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The RESTORE Act Does What is Needed to Protect America
In November, the House of Representatives passed the Responsible Electronic Surveillance that is Overseen, Reviewed, and Effective Act of 2007 (RESTORE Act), making some needed changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Introduced by Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (MI-14) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (TX-16), myself and several others, this bill would help restore the rule of law and give to the intelligence community the tools it needs to conduct effective surveillance of terrorists while protecting Americans against invasion of our liberty.
The Conyers-Reyes bill restores and enhances the role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in monitoring electronic surveillance programs, clarifies that monitoring communications among people in foreign countries does not require court approval, requires FISA warrants when targeting domestic communications, and strengthens protections against "inadvertent" warrantless surveillance of Americans ostensibly aimed at foreigners abroad. The bill also requires periodic audits of surveillance activities by the Justice Department's Inspector General. Additionally, the bill provides resources to the National Security Agency and the Justice Department for processing FISA applications and other submissions to the FISA court in a timely and efficient manner, and to comply with the audit, reporting and record-keeping requirements.
When the House Judiciary Committee approved the bill, that panel also accepted an amendment that I offered to strengthen judicial oversight of the surveillance programs by the FISA Court. The RESTORE Act embodies the best, most reasonable approach to our surveillance programs. It not only increases resources, it focuses them on the real threats to our national security and ensures that these powers are used correctly and consistently with our laws and with the Constitution.
We have refused to accept a key administration demand that telecom companies that cooperated with allegedly illegal government spying be immunized from any legal accountability. This is an outrageous demand, and has nothing to do with national security. The administration has never disclosed to Congress, even on a classified basis, what actions they believe need to receive legal immunity. What information we do have has been made public only through the press, and those reports are troubling. If they broke the law, it is not clear why the telecom companies should receive immunity; if they did not break the law, it is not clear why they would need immunity. In either case, questions of guilt or innocence are more appropriately decided by the courts than by the political process.
Simply put, the telecommunication companies acted either nobly or as knaves. They may have acted nobly -- or they may have acted as knaves, conspiring with a lawless administration engaged in an illegal and unconstitutional invasion of personal privacy and liberty. It is the business of the courts, not Congress, to determine the correct verdict.
The Senate is also considering various bills to reform FISA -- and some include immunity for the telecommunications firms. Fortunately, Senator Dodd has announced that he will block any bill that includes such a provision. And he has the backing of Senators Clinton, Feingold, Obama, Biden, Cardin and Kennedy. In November, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved its version of the FISA reform legislation without any immunity for the telecommunications companies. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to reject any such immunity provisions.
The House has passed a good bill. But the White House and its allies have made diversionary and untruthful allegations to oppose the bill. Earlier this year, it was reported that U.S. intelligence officials delayed wiretapping al Qaeda terrorists suspected of kidnapping an American soldier in Iraq, with terrible consequences. The administration and its supporters have argued that the legal requirements of FISA are to blame. The timeline of events released by the Director of National Intelligence, however, clearly shows that it was the Administration's failure to act swiftly, not any lack of legal authority or flaw in the law, that led to disaster
The RESTORE Act would increase resources available to government so that all FISA warrants are processed swiftly. It also includes emergency provisions, including the ability to begin surveillance immediately and get a warrant after the fact, to ensure that the government will never have to stop listening to a suspected terrorist plotting an attack
One thing that the RESTORE Act does not include is unchecked, blanket authority to conduct surveillance. While some have argued that the bill would allow for the wholesale collection of the communications of Americans, the bill is designed to do just the opposite. It requires the government to have court approved procedures for determining when it begins to target an American and must, therefore, get a warrant from the FISA Court. It would maintain the longstanding requirement that a warrant is needed to listen to a person in the United States or to a U.S. person abroad, and that a warrant is not needed to listen to communications from one person to another outside the United States. The act also contains minimization procedures to protect any U.S. person whose conversation may have been inadvertently monitored.
The RESTORE Act does what is needed to protect America and to protect our freedoms. When the House last considered the bill, the Republicans used a parliamentary procedure to stall the legislation by proposing a change that was already in the bill, and that would have sent the bill back to committee. When it comes to addressing our national security, policy, and not politics should be our guiding conscience.
Indeed, to address the "concerns" laid out by the Republicans, the bill we adopted clarifies that the act will not stop lawful surveillance necessary to prevent Osama Bin Laden, al Qaeda, or any other terrorist organization from attacking America or its allies. And, and in a move to strengthen privacy protections, the RESTORE Act also prohibits the NSA and other agencies from sharing personal information about a U.S. person unless a Senior Executive determines that such action is necessary to protect national security.
