An editorial cartoon is worth an entire blog post!

This editorial cartoon about sums up my feelings on the congressional Democrats' amazing lack of guts and logic the case of their rolling over for the Bush administration and (mostly) agreeing with its horrendous NSA domestic wiretapping program.

Another letdown for civil liberties... thanks to the Democrats?

So they fight a largely (purely for some) symbolic, somewhat shallow battle over Iraq, but don't bother to stand up to the Bush administration when American civil liberties are threatened? Whose side are the Democrats on? Dems still seem to be worried more about appearing 'soft' on fighting terror than concerns of basic American freedoms.

Only if one views the 'war on terrorism' as a real war that is serious enough that the US's fighting in it is allowed to chip away at the bedrock of American liberty (i.e. the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution) can one truly not see how troubling the wiretapping expansion promoted by both political parties is.

From today's New York Times:

Two months after insisting that they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress appear ready to make concessions that could extend some crucial powers given to the National Security Agency.

Administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess. Some Democratic officials concede that they may not come up with enough votes to stop approval.

As the debate over the eavesdropping powers of the National Security Agency begins anew this week, the emerging measures reflect the reality confronting the Democrats.

Although willing to oppose the White House on the Iraq war, they remain nervous that they will be called soft on terrorism if they insist on strict curbs on gathering intelligence.

A Democratic bill to be proposed on Tuesday in the House would maintain for several years the type of broad, blanket authority for N.S.A. eavesdropping that the administration secured in August for six months.

Because of their fear of being called wimps in the 'war on terrorism', the Democrats are once again caving into supporting a horrible Bush administration program (this same thing happened last summer too with the approval of the then-illegal White House NSA spying program). Great job guys; you've really served the people who gave you the majority in both houses of Congress well!

It's time for oversight over the Bush administration; it's time for government contractors in Iraq as well as at home to admit and rectify their misdeeds; it's time for the US to admit errors and mistakes too; it's time for the transparency a working liberal democracy requires to shine through this White House, this Congress, and the courts. If only one of the two major political parties would fight for what the United States needs.

Smile! You're on satellite camera

The United States is moving up in the world in terms of state surveillance...

The Bush administration has approved a plan to expand domestic access to some of the most powerful tools of 21st-century spycraft, giving law enforcement officials and others the ability to view data obtained from satellite and aircraft sensors that can see through cloud cover and even penetrate buildings and underground bunkers.

A program approved by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security will allow broader domestic use of secret overhead imagery beginning as early as this fall, with the expectation that state and local law enforcement officials will eventually be able to tap into technology once largely restricted to foreign surveillance.

Administration officials say the program will give domestic security and emergency preparedness agencies new capabilities in dealing with a range of threats, from illegal immigration and terrorism to hurricanes and forest fires. But the program, described yesterday by the Wall Street Journal, quickly provoked opposition from civil liberties advocates, who said the government is crossing a well-established line against the use of military assets in domestic law enforcement.

Does its implications against freedom cancel out the good it does for security (see security v. freedom); or is there nothing to worry about? And what is up with the WSJ getting all these major political news scoops?

Although the federal government has long permitted the use of spy-satellite imagery for certain scientific functions -- such as creating topographic maps or monitoring volcanic activity -- the administration's decision would provide domestic authorities with unprecedented access to high-resolution, real-time satellite photos.
...
Oversight of the department's use of the overhead imagery data would come from officials in the Department of Homeland Security and from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and would consist of reviews by agency inspectors general, lawyers and privacy officers.

No warrants are needed for this kind of spying, and yet it is my personal view that the NSA wiretapping program is probably a larger infringement on civil liberties. However, both these spy programs can be easily abused for political motives because the oversight comes from those within the Bush administration. Many of the people overlooking these spy programs, such as officials in the DHS and DoJ, have already proven themselves to be political appointees, cronies, incompetent yes-men, and by no means objective like they should be. And all they ever seem to want is more power to spy on Americans.

I think it is a good idea to update America's satellite imaging system, just as I believe a FISA for the 21st century was a good goal, but the lack of oversight is alarming for both of these surveillance programs. At least the NSA program will have audits and this new spy program will be reviewed by a number of people who hopefully will prevent abuse of this important and slightly worrying technology. Still, it is up to the courts, Congress, and, ultimately, the people to keep the executive in check, and that includes its more sensitive programs.

