Turning our attention back to the rules of spying, there seems to be an impasse at this time. Does that mean we will have new spy rules or will we revert to the old rules? Or, as the present administration sees it, will they have to play by the rules?
According to the Washington Post the so-called impasses could lead to tighter rules. Let’s hear it for the impasse!
With Congress at an impasse over the government’s spy powers, congressional and intelligence officials are bracing for the possibility that the government may have to revert to the old rules of terrorist surveillance, a scenario that some officials predict could leave worrisome gaps in intelligence.
There should be no guessing about who those “some officials” may be. The fight over FISA has been long and hard, neither side willing to budge. As the debate drags on with no apparent end in sight, the deadline on wiretaps is fast approaching.
The deadline is considered critical because of a series of secret one-year wiretapping orders that were approved last August under a controversial temporary wiretapping law. The law allowed the National Security Agency to use broad blanket court orders to target groups of suspected Al Qaeda terrorists based overseas. But those orders are growing staler by the day, officials said, and will begin to expire this August if nothing is done.
Of course, the Republicans are attempting to spread a little fear. That tactic has proven false so many times that it is hard for anyone to take seriously these days. But, give them a “A” for effort.
“We’ll start losing intelligence capabilities,” Senator Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee, said in an interview.
As far as other government officials go…
But government and congressional officials said in interviews that they saw it as a dangerous step backward. A return to the old rules, they said, would mean that numerous government lawyers, analysts, and linguists would once again have to prepare individual warrants, potentially thousands of them, for surveillance of terrorist targets overseas.
For those who believe in civil liberties, and there are a few left…
Civil libertarians who oppose the government’s broadened new surveillance authorities said a return to the more restrictive rules may be just what is needed to restore necessary checks on the government’s powers.
So, what does it all mean?
Telecommunications companies would also have to spend considerable time shutting down existing wiretaps, and then to start them up again if ordered under new warrants, officials said. In some instances, the broad orders given to the companies starting last August cover tens of thousands of overseas phone numbers and e-mail addresses at one time, people with knowledge of the orders said.
And…
In some cases, the government might simply be unable to establish in court why it suspected that a foreign target was connected to terrorism. Part of the problem, officials said, is that communications going from one foreign country to another sometimes travel through a telephone switch on American soil and, under some interpretations of the older rules, could not be tapped without an individual warrant. (Wiretaps aimed at Americans already require individual warrants issued by a secret court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, or FISA court.)
Ah… if the government can’t come up with a good reason to target someone “connected to terrorism” and establish a case, why would they want to listen to their conversations? The system, our system, of requiring a warrant is a part of what makes… made… America. The system worked for over 200 years. But, with this administration we, the people, should not have rights. Forget the Constitution. Forget the Bill of Rights. Forget that we have an elected President, not a king.
As time runs out, chances are the Democrats will give in and let Bush have his way. The Democrats are fearful of the fearmongering. When and if an attack on our country should occur, the Democrats are most fearful that they will be blamed for being slack on homeland security. In the meantime they will probably trade our freedoms for what will be called national security.
“I was hoping we’d made progress,” said Mr. Bond, who has been the White House’s point man in the negotiations. “But the longer this drags on — I’m not so sure.”
Democrats and Republicans have been negotiating behind closed doors for months, with occasional appearances by senior administration officials. The main stumbling block has been whether or how to give the phone companies immunity from lawsuits over their role in helping President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program; dozens of such suits are pending. Both sides have given some ground in the talks.
The Republicans have yielded somewhat on immunity for the companies: The current proposal from Mr. Bond would allow the FISA court to review the administration’s requests and determine by a “preponderance of the evidence” whether the companies had responded properly.
Mr. Bond’s proposal would also re-establish that the act was the “exclusive” means for authorizing intelligence wiretaps, even in the face of Mr. Bush’s claims of constitutional authority to order surveillance on terror suspects outside the courts. And it would allow for a congressional review of the wiretapping program, something Republicans had tried to avoid.
The House Democrats will probably fold first.
House Democrats, meanwhile, appear willing to settle for the FISA court having a smaller oversight role in approving the National Security Agency’s surveillance procedures in advance. They offered a counterproposal to Republicans late last week that left both sides optimistic.
There will be a compromise in the end, probably a little one-sided. Let’s just keep the pressure on our representatives and senators so they know that we don’t want them to “compromise” all our freedoms away.
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