On June 6th, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) called for FISA Court opinions to be made public when possible, and on Tuesday, he and a panel of bipartisan Senators made good on that call. This legislation would require the Attorney General to declassify significant Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, aka FISA Court) opinions.
Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Al Franken (D-MN), Mike Lee (R-UT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Dean Heller (R-NV), Mark Begich (D-AK), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced the bill Tuesday that would offer more transparency to Americans regarding the government’s interpretation of the PATRIOT Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
“Americans deserve to know how much information about their private communications the government believes it’s allowed to take under the law,” Merkley said in a statement. “There is plenty of room to have this debate without compromising our surveillance sources or methods or tipping our hand to our enemies. We can’t have a serious debate about how much surveillance of Americans’ communications should be permitted without ending secret law.”
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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, aka FISA Court) was established in 1978. It oversees requests for surveillance warrants by federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI and NSA, inside and outside the United States. FISA Court rulings are highly classified, and thus it operates as a secret court. One of the scandals during the Bush administration was that they had been conducting surveillance against U.S. citizens without the knowledge of the court since 2002, as reported by the New York Times in December of 2005:
President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
They got this authority via a Presidential order signed by Bush in 2002. It’s worth noting that the Times delayed their article for a year after the Bush White House asked them not to publish it, saying it would threaten U.S. security. The Times did omit certain segments due to that request.
Franken pointed out last Thursday that there’s a balance between our privacy and national security, but we haven’t achieved that balance yet due to a lack of transparency, “There’s a balance to strike between protecting Americans’ privacy and protecting our country’s national security. I don’t think we’ve struck that balance. I’m concerned about the lack of transparency of these programs. The American public can’t be kept in the dark about the basic architecture of the programs designed to protect them.”
Where are the alleged freedom lovers on this bill? Words are relatively worthless, whereas legislation speaks volumes. You are either for reasonable transparency or you are not. But for those who argue that this is the exact same thing as what the Bush administration did, a history lesson is in order. President Bush’s order was unconstitutional, and even went around the court. His administration required no warrant for actual wiretapping. Obama is not Bush, and anyone making that argument is “misunderestimating” the egregious history of civil liberties under George W. Bush.
Under Obama, NSA is engaging in a legal, classified program whereas Bush bypassed the legal process all together. One was secret from the public, the other was secret from the public and also the courts. One was legal, one was illegal.
Good legislation that balances our privacy with national security in a reasonably transparent manner is the way to shine a real light on the Patriot Act.
Image: Activist Post
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