Congress legalizes Bush's NSA wiretapping program

An inept Congress hands Bush his NSA wiretapping program legalized on a silver platter...
Quiz time! What is the one of the last things Congress did before taking a four-week August recess? Hand more power to the Bush administration and slash away at the US Constitution, of course! Another sting to civil liberties courtesy of the 'war on terrorism' and the American government. Enter the Protect America Act of 2007 (Senate vote info; House votes). All links in this post are, in my opinion, quite important to understanding this complex issue.

Secrecy, spying, and a false 'war'
Why did the United States Congress cave in to (NYT) President George Bush on the expanded wiretapping bill? If this were the Clinton years I might think secret deal or tradeoff (i.e. you pass my stuff and I don't veto yours). However, that system hasn't been as prolific in the relationship between Bush's White House and the majority-Democratic Congress.

One would think this new bill would finally resolve the legality of the Bush administration's controversial domestic surveillance program. How could any self-respecting legislator approve it — let alone a Democrat? The answer appears to be fear, on both sides, especially Democratic, of appearing soft on terrorism.

The Dems have already spent — for better or for worse — so much political energy on symbolic jabs at the Bush administration on the subject of Iraq. But when it comes to something real, impacting, non-symbolic, and relevant, but by no means routine, they give George W. Bush the kind of victory he hoped for. The NSA wiretapping program — revealed in 2005 by The New York Times — has been ruled illegal again and again. It sidesteps an already troubling statute: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or FISA, whose secret judges grant secret warrants for secret searches or wiretaps, secretly. The Bush administration was forced to but the NSA program under the domain of FISA in January, resulting in a still-secret ruling that the program was illegal and placed restrictions, or something of the sort.

But the word 'illegal' is not in Bush's dictionary...
This bill, signed into law by Bush this weekend, validates the illegal wiretapping program that he has even admitted exists (in his own special way, plus it gave him a chance to attack the so-called liberal news media). It has a decent reach too. One of the administration's excuses for its until-recently-illegal eavesdropping program was that the current FISA court only deals with old means of communication, not modern ones like email and calls over fiber optic cable. Naturally, instead of requesting the then Republican-controlled Congress update the legislation (especially for the post-9/11 world, for which which the administration claims the illegal secret programs are essential), the White House decided to launch its own secret programs — legal or otherwise.

Extension of power
So what's wrong with this law just updating FISA to keep up with the times? Well, keeping up with technology is not the only changes this law puts into place...

Just as before, the FISA court only issues the search warrant after the search/wiretap is carried out — troubling, I know. But this legislation goes a bit further by removing more power from the courts, albeit secret ones that almost never take issue with clandestine spying on a domestic level. Now the searches can be carried out at the discretion of the attorney general or intelligence director.

That is all the more troubling considering the political yes-men Bush keeps in his cabinet and staff, and the fact that Alberto Gonzales is known for politically-motivated (in)justice. The horror! And as if the fact that Gonzales can now order secret searches, legally this time, isn't enough to make you a bit queasy for the disregard of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, keep in mind that under this new law the AG and head of intelligence have plenty of discretionary leeway when it comes to ordering secret surveillance. Plus, it's all secret; I'd expect nothing less transparent from this administration.

The sorta good news
A positive is that the AG will indeed have his power checked to a certain extent by internal audits, which have proved their worth in the past. That aspect of oversight is one the White House doesn't like.

One sliver of good news is that because of lawsuit threats that only increase under this legislation, telecommunications companies and ISPs are less likely to be bullied into invading their customers' privacy under pressure by the Bush administration. In fact, as I understand it this law removes the shield the White House has desperately tried to use to protect the telcos, which is bad news for the industry. Still, Gonzales has less leeway to invade our phone and internet records, though more to wiretap if the conversation might (emphasis on might) be with someone outside of the United States. Nonetheless, the telcos are as scared as ever of being sued for disclosing private details of their customers, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, as did the NYT (linked above):

The law also gave the administration greater power to force telecommunications companies to cooperate with such spying operations. The companies can now be compelled to cooperate by orders from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.
...
In fact, pressure from the telecommunications companies on the Bush administration has apparently played a major hidden role in the political battle over the surveillance issue over the past few months.

