Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to reauthorize three expiring provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act. While the bill they passed strengthened civil liberties in several small ways, the Committee failed to make any meaningful improvements to the Patriot provisions that are most prone to abuse. Disturbingly, Obama Administration officials played a significant behind the scene role in opposing stronger civil liberties protections, directly contradicting Obama’s positions as a Senator.
Two of the most problematic surveillance powers the Patriot Act grants law enforcement are 1) National Security Letters (NSLs) and 2) Section 215 orders. As a Senator, Obama supported reforming both sets of powers “to protect the freedoms of innocent Americans while also ensuring that the government has the power it needs to investigate potential terrorists.” Senator Obama supported these protections through the SAFE Act, which he co-sponsored in the 109th Congress, and also in a signed 2005 letter to his Senate colleagues.
Under the Patriot Act, FBI agents may issue NSLs to obtain comprehensive financial and communications records about anyone, including people suspected of no wrongdoing and no connection to terrorists or foreign powers. To do this, the FBI merely needs to claim the information is relevant to an investigation. Anyone receiving one of these orders is prohibited by law from speaking about it to anyone else, except their attorney. The FBI issues tens of thousands of NSLs each year, most of them directed at U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.
As a Senator, Obama favored raising the standard for issuing an NSL to require a link between the records sought and a terrorist, spy, or other agent of a foreign power. Yet the Obama Administration opposed an even weaker standard – one that would require that the government draft an internal statement of "specific and articulable facts" showing that the information sought was somehow relevant to an investigation. Instead, according to the deliberations of the Judiciary Committee, the Administration favored a mere relevance standard.
Section 215 works in a similar manner to NSLs, enabling the FBI to require anyone to produce "tangible things"—such as business records—relevant to an investigation to protect against international terrorism. As Senator, Obama supported an amendment to raise the standard for issuing a Section 215 order to require a link between the records sought and a terrorist, spy, or other agent of a foreign power. The Obama Administration opposed this very change to the Patriot Act, dooming its prospects in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
These expansive powers have already been abused. The Justice Department's own Inspector General (IG) issued two reports on the use of NSLs from 2003 to 2006. The IG found that the FBI issued NSLs when it had not even opened an investigation, and that the FBI retained information obtained through NSLs almost indefinitely, even when the person is not suspected of any crime. Often the information obtained with an NSL is made widely available to thousands of people in law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
So what happened? Why did President Obama about-face on the very civil liberties protections he supported a few short years ago as a Senator? Has the President now determined that the contraction of American civil liberties is outweighed by the political risk of something happening on his watch? With Democrats in charge of Congress and strong civil libertarians at the helm of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, the time for Patriot Act reform is now. But with the Administration pushing in the wrong direction, the chances for reform have been diminished. Now it's up to the House Judiciary Committee to stand its ground. The opportunity for real reform will not come again anytime soon. Congress needs to do the right thing, even if Obama will not.
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I don't think Obama intentionally deceived us; but he chose a staff of Blue Dogs, Clintonites, Republicans, and general Beltway insiders (lobbyists), who have been busy defining him as a center-right president (or as another commentator put it elsewhere, a moderate Republican). I think it likely he will squeak through to a second term, but also think that Congress must find its own progressive leadership if it is to get anything done over the next 3-7 years.
Actually, the time was this past January.
America has survived horrific wars, debilitating economic depressions, and even incompetent leaders (such as Presidents Carter and Bush43). No democracy, however, can survive having its executive branch authorized to place people in prison indefinitely without formal charges or access to competent counsel and its courts--or to spy on its own citizens without probable cause that's verified by prior, independent judicial review. So, this is no mere dereliction of duty or failure to act on a campaign promise we're witnessing.
The current administration may be unlikely to abuse such needless extraordinary powers. But what of the next administration? What of our nation's future?
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We had the intelligence warning us of the impending attack in 2001. It was not handled properly.
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=jennifer_maitner_1
All that was needed was to fix what was in place by addressing the issue of communication and yes, there was no principle that Obama said he held that he was not will to throw away in his pursuit of the White House.
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We have literally millions of Limbaugh/Fox-fed proto anarchists ready to do the hardliner's bidding. The spying apparatus the Bush dictatorship set up only 2 months after appointment by the SCOTUS was obviously being used to spy on and control the American people-their greatest enemy-not terrorists.
It is highly likely, Obama is using the Bush spying apparatus to protect the country from violent fascist backlash, attempted assassination, and keeping in check those totalitarians most likely to continue the Neo Con subversion. Elections mean nothing when you're outside the system you're trying to destroy. Look, the ideologues are in it for the long run...unless they are frankly interrupted by the law.
http://www.light-to-dark.com/murdochs_enslaved_red_states.html
If his use goes beyond that, I'm afraid he'll have to be removed from office.
We need a left leaning third party. Myself I'm looking at the socialists and the greens. I may not "win" many elections but I'll stop participating in my own destruction.
And don't get me wrong--I like Obama, the same way I liked Bill Clinton, and I voted for both of them. Vast improvements over the fah chist regimes they replaced. But, the man is a Constitutional Law Professor, ferchrisakes. Are we to believe that Cheney was right when he said that Obama would not be able to resist the increased powers that the Bush regime left him? And if that's true, then where is justice in all of this?