The RESTORE Act has already been endorsed by several privacy and civil liberties groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Center for National Security Studies. It is a balanced and effective approach to meeting our national security needs and protecting our precious liberties. I am hopeful that Congress will do the right thing, and pass a RESTORE Act with the strongest privacy protections possible.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler
Congressman Nadler is the Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
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Congressman Nadler,
I think if you've taken the time to read the comments to your post, you've discovered that we fail to be comforted by the RESTORE Act. While you and your colleagues may feel you've parried the administration into a reasonable compromise, we see only the inexorable leaching of civil rights out a different door.
As I see it, the issue is this: the Bush Administration had credible intelligence delivered well in advance of 9/11 upon which it did not act. This information was gathered without the "benefit" of the Patriot Act, without castrating the 4th Amendment and without bastardizing the FISA laws as they existed then. Bush's continual assaults on the Constitution under the guise of protecting America should not obscure his failure to act in the months leading up to 9/11. No accrual of more authority will make this administration more trustworthy or less derelict in its responsibilities.
Perhaps the RESTORE Act is a step in the right direction, but it is hard to be encouraged while Congress still deliberates granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who provided information to the government without warrants. It is hard to be reassured by anything coming out of an environment that would even consider retroactive immunity debatable.
What I think we're looking for is not another act, the title of which is an acronym that is meant to assuage us, but a REAL restoration of accountability and constitutional rights.
NADLER & A SLEW OF OTHER CONGRESSIONAL MEMBERS
WERE TOLD OF THE TREASON THAT bush & company =
R.I.C.O. ACT CAREER CRIMINALS ENTERPRISES INC.
VIOLATORS DID IN REGARDS TO SOME MOST WANTED
TERRORISTS CAPTURED IN AMERICA IN 2004 & THEY
DID NOTHING...
SEE LINK = 3 IN BLACK & WHITE...
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/may04/bolo052604.htm
THEN SOME IN CONGRESS WERE TOLD WHEN THE ONE ON
THE BOTTOM RIGHT WAS SOMEHOW RELEASED FROM U.S.
CUSTODY & DELIBERATELY DUMPED IN SOMALIA 1/2007
SO ALL THIS BULLSHIT bush / CONGRESS RATTLE ON
ABOUT THIS WAR ON TERROR & WINNING THIS WAR ON
TERROR = COMPLETE BULLSHIT...
SOMEONE PLEASE TELL HOW CAN AMERICA WIN THIS
WAR ON TERROR WHEN MEMBERS OF OUR GOVT. PLAY
"CATCH & RELEASE" WITH MOST WANTED TERRORISTS
WHO BY THE WAY WAS UNDER A FEDERAL INDICTMENT
AT THE TIME HE WAS CAPTURED = YOU CAN'T...
READ A OFFICIAL E-MAIL SENT TO THE HOUSE
JUDICIARY COMMITTEE IN MAY-2007 + ALL THE OTHER
RELEVANT INFORMATION DEATAILING THE PARTICULARS
OF THEIR CAPTURES AT:
http://360.yahoo.com/caspereraser1
PS. SO MUCH 4 DEFENDING THOSE U.S. NATIONALISTS
WHO LOST THEIR LIVES & WERE KILLED IN THOSE 1998 U.S. AFRICAN EMBASSY BOMBINGS...
You can't "protect America" without protecting the Constitution. You can't protect the Constitution while allowing a rogue Administration to TORTURE, VIOLATE TREATIES, SUSPEND HABEAS CORPUS, LIE TO CITIZENS ABOUT JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING INCLUDING AN UNNECESSARY WAR, and POLITICIZE and CORRUPT THE JUSTICE SYSTEM. You can't "protect America" by protecting and enabling an Administration that is defined by MALFEASANCE, INCOMPETENCE, CRONYISM, CRIMINALITY, TRAITORISM, GREED, and is BANKRUPTING this country FISCALLY, MORALLY, AND DIPLOMATICALLY!
God I'm sick of these B.S. pats on the back by Representatives that are presiding over the ruining of America!
IMPEACH BUSH/CHENEY AND GET US THE HELL OUT OF IRAQ!
For crying out loud! Read the 4th amendment. Even FISA is a Constitutional problem. When it comes to Constitutional issues the Republicans are despicable and the Democrats are weaklings and enablers. Please explain to me why I should vote for any of you? I'll vote Republican so we can make things worse with the hope of finally waking up this slumbering nation. Weird logic, I know, but desperate times require desperate measures.
.
SINCE WHEN IS WARRENTLESS LEGAL?
Congressman,
What say the Fourth Amendment?
Just HOW are you protecting and defending this Constitution of the USA, WITHOUT mental reservation OR purpose of evasion when laws are created that infringe upon American Birth Rights?
The mere fact that you have to "RESTORE" that document that which you took a pact with "The People" to defend and support, should warrant our attention.
REINVENTING THE WHEEL AGAIN?
JUST WHO LET IT GET THIS FAR...