Worse than FISA
FISA was scary enough — but maybe understandable and, to an extent, justifiable — but putting the secret search rights into Bush's political cronies (yes, that's what Gonzales, among others, is) is going more than a tad overboard. Justifying it with national security is puzzling. The least Congress could do is get rid of Alberto Gonzales, which would take a bipartisan effort; many, many Republicans are on board with the idea and the Democrats have been jabbing at it for months. This new law will last six months or so, ending in early February 2008.

Just to make this more confusing, this all ties back to the legality of the 'war on terror':

With minor exceptions, FISA authorizes electronic surveillance only upon certain specified showings, and only if approved by a court. The statute specifically allows for warrantless wartime domestic electronic surveillance—but only for the first fifteen days of a war. 50 U.S.C. § 1811. It makes criminal any electronic surveillance not authorized by statute, id. § 1809; and it expressly establishes FISA and specified provisions of the federal criminal code (which govern wiretaps for criminal investigation) as the "exclusive means by which electronic surveillance...may be conducted," 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(f) (emphasis added).[2]

The Department of Justice concedes that the NSA program was not authorized by any of the above provisions. It maintains, however, that the program did not violate existing law because Congress implicitly authorized the NSA program when it enacted the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against al-Qaeda, Pub. L. No. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224 (2001). But the AUMF cannot reasonably be construed to implicitly authorize warrantless electronic surveillance in the United States during wartime, where Congress has expressly and specifically addressed that precise question in FISA and limited any such warrantless surveillance to the first fifteen days of war.

So even under FISA the NSA program is questionable. No wait, the White House says it doesn't follow FISA rules because of the 'war on terror' powers given to the president by Congress. No worries: this new law legalizes all that existing wiretapping junk and then some.


There's balance, it's just all tilted towards the White House, (and the only checks are top secret)
In the war against terrorism there's no need to bother with those pesky courts of Constitutional practice anymore, says the White House. Congress seems to have fallen in line with that logic. And this isn't the first time. Remember the horrendous Military Commissions Act of 2006?

Isn't Congress supposed to oversee the operations of the executive? Has everyone forgotten the fundamental idea of checks and balances? With this law Congress has only given more power to the bloated, unpopular, unitary executive Bush administration that a majority of it claims to hate. It also cuts away further at the notion that Americans have rights guaranteed to them by their constitutional, and that civil liberties come with those rights. Freedom trumps security — or at least it should. But in a police state as well as in a certain way modern America (though nothing near a police state), fear rules all.

Soft on civil liberties
If the Democrats are so afraid of being painted as weak on national security, than actually being weak on civil liberties is not a very good fix. Are they more worried of what their opponents think of them and will paint them as than what they are actually doing? That's just sad.

When it comes to the reaction to national security — GWOT and its consequences — the Democrats have been disappointing. Does what your opponents think of you matter more than doing the right thing? Enjoy your recess, Congress. Hopefully you'll come back to Capitol Hill with more brains and balls.

Balkinization offers brilliant legal analysis and opinion on the 'proposed FISA "fix"', as they call it.

This post is over 1,500 words. Eventually I will probably cut it into shorter, more specific posts then expanding them. So don't be alarmed if you see a post with parts of this essay in the future.

The CIA: coming clean

The CIA is to declassify years of documents confirming many of it's shady and illegal Cold War practices. Topics like this — knowing, or rather not knowing, what a supposedly free and democratic country as the United States was and still is doing against any measure of human rights, freedoms, and more — get me a bit fired up.

The Washington Post reported:

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests.
...
The CIA documents scheduled for release next week, Hayden said yesterday, "provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency."
...
Hayden's speech and some questions that followed evoked more recent criticism of the intelligence community, which has been accused of illegal wiretapping, infiltration of antiwar groups, and kidnapping and torturing of terrorism suspects.

The BBC went further into what exactly these papers will reveal.

The papers, to be released next week, will detail assassination plots, domestic spying and wiretapping, kidnapping and human experiments.

Many of the incidents are already known, but the documents are expected to give more comprehensive accounts.
...
Among the incidents that were said to "present legal questions" were:

* the confinement of a Soviet defector in the mid-1960s
* assassination plots of foreign leaders, including Cuba's Fidel Castro
* wiretapping and surveillance of journalists
* behaviour modification experiments on "unwitting" US citizens
* surveillance of dissident groups between 1967 and 1971
* opening from 1953 to 1973 of letters to and from the Soviet Union; from 1969 to 1972 of mail to and from China

These actions are not those of an agency of a free, liberal democratic government. While not turning into a paranoid, "everyone's out to get me"-ist, a citizen should always remain aware of what his or her government is doing to prevent the removal of their own liberties. Those of us who live in America, Germany, India, and other democratic countries should protect our freedom by using the powers democratic governance gives us; those who live in unfree states should also do what they can for freedoms. Moreover, fake wars are no excuse for taking away the freedom of citizens or of others outside of the country. Doing so is counter-intuitive and, as I said before, not the actions of a free state.

