January 1, 2006, The President sends his New Year Greetings
In San Antonio, Texas, at a photo-op with wounded troops from the Iraq campaign (who otherwise don't officially exist) the President staunchly defended the recently disclosed practice of wire-tapping, eavesdropping, listening in and otherwise God knows what associated with domestic telephone calls. Unsurprisingly, the President insisted that it was only international calls to the United States from known Al Qaeda operatives, and that "real Americans" had nothin' to worry about, unless they were gettin' qollect calls from Qaeda!
This would be somewhat reassuring to crusty gadflies (like m'self) who are coming to mistrust this Government's stated desire to heed, protect, or even acknowledge the existence of our basic liberties-- something about holding American citizens for years and years in camera (and ex cathedra) without due process of law might just do that-- if there were some means of verifying the President's assurances (which right now, there is not).
That said, given the incredibly relaxed procedures associated with... (before clicking -- a warning about the link-- its to the Justice Department, which, like the rest of the Government, presumably has illegally inserted "cookies" to monitor the web activities of everyone unwary enough to surf in...) of course, if you're reading this blog, you've probably been monitored so long that the Government is running out of bandwidth to track you!-- FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)-- which even permits nunc pro tunc warrant applications for after-the-fact sanitizing of wiretaps and the like if "exigent circumstances" didn't permit a pre-wiretap warrant application... one wonders why the need to evade FISA? The judges on the secret court responsible for issuing warrants almost never turn down the Government's requests (as far as we know)... and surely, if there were an issue about it, surely the Government could... as noted... do the surveillance, interception or whatever, and argue about its legality later in a higher court, as there is an appeals process for denied warrant requests. Frankly, no one would fault a Government taking every step possible to both protect us and try to ensure that Constitutional protections are maintained...
Certainly, a Government committed to its multiple duties of protecting us from our foreign enemies and protecting us from its own overreaching would have no problem doing that... Releasing the details of its warrant requests to a highly secretive court, all of whose judges have super, ultra-top secret security clearances, hardly "tips off the enemy" now does it?
Unless, of course, the enemy isn't Al Qaeda at all, but much closer to home...
No, no... that's just crazy talk. One of my New Year's resolutions is not to take out my tin-foil hat until at least February...
What can we say? This President models himself after (warning: the White House web site-- see above re: cookies...) St. Ronald of Santa Barbara. Well, St. Ron famously told us the terms of his dealings with the Evil Empire TM in the course of his negotiations over arms control: Trust, but verify. As unsatisfactory as it is, I would nonetheless accept the conclusions of an independent investigation by the courts set up for that purpose under FISA, or possibly by something allegedly non-partisan like the Senate Intelligence Committee... if the Government cooperated, for a change, and could demonstrate to the satisfaction of anyone outside the Bush Administration (and the paid right wing punditocracy and blogosphere) that, in fact, the eavesdropping program really was narrowly tailored toward A.Q., and not John Q. Public, or, say, political enemies...
I assume that the usual pattern will apply: staunch denials by the White House (and support by the paid right wing punditocracy and blogosphere) followed by defections in the Congressional delegation realizing that they are up for reelection and the President isn't, followed by some level of some kind of half-assed highly partisan investigation, concluding that while some mistakes were made, nothing serious was done, and the American people can know that we have gone (as of today anyway) 1572 working days without a major terrorist incident on American soil...
Happy New Year, everybody!
Comments
"one wonders why the need to evade FISA? The judges on the secret court responsible for issuing warrants almost never turn down the Government's requests (as far as we know)... and surely, if there were an issue about it, surely the Government could... as noted... do the surveillance, interception or whatever, and argue about its legality later in a higher court,"
No, they couldn't, dear long-lost relative, because of the nature of what they've been doing, both in scope and by way of technology, although in this case that's the same thing.
I've been talking myself blue in the face for weeks trying to explain this to the lefty blogosphere, but nobody has ever linked, so I might as well be talking to myself. (Although after weeks of saying it in new and different ways at Obsidian Wings in comments, folks there are finally starting to understand.)
