Reform the 'Patriot Act'? Of course!

Now that the federal appeals court ruling has come down that the main NSA surveillance program - based on the Patriot Act  - has been illegal, what should be the reaction of our congress critters? Well, total reform! But instead we see the usual lunatics on the Right saying it must be sustained. Mitch McConnell, not known for being the sharpest knife in the drawer, actually said that had the current  dragnet, mass surveillance program existed back in Sept. 2001 the attacks never would have occurred.

Of course, this is out and out blatant balderdash. But, as usual the 'pukes play on Americans' short term memories of events to exploit new fears. The facts? There was a surfeit of data available at the time that - had the Bushies paid the slightest attention - could have thwarted the attacks.

Nowhere do reepos like Marco Rubio or McConnell mention how FBI agent Coleen Rowley  and her Minneapolis FBI field office  nabbed "20th hijacker" Zaccharias Moussaou  just before 9/11- and detained him.  The Minneapolis FBI office immediately sought a criminal warrant to search his belongings  but were prevented from doing so. Management at the FBI dealing with the request threw up numerous obstacles to the agents, and even withheld information from them, including the now-infamous Phoenix Memo written by an agent in Arizona warning of terrorists training in flight schools for a possible upcoming attack. The request was denied and agents were prevented from searching Moussaoui's laptop, which contained information that would have tipped the FBI off to the 9/11 plot.

So the information was right there, suspect at hand and a critical search in the offing, but it was ignored!  Bush himself stands accused of the most blatant carelessness in not responding proactively  to the President's Daily Briefs (PDBs)  that came his way that August. If one goes to the official 9/11 Commission Report he will find the following, under the section: ‘The System was Blinking Red’

Page 254:

"Each PDB (President's Daily Brief) consists of a series of six to eight relatively short articles or briefs covering a broad array of topics; CIA staff decides which subjects are the most important on any given day. There were more than 40 intelligence articles in the PDBs from January 20 to September 10, 2001, that related to Bin Ladin. "

On page 255:

"In the spring of 2001, the level of reporting on terrorist threats and planned attacks increased dramatically to its highest level since the millennium alert. At the end of March, the intelligence community disseminated a terrorist threat advisory, indicating a heightened threat of Sunni extremist terrorist attacks against U.S. facilities, personnel, and other interests."

And further (ibid.):

"On March 23, in connection with discussions about possibly reopening Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, Clarke warned National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that domestic or foreign terrorists might use a truck bomb—their “weapon of choice”—on Pennsylvania Avenue. That would result, he said, in the destruction of the West Wing and parts of the residence. He also told her that he thought there were terrorist cells within the United States, including al Qaeda."

Further (ibid.):

"In May 2001, the drumbeat of reporting grew louder with reports to top officials that “Bin Ladin public profile may presage attack” and “Bin Ladin network’s plans advancing.” In early May, a walk-in to the FBI claimed there was a plan to launch attacks on London, Boston, and New York.

Attorney General John Ashcroft was briefed by the CIA on May 15 regarding al Qaeda generally and the current threat reporting specifically. The next day brought a report that a phone call to a U.S. embassy had warned that Bin Ladin supporters were planning an attack in the United States using “high explosives.”

Of course, the most sensational Daily Brief of all was that dated August 6, 2001 and headed: Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US . Bush received this while at his Crawford, TX retreat. (He took more vacations than any other president in his first year alone.) And how did Bush respond to this? He gave a quick glance then went to clear some ....bush. But what ought to have made his eyeballs pop out was the short paragraph reading (p. 255-56):

"An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [—] service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the US to mount a terrorist strike."

I also found it interesting to read through the communication exchanges as the hijackings became apparent, especially for American Flt. 11. According to the transcripts in the Report (page 20):

FAA: Hi. Boston Center TMU [Traffic Management Unit], we have a problem here.We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to,we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.

NEADS: Is this real-world or exercise?

FAA: No, this is not an exercise, not a test.