People like former secretary of state and still-foreign policy leader Henry Kissinger want skeletons like these to remain in the dark closets of the CIA, so to speak. He has fought any investigation into America's intelligence agency's misdeeds. Perhaps the reason he fights against the ugly truth is because he himself was a proponent of despicable policy, like bombing civilians in Cambodia or overthrowing democratically-elected world leaders and killing many for the sake of posturing. Why stoop to the enemy's level? Who did Kissinger turn to to commit these misdeeds? The CIA. These are no conspiracy theories.

In 1975, CIA Director William Colby told then-President Gerald Ford that his summary of the CIA's activity had descriptions of "things [the CIA] shouldn't have done". A day later on 4 January, Secretary of State Kissinger told Ford that divulging these documents — in effect telling a nation the truth about all the horrible things its government has been doing — would result in a political disaster, like a new Watergate. Further withholding information of illegal and shady deeds from the public for your own political security is pretty sad on the part of Kissinger and the Ford administration.

While it's good that the CIA is finally doing this (a bit late though), I wonder how exactly some of these — need I emphasize it more — horrible acts are, as Hayden calls them, "crown jewels". Moreover they are reminders of a time which I for one hope America never returns too. The Cold War was much worse than the current GWOT in how the government acted and how people's freedoms were suppressed — but that's no excuse for the Bush administration's condemnable "war on terror" actions either.

Many of the misdeeds listed above were similar to what the unfree, authoritarian Soviet government agencies were doing, just as Bush is in some ways using similar scare tactics as the terrorists he is fighting against. See a pattern? An enemy develops, government takes advantage of people's fear, government gains power and engages in illegal and bad activities for its own power and for whatever other reasons in its 'war'.

Nowadays the CIA is actually weak. It has lost the badge of authority it carried as it painted a picture of the Red Army marching across American soil and performed commonly operations like the ones listed above. Now the Defense Department has far more power; the CIA is underfunded and the intelligence community often thrust aside — even when it is right, like in the case of 9/11 and the failure in Iraq; and more directly under the president's political authority, the FBI is more notorious for restrictions of domestic civil liberties.

For a bit more on the foreign policy of America during and before the Cold War, see my Monroe Doctrine essay. The National Security Archive has a page on these "family jewels".

The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Let's just hope that chapter in the American intelligence community's history has come to a close, or is to end at least with the next president. I highly recommend checking out the archive page linked above; it also documents all the CIA's broken promises of declassification — making Hayden's announcement look less and less like a positive step forward and more like something that should have happened long ago.

"Freedom isn't free"

I recently saw an old foe from long ago. It professed ignorance and a modern excuse for war: to fight for freedom. World War II was a fight for freedom against Nazi repression and invasion in Europe and Japanese imperial aggression in the Pacific; the current Iraq war and the 'war' against terrorism are not fights for America's freedom.

"Freedom isn't free" may sound like an interesting statement out of context. But when overlayed in front of a gun or the silhouette of a soldier, it is a statement of the United States' militancy — in spirit, politics, or action — and an unjustified fear of loosing freedoms at the hands of outsiders when the politicians in charge at home are doing a fine job. In the case of my recent encounter of the saying it was in the form of a bumper-sticker.

In the "war on terror", President George W. Bush and his group have proven to be formidable enemies to American civil liberties, not terrorist Osama bin Laden and his cronies. Freedoms have been quashed in the name of fighting international terrorism. Osama is surely a larger direct threat to US security, but Bush's poor policies at home and abroad have in effect made the United States less secure.

"Freedom isn't free" has become a major statement of Bush-supporters and the right wing in America, as well as the population at large in the patriotic wake of 9/11.

Is the US fighting for freedom in Iraq or Afghanistan? No. By detaining innocent and bad men in Gitmo and elsewhere, is America promoting freedom or even helping its own? No. Freedom might not be free, but it's no reason to give up freedoms in a supposed fight to save them. Not only is that self-defeating, it is caving into the same kind of pseudo-patriotism that has allowed this White House to pursue its "war on terror".