See, if you feel like it, here, here (mostly light relief there), a placeholder here, here (bottom half, under the transcript), most of all this here. Frustration here.
Bottom line: if you're doing a multiplex data-mining pattern analysis on tens of thousands or more people, shifting by possibly tens of thousands of people per day, or more, you can't get warrants. It's not humanly possible.
Which, as I keep explaining, only makes the threat exponentially larger than most non-tech oriented left/lib/progressives seem to understand, with this antediluvian focus on "wiretaps." It's far greater reason for Congress to get the truth out, and possibly impeach, then simple wire-tapping. It's as if people kept decrying the threat of TNT when we're talking about the fact that the fusion bomb has been invented and put to use.
Do feel free to spread the word, if you feel inclined. It's far worse than most people seem to yet understand.
It's incredibly hard to see what I'm typing in such a tiny little box, by the way, especially when dealing with URLS. I thought five lines at a time went out with the Osborne. I finally had to yank it all out to typepad to write and paste it back in, rather than deal with having to work with 40 words at a time.
Posted by Gary Farber at January 2, 2006 12:31 AM
Well, Gary, I'm not the super-tech maven (indeed, I didn't configure this site... or its predecessor) but I think the preview function for comments gives you a much, much bigger field, though, of course, you can't type in it.
I followed along your comment and the links you provided, and I guess, it looks like we've moved beyond individual wire-taps: my read on what you are saying is that "we" (meaning the various spooks and operatives paid by our tax dollars) may now have the technology to intercept tens of thousands of phone calls at the same time, at the touch of a button/flip of a switch/hitting of a key... and of course, its not mere conversations, but text messages, e-mails, faxes, you name it...
In theory, of course, "our government" could apply for some kind of a "blanket warrant" to do all this, but the mere application would alert someone (in the judiciary) to the game as a whole, and that the technology to do it had arrived... something the exec didn't want to share with either the leg or judic branches, it seems.
As long as we have a GOP majority House of Representatives, the concept of impeaching the President whose Deputy Chief of Staff is responsible for most of them having their seats is ludicrous, of course.
OTOH, if this issue gets traction, coupled with the ongoing corruption in GOP leadership, maybe there will be a change in the composition of the House. As if.
I hope what you are saying is not true... that this is simply the usual lying and dissembling from the White House and that it really is just a large number of individual wire taps on individuals... because if its the alternative and we really have arrived at the advent of this kind of Big Brother technology, given the defaults by the judicial and legislative branches in so many other things, not to mention the press, the opposition party, and the voters themselves, then we pretty much have to welcome Big Brother as a permanent part of our lives...
Posted by the talking dog at January 2, 2006 1:14 AM
"I hope what you are saying is not true..."
The precise scope, and most of the rest of the details are obscure, but the basics of the data-mining and switch-compromising is inarguable, I claim.
"that this is simply the usual lying and dissembling from the White House and that it really is just a large number of individual wire taps on individuals..."
No, it's absolutely not that at all. See most recent post if that helps.
Posted by Gary Farber at January 2, 2006 2:44 PM
"...we really have arrived at the advent of this kind of Big Brother technology,"\
If you follow along the Echelon links -- a topic I've been following since around 1982, you'll see that it's just an extension of earlier NSA activity, of which I've been following as best as I can in my amateur way since being a kid circa 1969 or so, most of the technology has been used since, well, INTELSTAT circa 1966, although we could go back to the BKUSA Agreement circa 1944 for the political origin, and then talk about technical way-stations during the Seventies and early Eighties.
The difference here is that it was all for intelligence gathering, mostly foreign, although also domestic counter-intel. What's happened here is the tearing down of the "wall" between intel and the criminal justice/domestic cterrorism systems with the PATRIOT ACT. We had that wall for a reason, and it wasn't because of Jamie Gorelick's perfidious evil or stupidity.
Posted by Gary Farber at January 2, 2006 2:49 PM
Not that I'm saying the PATRIOT ACT authorized or legalized any of this shit, mind. I'm just saying that that's how we got here, regardless.
Posted by Gary Farber at January 2, 2006 2:50 PM