered Verizon (and presumably other carriers) to turn over all calls made within the United States and calls between the United States and other countries. The surveillance was conducted under an order from our controversial secret court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and demanded by the Justice Department and the FBI. The Administration has confirmed the existence of the program — another blow to civil liberties under Attorney General Eric Holder and this president. It also adds another area where Obama officials appear less than candid with Congress. [Update: USA Today first revealed aspects of this program in 2006]
The order signed by Judge Roger Vinson requires the company to turn over the phone numbers, location, duration, time and unique identifiers for all calls for all citizens. There is no effort to confine the search for individuals connected to any investigation. It is a sweeping surveillance on all citizens. Of course, just as Democrats have remained quiet over the recent attacks on the free press, it is not clear if even this abuse will generate opposition in Congress. Civil libertarians have been complaining for years about these programs and have met a wall of silence from Democrats protecting President Obama and Eric Holder.
In February, the Administration succeeded in blocking a challenge to its surveillance policies by arguing that any confirmation of such programs would put American lives at risk. Now that the case is dismissed, they have simply acknowledged the program. The decision is Clapper v. Amnesty International, No. 11-1025, and it is a true nightmare for civil liberties. The Supreme Court rejected the standing of civil liberties groups and citizens to challenge the Obama Administration’s surveillance programs. President Obama has long been criticized for his opposition to such lawsuits and his Justice Department has continued a successful attack on the ability of citizens to challenge the unconstitutional actions of their government in the war on terror. The 5-4 opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. insulates such programs from judicial review in yet another narrowing of standing rules.
Alito rejected the ability of an array of journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates to challenge the constitutionality of the 2008 law allowing secret surveillance without meeting constitutional standards of probable cause. Alito simply said that the parties could not prove that they were subject to surveillance — since the Obama Administration has classified such evidence — and insisted that their fears and precautionary actions are merely efforts to “manufacture standing by incurring costs in anticipation of nonimminent harms.”
Alito wrote that just because no one may be able to challenge the law is no reason to recognize standing — a position that guts the separation of powers principles underlying judicial review. He also cites to the secret FISA as judicial review — a truly laughable proposition. I have been in that court as a NSA legal intern and the thought that it constitutes any real form of review is a preposterous notion. I have written and testified on this court in the past.
Now we can see the inevitable consequence of this secret court and the Administration’s surveillance program. The Administration is creating a massive databank for all calls, including calls within the United States. This surveillance program is the result of a sense of political immunity reflected in this Administration. With some Democrats blindly following this President, there appears no concern over excessive surveillance or the ever-expanding security state. It is the final evidence of how Obama has truly crippled the civil liberties movement in the United States.
Source: NPR
R E M E M B E R
“They hate us for our Freedoms…”
… And so Congress Legislated those Freedoms away.
Secret laws…
Secret Courts…
Secret Memos…
… Open society?
“This is not the Bill of Rights you are looking for.”
~ Obi-won Obama
Again I ask…
… WHY AREN’T LAWYERS MARCHING IN THE STREETS DEFENDING THE RULE OF LAW, CALLING FOR ACCOUNTABILITY FROM THE GOVERNMENT THAT SPIES ON THIER ATTORNEY/CLIENT PRIVATE COMMUNICATIONS?????(!)
To echo what was mentioned earlier, it won’t matter who is in the White House if the Patriot Act is not altered or repealed and the FISC court is brought under control and into the sunshine. If the court approved this broad surveillance program and reapproved it recently, it unfortunately may be legal. We have to change the law.
Bron,
Seriously, George W. Bush was a progressive???
OS,
Every time I get on a plane at Ohare they check my shoes and my belt buckle. I have to take my belt off every time I enter a courthouse. It won’t end unless we end this war on terror and get control again.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/what-we-dont-know-about-spying-on-citizens-scarier-than-what-we-know/276607/
Here is one for you, ap: “http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/what-we-dont-know-about-spying-on-citizens-scarier-than-what-we-know/276607/
June 6, 2013 10:32AM
Your Congress, Your NSA Spying
By Jim Harper
http://www.cato.org/blog/congress-nsa-spying
The National Security Agency is collecting records of every domestic and cross-border Verizon phone call between now and July 19th. The secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over these records has been leaked to the Guardian.