The same people who use the phrase "Freedom isn't free" to justify the gross abuse of power by the Bush administration are probably the same people who ultimately believe 'ignorance is bliss'. I guess by the logic of Bush's supporters — yes, he still has plenty — freedom isn't freedom because it isn't free ('How could something by nature free be free?'), and war is peace (Orwell's 1984 = best novel ever, or at least best political novel).

I understand America has many brave servicemen and women who are fighting for causes — just and unjust — putting their lives at stake in the deadly game of war. Looking at the mass military and civilian casualties of the excursions of the GWOT is not a pleasurable activity. But justifying those many deaths with a catchphrase that mixes misguided, post-disaster patriotism with twisted logic, especially considering phrases like "Freedom isn't free" are often used as an attack on those who do not particularly like the president (e.g. "Support our troops" being used by the GOP against those wishing for withdrawal from Iraq, or those opposed to the White House's war policy; fighting terror with terror or fear), is a poor way to honor the deaths of those people. The fight for defending freedom is actually hurting it. "Freedom isn't free" seems like a justification for such a fight, and is used in such a way. War isn't free either.

FBI continually breaking the law

On Friday, it was revealed in a US Department of Justice (DoJ) report on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the use of various elements in the so-called war on terrorism that the FBI was misusing the Patriot Act and other laws — already controversial when followed appropriately — that constituted breaking the law. Although it hardly constitutes 'breaking news', the report sparked outcry on Capitol Hill (which is good, because it should).

Soon after the report, FBI Director Robert Mueller III admitted the law-breaking and took all of the blame, “Who is to be held accountable? And the answer to that is, I am to be held accountable.” he said.

The United States government — not least the FBI and CIA — breaking its own laws is nothing new, but rarely is it exposed and admitted so publicly, and rarely is it revealed by the government itself. This shows the US federal government has not lost all transparency, and these internal audits — like the one that showed the Bush administration was skewing terror figures — and reports are important to a free and democratic government. Not all hope is lost. Note: Congress had required the DoJ to file this report.

However, the story does not end with Mueller, or even the FBI.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald wrote an exceptional and extensive piece tying the FBI's misuse of Patriot Act provisions directly up to President Bush via the myriad of legislation and policies empowered by the 'war on terrorism'.

Multiple media outlets are focusing on the unsurprising story that the FBI seems to have been abusing its powers under the Patriot Act to issue so-called "national security letters" (NSLs), whereby the FBI is empowered to obtain a whole array of privacy-infringing records without any sort of judicial oversight or subpoena process. In particular, the FBI has failed to comply with the legal obligations imposed by Congress, when it re-authorized the Patriot Act in early 2006, which required the FBI to report to Congress on the use of these letters.

That the FBI is abusing its NSL power is entirely unsurprising (more on that below), but the real story here -- and it is quite significant -- has not even been mentioned by any of these news reports. The only person (that I've seen) to have noted the most significant aspect of these revelations is Silent Patriot at Crooks & Liars, who very astutely recalls that the NSL reporting requirements imposed by Congress were precisely the provisions which President Bush expressly proclaimed he could ignore when he issued a "signing statement" as part of the enactment of the Patriot Act's renewal into law. Put another way, the law which the FBI has now been found to be violating is the very law which George Bush publicly declared he has the power to ignore.
...
And this report, as indicated, is from the Bush Justice Department. But this is the country we have created for ourselves by allowing the President to insist upon not only more and more invasive powers, but the ability to exercise those powers in virtual secrecy and with no limits. And the few limits which Congress has imposed are simply ignored because the administration knows that -- at least thus far -- there have been no consequences, and little public outcry, prompted by its law-breaking.

The information being gathered and stored on the private lives of American citizens by the federal government is vast and growing -- and that is the conclusion compelled by what we know about what this government has been doing. This is an administration that has operated behind an unprecedented veil of secrecy, and it is undoubtedly the case that there are whole surveillance programs about which we have not learned. Do Americans really want the federal government compiling electronic dossiers on them with virtually no safeguards and no oversight?