... That you have to "RESTORE" the Constitution to it's former self?
This didn't happen because the president made it happen, nay! It happened ON YOUR WATCH!
.
Hey Jerry,
where's the "Impeach George W. Bush" act? THAT's what we need to protect America.
Rep. Nadler -
I don't know what you would call a "blanket" warrant or order to spy domestically if not "blanket authority to conduct surveillance." Which RESTORE authorizes, for communicated PATTERNS and SUBJECT MATTERS of interest to government interceptors [as opposed to surveillance of the communications of a targeted individual person, or group of persons, through a specified telephone number, email address, or building], unfettered for a year at a time, inside the United States. So long as that "blanket" year-long subject matter interception "procedure" is rubber-stamped once by the secret FISA Court. [In addition to allowing ongoing fishing expeditions through e-mails stored on ISP servers located in America.]
I really can't condemn enough Members of Congress who mislead us in their descriptions of legislation and events, rather than attempting to educate us, because they know more than we do about the subject, but also know that the media won't explain that "more" to us in time for us to prevent getting conned.
I've read RESTORE and the managers' amendment to it which allowed it to pass the second time it was brought to the House floor. It would end individual, probable cause warrants for eavesdropping on certain subjects discussed in the communications of (anonymous-to-start) Americans in America. Period. You can fancy it up with all the rhetoric you want, but that's what it does, in keeping with the core provision of the Protect America Act.
You might want to think twice about this approach, Rep. Nadler. I urge you to read this recent analysis of the inherent risks of programmed, wholesale, undetectable spying on our domestic networks such as that which RESTORE would "legalize":
http://research.sun.com/people/slandau/PAA.pdf
For those who don't want to read RESTORE, but who do want to understand what Rep. Nadler, et al, are going on about, I highly recommend this lucid, expert account of what this FISA debate is (and SHOULD be) all about, by David Kris:
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2007/1115_nationalsecurity_kris/1115_nationalsecurity_kris.pdf
"restore act", how about this restore everything that Bush and the GOP have taken away or changed that our forefathers gave and fought for. Now that would be a restore act.
Mr. Nadler,
What about this 'Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act'?
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/01/5551/
I am extremely disturbed that the House has basically decided to create another 'House Un-American Activities Commission' like that of the McCarthy era.
The worst aspect of this legislation is that after 18 months the 'interviewing commission' that looks into people and groups that are deemed under the very broad and vague language of the bill to be operating 'against the government' is to be turned over to private companies!!!! So, the murderous mercenaries at Blackwater can take over this already Orwellian new function of the government?
What the heck?! This bill passed almost unanimously! Is this like the time you guys passed the Patriot Act without reading it like the time you passed The Military Commissons Act without really reading it? We wouldn't need to restore a damn thing if Congress just did it's job in upholding and protecting the Constitution!
I find your post on this RESTORE ACT a day late and a dollar short. Congress is supposed to uphold and protect the Constitution.
Civil liberties are like money...pretty damn near impossible to recover once you've given it up, the party you gave them to has no self-interest in returning them.
Congressman Nadler,
Some of us wonder why Democrats are not doing more to restore our Constitutional system of government.
It would seem critically important, for example, to remove Vice-President Cheney from office in order for this to happen.
Some of us know, however, that Speaker Pelosi has claimed to have taken impeachment off the table.
When Congressman Kucinich introduced H Res 333 to impeach Cheney, Speaker Pelosi sent it to a committee headed by Congressman Coyners, a Democrat.
Congressmen Conyers assigned it to a subcommittee headed by you.
Because it appeared to Congressman Kucinich that H Res 333 now sits in limbo and no action will be taken with respect to it, he introduced another resolution, H Res 799, on November 6th, for the same purpose of impeaching Cheney.
Instead of calling for a vote on the House floor, it also appears that Speaker Pelosi has been blocked by sending to the committee heading by Congressman Conyers (D).
Are you sincere in your desire to restore Constitutional rights? Or do you think that any of your Democratic leaders believe that the voters are uninformed fools? Is this nothing more than a very expensive form of Wrestlemania?
Since H Res 333 is in your subcommittee, and since you head the subcommittee, why don't you take action on it?
Rep. Nadler,
This is an excellent first step. Gosh, do we need this one. But I am worried about the countless "signing statements", and abominable laws and regulations and "amendments" that have polluted our body of laws since George W. Bush took office. Is there any way to declare any of HIS "edicts" null and void??? They were all or most unconstitutional!!
It's interesting to note that the "privacy" and "civil liberties" groups cited as supporting the RESTORE Act do not include either the ACLU or the Electronic Frontier Foundation. To the extent that the RESTORE Act includes any provision allowing warrantless eavesdropping of any communication to which someone in the United States is a party, it gives the executive branch too much authority and is not consistent with the Fourth Amendment.
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