You may find that outrageous. 1984 has arrived. Big Brother is watching you.
But the author of this story is not George Orwell. It’s Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, Senator Diane Feinstein of California, and you.
Here’s what I mean: In June of last year, Representative Smith (R) introduced H.R. 5949, the FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012. Its purpose was to extend the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 for five years, continuing the government’s authority to collect data like this under secret court orders. The House Judiciary Committee reported the bill to the full House a few days later. The House Intelligence Committee, having joint jurisdiction over the bill, reported it at the beginning of August. And in mid-September, the House passed the bill by a vote of 301 to 118.
Sent to the Senate, the bill languished until very late in the year. But with the government’s secret wiretapping authority set to expire, the Senate took up the bill on December 27th. Whether by plan or coincidence, the Senate debated secret surveillance of Americans’ communications during the lazy, distracted period between Christmas and the new year.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D) was the bill’s chief defender on the Senate floor. She parried arguments doggedly advanced by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) that the surveillance law lacks sufficient oversight. My colleague Julian Sanchez showed ably at the time that modest amendments proposed by Wyden and others would improve oversight and in no way compromise security. But false urgency created by the Senate’s schedule won the day, and on December 28th of last year, the Senate passed the bill, sending it to the president, who signed it on December 30th.
The news that every Verizon call is going to the NSA not only vindicates Senator Wyden’s argument that oversight in this area is lacking. It reveals the upshot of that failed oversight: The secret FISA court has been issuing general warrants for communications surveillance.
That is contrary to the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which requires warrants to issue “particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” When a court requires “all call detail records” to be handed over “on an ongoing daily basis,” this is in no sense particular. Data about millions of our phone calls are now housed at the NSA. Data about calls you make and receive today will be housed at the NSA.
The reason given for secret mass surveillance of all our phone calls, according to an unofficial comment from the Obama administration, is that it is a “critical tool” against terrorism. These arguments should be put to public proof. For too long, government officials have waved off the rule of law and privacy using “terrorism” as their shibboleth. This time, show us exactly how gathering data about every domestic call on one of the largest telecommunications networks roots out the tiny number of stray-dog terrorists in the country. If the argument is based on data mining, it has a lot to overcome, including my 2008 paper with IBM data mining expert Jeff Jonas, “Effective Counterterrorism and the Limited Role of Predictive Data Mining.”
The ultimate author of the American surveillance state is you. If you’re like most Americans, you allowed yourself to remain mostly ignorant of the late-December debate over FISA reauthorization. You may not have finished digesting your Christmas ham until May, when it was revealed that IRS agents had targeted groups applying for tax exempt status for closer scrutiny based on their names or political themes.
The veneer of beneficent government is off. The National Security Agency is collecting records of your phone calls. The votes in Congress that allowed this to happen are linked above in this post. What are you going to do about it? -Jim Harper
Mespo: “I’ve got Verizon and I talk to clients — though I won’t anymore. I want in on the class action suit on this one.”
Mespo,
I find it particularly amusing that you reserve your objections to unconstitutional exercises of power (in the ”war on terror”) to the times when they affect you personally.
Here’s to principle centered reasoning.
Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) backed up Feinstein, saying, “This is nothing particularly new.” TPM
Well, there’s more to the story. This is just the tip of it.
NAL, unless you stop defending any party who breaks the Constitution we will not get anywhere as women, people of color, LBGT, disability or any other civil rights issues.
Redress of grievance requires a functioning govt. which follows the rule of law. You will not get that from this administration and you will not get that from a Republican administration. The belief in parties needs to go.