The day after the revelation of this latest government fumble, Bush proclaimed himself Mr. Fix-It and said things would be worked through so this kind of misuse will not happen again — or at least people wouldn't hear about it again. He defended most all of these questionable policies, such as the 'national security letters' Greenwald wrote about, which are basically a warrant-less ticket for the FBI to do whatever it pleases in the name of 'fighting terrorism'.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, already up to his knees in troubles and political liability, including one relating to the politically-related firing of decent attorneys, is also implicated in this mess. Whereas Mueller is the fall guy, and Bush occupies the title of Mr. Fix-It-But-Not-Really, Gonzales is somewhere in between. His number of friends in Congress — Democrat or Republican — is dwindling. The New York Times even called for his resignation, a harshly-worded but true editorial, on Sunday (their editorials are regarded as influential, especially politically).

...[Gonzales] has never stopped being consigliere to Mr. Bush’s imperial presidency. If anyone, outside Mr. Bush’s rapidly shrinking circle of enablers, still had doubts about that, the events of last week should have erased them.

First, there was Mr. Gonzales’s lame op-ed article in USA Today trying to defend the obviously politically motivated firing of eight United States attorneys, which he dismissed as an “overblown personnel matter.” Then his inspector general exposed the way the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been abusing yet another unnecessary new power that Mr. Gonzales helped wring out of the Republican-dominated Congress in the name of fighting terrorism.

The F.B.I. has been using powers it obtained under the Patriot Act to get financial, business and telephone records of Americans by issuing tens of thousands of “national security letters,” a euphemism for warrants that are issued without any judicial review or avenue of appeal. The administration said that, as with many powers it has arrogated since the 9/11 attacks, this radical change was essential to fast and nimble antiterrorism efforts, and it promised to police the use of the letters carefully.

But like so many of the administration’s promises, this one evaporated before the ink on those letters could dry. The F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, admitted Friday that his agency had used the new powers improperly.

Mr. Gonzales does not directly run the F.B.I., but it is part of his department and has clearly gotten the message that promises (and civil rights) are meant to be broken.

It was Mr. Gonzales, after all, who repeatedly defended Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize warrantless eavesdropping on Americans’ international calls and e-mail. He was an eager public champion of the absurd notion that as commander in chief during a time of war, Mr. Bush can ignore laws that he thinks get in his way. Mr. Gonzales was disdainful of any attempt by Congress to examine the spying program, let alone control it.

The attorney general helped formulate and later defended the policies that repudiated the Geneva Conventions in the war against terror, and that sanctioned the use of kidnapping, secret detentions, abuse and torture. He has been central to the administration’s assault on the courts, which he recently said had no right to judge national security policies, and on the constitutional separation of powers.
...
The Justice Department has been shamefully indifferent to complaints of voter suppression aimed at minority voters. But it has managed to find the time to sue a group of black political leaders in Mississippi for discriminating against white voters.

We opposed Mr. Gonzales’s nomination as attorney general. His résumé was weak, centered around producing legal briefs for Mr. Bush that assured him that the law said what he wanted it to say. More than anyone in the administration, except perhaps Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Gonzales symbolizes Mr. Bush’s disdain for the separation of powers, civil liberties and the rule of law.

On Thursday, Senator Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, hinted very obliquely that perhaps Mr. Gonzales’s time was up. We’re not going to be oblique. Mr. Bush should dismiss Mr. Gonzales and finally appoint an attorney general who will use the job to enforce the law and defend the Constitution.

technorati tags: united+states, justice+department, patriot+act, national+security, national+security+letters, legal, politics, alberto+gonzales, robert+mueller, bush, civil+liberties, war+on+terror, US+government

Good day for Canadian civil liberties

If only with the United States Supreme Court could be this rational...
BBC News:

Canada's Supreme Court has struck down a controversial system that allowed the government to detain and deport foreign-born terror suspects.
The nine judges ruled that the security certificate system - in place since 1978 - violated Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The system allowed a suspect to be held indefinitely or deported on the basis of evidence presented in secret.

Though it took long enough for the courts to catch up and attack this highly questionable system. Nonetheless, the system sounds a lot like America's legal FISA courts, which award secret warrants, but are a bit more broad in regards to evidence. The Bush administration, and some administrations prior, have ignored FISA and even the courts and the US Constitution. To be honest this is the first time I have heard of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Overall: a good day for civil liberties [edit: including in Guinea]. Well, except for the whole continued repression of free speech in Egypt issue...

technorati tags: canada, civil+liberties, news, courts, justice, politics, united+states

The tapping point

The New York Times reports:

The Bush administration, in a surprise reversal, said on Wednesday that it had agreed to give a secret court jurisdiction over the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program and would end its practice of eavesdropping without warrants on Americans suspected of ties to terrorists.

