I was pleased to see Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein acknowledge that he "may have made a mistake" in his column attacking the House Majority ("The Tone Deaf Democrats") and misrepresenting the RESTORE Act. Unfortunately, Mr. Klein still professes confusion toward the bill's contents and continues to question whether the House should have passed it in the first place.
As one of the bill's authors, I want to set the record straight about what's in the RESTORE Act, why it's needed to safeguard Americans from unwarranted surveillance, and ultimately, why it will lead to better intelligence gathering.
In his original column, Mr. Klein incorrectly wrote, "Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee's bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that - Limbaugh is salivating - would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only." It contains no such provision.
(Also, as someone closely involved in trying to produce a good bill, I cannot figure out what bipartisan House Intelligence Committee effort Speaker Pelosi "quashed" that Mr. Klein could possibly be talking about. Several Republicans proposed something close to last August's Protect America Act, but that never got anywhere.)
Let me repeat: our bill gives the intelligence community the tools and flexibility it needs to listen to the conversations between those who wish to do us harm. This bill provides exactly what the Director of National Intelligence asked for earlier this year: it explicitly states that no court order is required to listen to the conversations of foreigners that happen to pass through the U.S. telecommunications system. It does not grant Constitutional rights to foreign terrorists.
What we have not agreed to do is give this or any other President a permanent blank check to spy on you, your family, the members of your congregation, or any other American citizen without any judicial oversight - a position shared by an overwhelming majority of Americans according to the latest public opinion surveys on the topic.
If federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies want to read the email or listen to the phone call of an American citizen, they have to get - except in emergencies - a judge to issue a warrant allowing them do so, as the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution requires. Such a court order would be easy to get if there is cause to believe that the American's communications are important intelligence for the protection of our security. And in such "emergencies" there would be quick after-the-fact review by the courts. These are not "unimportant, obscure technical details" - this is the heart of the bill.
In an era where the government can conduct searches and seize the contents of communications without even alerting citizens to the government's presence, building in such safeguards is even more important than in James Madison's day, when if the King's men were coming to take you or your papers, you at least saw them walking up to your door before they kicked it in.
This bill is not simply about "defining the 4th Amendment rights of US residents in light of new technologies" - as Mr. Klein wrote in a later posting. As I've previously noted, our bill will only strengthen and improve intelligence collection and analysis. It has been demonstrated that when officials must establish before a court that they have reason to intercept communications - that is, that they know what they are doing - we get better intelligence than through indiscriminate collection and fishing expeditions.
What our bill does is both protect Constitutional norms and require that the government meet some basic evidentiary standards - as evaluated by a judge - before allowing the National Security Agency, the FBI, and the other elements of our federal law enforcement and intelligence communities to conduct surveillance on Americans. Having to meet a standard in the intelligence business isn't simply about protecting American rights, it's about targeting the right people in the first place. We must not let anyone advance the bogus argument - repeated by Mr. Klein - that protecting American's against unwarranted search and seizure necessarily requires a compromise in their security. The opposite is true.
It is interesting that the principles Mr. Klein proposes and claims a bipartisan bill should include are included in the bill as written and passed by the House: the use of new surveillance technologies against foreign targets is appropriate; if a suspicious pattern is found between a foreigner and a US person, a warrant would be needed to monitor those communications; and the identities of US persons caught up in those intercepts would be minimized so the identities would not be known or used.
Mr. Klein is correct that Republicans will try to misrepresent the RESTORE Act as "civil rights for terrorists." They have already used these scare tactics and will continue to make false, hyperbolic statements about the bill. However, protecting Americans is too important for Democrats to allow such scurrilous attacks to lead them to sacrifice legislation that adheres to the principles that are necessary to protect Americans.
The House should be proud that it passed a bill that would strengthen the intelligence collection facet of our national security efforts and strengthen our Constitutional protections. This is the kind of tough-minded, hard-thinking legislation that is needed in this complicated and dangerous world. I can only try to get the Senate to do as well, and then hope that the President would approve it.
Restore out rights . All of them.
Restore trust in the American people.
Restore HONESTY to politics, If there ever was any.
Remove private money from politics.
Remove lobbyist.
IN short restore our government to a Government for the people , BY the people and of All the people. regardless of Race , Creed Color or socio economic status.
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.
I hope that you (and others in Congress working on FISA) are aware of an important paper written in October by experts affiliated with Sun Microsystems, concerning "potential hazards" of the PAA (the core provisions of which RESTORE and the Senate FISA bills threaten to make permanent). Please note, especially, the NEW and potentially grave national security RISKS that would be inherent in a wide-open NSA spigot purposely inserted into our domestic communications networks, which is of particular concern to these authors:
"The August 2007 Protect America Act changes U.S. law to allow warrantless foreign intelligence wiretapping from within the U.S. of any communications believed to include one party located outside the United States. Monitoring international traffic requires an effective way to identify whether the communication starts or ends outside the United States, a problem that is not easy to solve either on today’s Internet, or on the telephone network. The new law could lead to potential overcollection of purely domestic communications. Thus the U.S. government is creating three distinct serious security risks: danger of exploitation of the system by unauthorized users, danger of criminal misuse by trusted insiders, and danger of misuse by government agents."
http://research.sun.com/people/slandau/PAA.pdf
The link to that informative and timely paper was provided in an OUTSTANDING overview of the current FISA situation by the expert David Kris, as recently highlighted by Marty Lederman at Balkinization:
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2007/1115_nationalsecurity_kris/1115_nationalsecurity_kris.pdf
I sincerely hope and trust that you will alert your colleagues, especially in the leadership of the House and Senate and on pertinent committees, to take careful note of Kris's extremely helpful, very understandable, and UNclassified explanation of the lay of the land in foreign intelligence collection, as it relates to FISA. Thank you.