This is a crisis of govt. in which members of both major parties are up to their neck in the destruction of our govt. There are individuals within each party who deserve our support but it is folly to believe a party, which as a whole, is undermining the rule of law, will save people’s civil rights. These are rights which require the rule of law to enforce. They may be granted to you for a while, by the Democratic party’s need to get your vote. But they are granted by fiat and the need to propagandize you, not by law.
There is no comparison between rights which are doled out a whim and rights which are guaranteed by force of law. Your party doles them out for now by whim. Do not think that need remain true, as it does not and likely, will not.
“The key quote this morning from Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, on The Guardian’s big story:
This is nothing particularly new. This has been going on for seven years under the auspices of the FISA authority, and every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this.
That essentially confirms that the order obtained by The Guardian was not a one-off, isolated order. Rather, it was one of many such orders, approved by a series of FISA court judges, directed to multiple telecom carriers over many years. Seven years, as Chambliss says.” TPM
I don’t believe for a moment only Verizon was subjected to being coerced into handing over the data. The gov’t wants all data on everything. it is a matter of what comes to light.
I have maintained for years the entirety of the elected federal politicians need to be voted out of office for every reason or any reason. Yet, I agree with others there are too many breads and circuses, plasma TVs, or whatever table scraps are served to people to placate them into indifference for this to happen.
A good read: Robert Silverberg’s The World Inside.
We’ll be watching for any sign of flippoing.
Whassamatta U guyz?
Doncha feel so safe that your Guvmint is watching U?
Just in case you slip and fall in the bathroom we are installing telescreens in all bathrooms. You should be accustomed to and appreciative of the telescreens in all other rooms as installed previously.
Our software will be watching out for any suspicious activities. If any are detected a protector-bot will be sent to respond appropriately.
My 21 year old granddaughter flew to Canada yesterday to see her fiance whose aged grandmother is nearing the end of her life. Since she did not know the exact return date in case grandma passes away, she did not get a return ticket. She was flying on a “buddy pass” which is an employee discount for the airline. They pulled her out of line at security for an “enhanced screening.” They checked her shoes for gunpowder and explosives. She was wearing flip-flops!?! She said she was given the third degree both by TSA and Canadian customs.
Since the comment by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency Commissioner Alan Bersin, “In terms of the terrorist threat, it’s commonly accepted that the more significant threat” comes from Canada. That did not sit well with the Canadians, and since then, she says it has been tit-for-tat regarding making it difficult for even casual travelers. She was told by the Canadian customs people, after an extensive and unpleasant grilling, she could stay for three weeks, but if she is not out of the country by the 25th, an international warrant will be issued for her arrest. They gave her some kind of document she has to fill out, and I gather give it back to them when she leaves Canada.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/canadian-border-bigger-terror-threat-mexican-border-says-border-patrol-chief
The paranoia has gotten completely out of hand. The TSA and CBP are behaving more like Stasi or KGB than I ever thought we would see in the US.
I am not afraid to say it. It must be said. I am openly calling for a Revolution by the American people. Non violent. Our government must be forced to resign. They no longer can be trusted or represent us. They are corrupt to the core
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
Thomas Jefferson.
“The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”- Patrick Henry
“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery” – Thomas Jefferson
Elaine, The press was cheerleading on Iraq in the wake of 9/11 when this country was pretty bonkers. They quickly woke up and did their job, maybe overcompensated because of the embarrassment of being duped. It’s taken the press MUCH longer to stop cheerleading for this prez and it took their own being attacked to awaken them. However, in general we agree.
Damn….. I’ve been with Verizon for 16 years….. That relationship will end when my current contract is up next April.
nick,
Many members of the press have been asleep behind the wheel for years. What’s even worse is that some of them were cheerleaders for a war with Iraq. And let us not forget folks like Judith Miller.
That said, I’m disappointed that there hasn’t been more outrage with the press–and citizens as well–regarding the diminishment of our civil liberties under this–or any other–administration.
Democrats are getting exceedingly vulnerable on civil liberties.
Seat grand juries today.