The Justice Department said it had worked out an “innovative” arrangement with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that provided the “necessary speed and agility” to provide court approval to monitor international communications of people inside the United States without jeopardizing national security.

The decision capped 13 months of bruising national debate over the reach of the president’s wartime authorities and his claims of executive power, and it came as the administration faced legal and political hurdles in its effort to continue the surveillance program.

Stepping back on the wiretapping power is another great political PR move by the White House. This latest change in executive policy accompanies Bush’s admission that Iraq was going “unacceptable” and much blame lied with him and the challenge various White House officials (including the president) gave to those who did not support the Bush administration’s Iraq policy to ‘come up with their own plan if they think they can do better’. But don’t get too excited about the allowing of secret judicial oversight for already-illegal wiretapping programs, there are several problems. One is that the wiretapping will continue, another is that it was happening in the first place, yet another is United States Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales’s testimony to Congress, and another is GITMO. Of course, the list of this administration’s civil liberty and human rights violations and issues does not stop there. The authorization by President Bush of the ‘terrorist’ surveillance program in the first place was a vast, vast overreaching of executive power. Just one more thing: [NYT]

The Justice Department said it had worked out an “innovative” arrangement with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that provided the “necessary speed and agility” to provide court approval to monitor international communications of people inside the United States without jeopardizing national security.

Justice Department officials would not describe whether the court had agreed to new procedures to streamline the process of issuing orders or accepted new standards to make it easier for the government to get approval to monitor suspect e-mail and phone communications.

And its not very judicial-like to not go case-by-case either, especially when the matter deals with people’s civil liberties.

Ms. Wilson, who has scrutinized the program for the last year, said she believed the new approach relied on a blanket, “programmatic” approval of the president’s surveillance program, rather than approval of individual warrants.

Yeah, don’t get your hopes up that the Bush administration is turning a new leaf on its “war on terrorism” policies. Even with FISA, it is not like the wiretappings are totally kosher, because the FISA courts surely are not. In a society celled a democracy, the United States has a odd way of handling its justice system and its crusades against "bad" people and things (e.g. terrorism, drugs).

There are still numerous — lawsuits pending and active — over the surveillance program, launched by everyone from legal scholars to journalists to the ACLU.

There are two fantastic Balkinization blog posts on this topic and the new developments. From one of them…

First, there is a remarkable similarity between the Administration's behavior in the Padilla case and its behavior here. Recall that the Administration held Padilla in a military prison for three years and insisted that he could not speak to anyone-- much less have the basic rights in the Bill of Rights-- because to do so would put our country at grave risk. Once the Administration realized that the Supreme Court would likely reject its theory of Presidential power, it backtracked and placed Padilla in the criminal justice system-- thus undermining all of its predictions and assertions. It moved Padilla out of a military prison and brought an entirely different set of charges against him, hoping to moot the challenge to what it had done to Padilla earlier and prevent an authoritative rejection of its implausible claims about the powers of the Presidency.

Similarly, in this case, the Administration insisted for months that the President did not need to follow the procedures in FISA, either because of the AUMF or because of inherent Presidential authority. Apparently, it has now retreated from that legally untenable position, hoping to moot, or at the very least disarm, federal litigation challenging the legality of the NSA program. Once again, the goal is to prevent a court from stating clearly that the President acted illegally and that his theories of executive power are self-serving hokum.

When we put these two stories together, a pattern emerges: the Administration repeatedly takes unreasonable positions about its powers. It insists that obedience to these views is necessary to the very survival of the Republic and that those who would dare to disagree are jeopardizing national security. It makes these aggressive claims repeatedly in every venue, hoping that others, cowed by its aggressive self-confidence and patriotic appeals, will be overawed and simply give in. It struts and boasts and threatens and exaggerates until its bluff is called, at which point its previous assertions simply become-- as they once put it in the Nixon Administration-- inoperative. Put another way, the Administration's stance on Presidential power has resembled nothing so much as an altogether familiar character, the neighborhood bully.