S. 1959 the "Violent Radicalized Homegrown Terrorist Act" is pushing through.
We need to do something before every peace activist gets labeled a terrorist.
http://www.newstarget.com/022308.html
Please watch the documentary "Unconstitutional" to get an idea of what's been happening since the Patriot Act passed. I don't agree with everything in it, but it makes some really good points.
That computer could then, automatically, draft and spit out, a request for an individual, particularized warrant, that would HAVE TO BE APPROVED by a Judge, before the Government reads any e-mail, or listens into any telephone conversation, identified by that "data mining" program (or, in the case of "exigent circumstances" within 72 hours of the search).
This seems like a good, "common sense" compromise that protects both our security and our civil liberties. I am interested in hearing people's thoughts on this.
Krash
citizen from unwarrented survellience. In the
reality we live in, I doubt it. And until
someone from the FBI or CIA comes to the door
there would be no way to know if you had been
under survellience.
How do our spies know if someone speaking on the telephone is a US citizen, visitor or foreign terrorist?
What's wrong with using the FISA courts in an excess of caution?
Democrats are so busy to dodging imaginary bullets, they forget to do the right thing. The harm they do to themselves by their cowardice and lack of moral fiber ia far greater than the harm done by right wing ideologues.
aiding & abetting this administration in all of its' crimes.
Members of both chambers in both the Judiciary
& the Intelligence committees have been swamped
repeatedly by me about SERIOUS CRIMES that hi-level members of this administration committed
against America in the so-called War on Terror.
You can read it all for yourself the type of information that has been sent to them at:
http://360.yahoo.com/caspereraser1
The list is endless - although the information
& the crimes that were committed stayed the same...
Resource producers are the most chokingly regulated, spied on and vilified in our nation.
For example, people who are not prudent with their actions and engage in the use of toxic words, drugs, extortion and sex bring a huge financial drain on taxpayers. Their actions should be considered as tangible as an oil spill, and answer to NEPA. They serve no purpose, and cost a culture dearly.
Before you launch into any non-constructive, time wasting, non-good-product-producing campaigns like empeachment, you better make certain you have a safe food source to give you the energy to do so.
We've come to a point in history, where "prioritization" of missions is critical.
For starters- concentrate on:
Defeating "LOST"
Stop federal welfare to groups like The Nature Conservancy.
Stay as much land as is possible- in resource production (You cannot feed the world out of a windowsill garden.).
Replace "income" tax with a "consumption" tax (Simple math will tell you the guy who buys a Rolls will spend more on that tax, than the guy who buys a used Plymouth. It's the only FAIR way to go!).
Stop the flow of illegal immigration.
Start honoring our Constitution.
Reintroduce civility and manners.
Get smart and not succumb to the psychological warfare foisted upon us.
Learn to discern fact from fiction, and fantasy from reality.
To save our nation from socialism, you must choose a side. Do you know which side to choose?
Learn how to be a good neighbor, then be one.
Bush likes to appoint judges who are interested in the "orginal intent" of the founding fathers. The Fourth Amendment states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." I'll defer to the judgement of the founding fathers. Too bad, Bush doesn't.
MAGLATINAVI@AOL.COM
WE MUST DEMAND IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS FOR BOTH THE CROOKS BUSH & CHENEY! true crook's!
THEY SUED TO HAVE OUR VOTES NOT-COUNTED, TWICE!
ONLY TO BE THE 1st SELECTED PRESIDENCY (except when more criminal Republican's did it before with Gerald Ford, the Nixon Pardoneer!).
THEY IMMEDIATELY STARTED WARRANTLESS WIRETAPPING (& god knows what else!) in February 2001. Long before they allowed 9/11 to happen and forced their "patriot act" on us in the dark of night, not allowing anyone to pre-read it!
NOW THEY HAVE SPIED ON ALL THEIR OPPONENT'S & WE HAVE LOST THE SOUL OF OUR COUNTRY TO WAR-PROFITEER'S!
WE MUST DEMAND IMPEACHMENT HEARING'S, EVEN IF THEY FAIL!
A FAILED IMPEACHMENT IS BETTER THAN NONE AT ALL!
REMEMBER HOW THEY DESTROYED BILL CLINTON & HE KILLED NO ONE! REMEMBER, 9/11 HAPPENED ON BUSH & CHENEY'S WATCH!!
NOW CALL NANCY TODAY (202)225-0100,
DEMAND IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS, YOU CAN E-MAIL HER TOO AT, americanvoices@mail.house.gov
WE DESERVE HEARING'S AT A MINIMUM! BEFORE THEY ATTACK US AGAIN! worse than Nixon dreamed!!
THEY WANT TO SPY ON US TO SUPPRESS DECENT AND CRUSH THEIR OPPONENT'S. THEY HAVE NO DESIRE TO STOP TERRORIST'S, ONLY TO SEIZE MORE POWER.
POWER CORRUPTS, ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY, don't think these 2 are above anything! they are war-profiteering elite-ist's!
DEMAND IMPEACHMENT HEARING'S NOW before all their crimes are locked away in his B.S. "(p)residential library"!