Remember a while back when a federal judge ordered the surveillance and illegal wiretapping to stop? This president's commitments to democracy — and definition of democracy — seems to be quite warped, and no other branch, in his mind, can stop him, neither can the constitution (thus far).

technorati tags: civil+liberties, fisa, bush, justice+department, wiretapping, executive+power, news, politics

Revised song in memorium of habeas corpus in the US

Here is a modified version of an original song I wrote in this post after the passing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 mourning the virtual loss of habeas corpus judicial protections.

To be sung to the tune of "Candle in the Wind" by Elton John:

Goodbye habeas corpus,
though I never needed to use you at all
you had the strength to guarantee fair trials
no matter what....

You crawled out of the British law
and you were entered, by name,
into democratic history
and the world was never the same again....

And it seems to me you lived your life
like a candle burning strong,
never waning when the King
tried to blow you out.

And I would have liked to know you
but I have never been imprisoned,
your candle of freedom burned out long...
before your legend ever will....

Goodbye habeas corpus
thanks to those bigwigs in Washington
you cease to protect
the very people in need...

Goodbye habeas corpus,
though I never needed you
you know there still are plenty

who dooo....
And it seems to me,
that King George
got a bit to powerful...
he scared his own people
into trusting him...

And I wish I could have saved you,
but my power is limited.
You truly died, [in America,]
on the 17th of October, 2006.

Maybe we can bring you... back....

Cross posted with my Daily Kos diary.

technorati tags: habeas+corpus, writ, great+writ, habeas, bush, politics, news, song, in+perspective, daily+kos, diary, civil+liberties, united+states, elton+john, clearthought, blog

Bush and civil liberties, part 1

If George W. Bush says that we are safer from the results of illegal torture, illegal wiretapping, and cruel treatment of people worldwide, when why don't we go a step further? With Bush's logic, we could say that society would be safer if all of the governmental critics and members of the “liberal” press were disposed of (especially to an undisclosed location) and a police state established with King George as head (in re to the statement by a recent federal judge that, in response to the case brought on by the administration for wiretapping without a warrant, 'there are no hereditary kings [in America]', Bush seemed to dispute her ruling in its entirety). I mean, wasn't the government in the genius George Orwell's 1984 world pretty safe for the normal people? (Once you get past the fact that Big Brother dictated their every move.)

So come at it Bush, if you love freedom so much then why are you chipping at the very bedrock of our free society and political system? A free and honest press (hard to be that way when you are polarizing it more and more by attacking on publication or another), morals (yes, torturing is bad, especially when it has been proven to rarely heed good results), right to privacy, and a transparent, open, and accountable government are all essential to a liberty-fashioned government.

The only thing that has changed since the September 11, 2001 attacks — besides many dead as a result of the event and the events directly succeeding it — has been the attitude of the press and people of this nation to not demand a transparent enough government, the thought that 'if it will make us safer, let's not question it' has been followed many times by the 'evil, liberal' New York Times after 9/11 and during the run up to the Iraq war (which few questioned the sketchy evidence of). Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said a couple weeks ago that criticizing the defense and other strategies of this administration is meaning you are helping and “appeasing the terrorists”, if that doesn't scream 'I don't want a free press or to be open and accountable for my actions' then what does? Bush and others in the administration have reiterated a slew of times at the “liberal media bias” ('Mr. President, an example please?'). Why don't they look up the word “liberal” in the dictionary? (Oh, that's right, liberals write the dictionary, so that is why the definition for the word “liberal” says nothing of evil terrorist-appeasers.)

Maybe the Bush administration and its followers should live up to their Neoconservative ideology's preaching of freedom and democracy and actually help, not harm, those values that they are currently trampling upon in the United States.


Links
Inspiration for post:
"Chalk Up Another One for Torture" on Eric Umansky's blog (with related links)
"Failures of Imagination" by Eric Umansky in Colombia Journalism Review, September 2006
"Standards Issue" transcript from On the Media, 8 September 2006

News and commentary:
LA Times op-ed on topic
UPI analysis on topic
"Bush admits to CIA prisons" by BBC News (with related links), 7 September 2006

Profiles:
"Q&A on CIA prisons" by BBC News (with related links)
"Profile: Guantanamo Bay" by BBC News (with related links)

Reference:
"Criticism of the War on Terrorism" article on Wikipedia

Documents:
UN report on GITMO

Updated 13 September 2006
More links, references, better editing, and more information to follow.

News
Politics
Current Affairs
Terrorism
9/11
Bush
News and politics