The reaction of NEADS (National Emergency Air Defense System), i.e. asking “Is this real world or exercise?” is instructional. Evidently, as came out later, no less than five different military “exercises” were planned and underway, including:

‘Operation Vigilant Guardian’ which simulated hijacked planes in the northeast sector-corridor. This definitely contributed to the confused response on the given day, as evidenced after NORAD received a phone call from Boston Center about a hijacking and Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins responded “It must be part of the exercise”.

Thus delaying critical response to the REAL attacks in NYC.

Then there was ‘Operation Northern Vigilance’ – planned months in advance of 9/11 (tracked to when the peak of terror warnings were being issued in May, as reported by the 9/11 Report) and for which jet fighters were removed from the east coast and sent to Alaska and Canada. Thereby, leaving a security hole at the precise date and region which would be most directly affected

As I learned more about these exercises, and the withdrawal of needed air security, the similarity to what transpired in the days before the Kennedy assassination was striking. Researchers learned only in the wake of that executive action that: 1) The Secret Service detail had been changed in the days leading up to the Dallas motorcade, with an inexperienced agent in Kennedy’s car, while the more experienced guy (Cliff Hill) protected LBJ, and 2) The usual Army security detail from Ft. Sam Houston, TX was removed so their presence was nowhere on Dallas’ streets on Nov. 22, 1963. Ordinarily they’d have had building oversight, ensuring no open windows and have had snipers posted themselves as a counter measure.

Were the 9/11 military exercises, planned in advance as a cover or distraction to make effective air defense response more unlikely? The basic answer is we don’t know, although the extent of withdrawn protection makes one suspicious.

Without wading into the morass of 9/11 conspiracy theories  - most of which I deem improbable - the main  point in context here (re: renewing of full Patriot Act) is there was: a) ample surveillance data present at the time to have stopped the attacks if proper response from authorities was forthcoming, and b) there were likely ample military resources to prevent the attacks had these not been displaced to a location where they became useless.

In effect, if a surfeit of data available then didn't stop the  9/11  attacks it is  logical to assert that vacuuming up massive amounts of data now won't make us any safer either. It will merely increase the 'haystack' in which the critical 'needle' must be found. Hence, we don't need the Patriot Act as it stands and it merely serves as an excuse to undermine civil liberties, nothing more.

As Sen. Ron Wyden put it this morning on MSNBC, citing the President's own Advisory Group  - (made up of "very conservative people with strong national security credentials") said on page 104 of their report:

"Collecting all of these phone records from law-abiding Americans with no connection to wrongdoing does not really advance the cause of fighting terror. That information can be obtained by  conventional means."

To his credit, Sen. Wyden made clear that if the fear mongers seek to go with a "short term extension" he plans to filibuster - unless there are reforms to the bulk collection program. Wyden stated he's "tired of extending a bad law".

Let's also recall that one of the original authors of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, has asserted that Section 215 was never intended to go as far as Bush and Obama have driven it. Writing in the Summer, 2014 issue of the ACLU Stand:

"Section 215 was intended to give the government the ability to secure 'any tangible thing' connected to specific terrorism investigations. As is now common knowledge, the Bush and Obama administrations took the limited power Congress intended and went rogue. If we had known during any subsequent re-authorizations what we now know about Section 215's blatant misinterpretation, Congress would have allowed it to sunset.  And if it's not fixed by the 2015 re-authorization, Congress will.

The basic idea behind the American search and seizure law is that you can't investigate unless you can first provide at least some articulable reason to do so. Investigations just can't be arbitrary. The government's definition, on the other hand, is the very definition of arbitrary. "

Let us hope Congress processes that carefully, before taking any reckless action to approve this egregious law's extension or reinstatement.

Is No One Prepared to Collar the NSA and Its Zealous Overeach?

Edward Snowden, a true patriot, receives his ACLU card from Anthony Romero.

Does the NSA even understand the meaning of the 4th amendment? Does Congress? Especially the weasel rats that signed onto the FISA Amendments Act of 2008  which ratified and expanded the warrantless surveillance program originating under Bush Jr. But rather than adhering to their sworn oaths to protect and defend the Constitution , these vermin rats legalized Bush's transgressions - thereby setting the stage for the latest outrages.

For those who may not have been paying attention, a 4-month investigation by the WaPo has found that ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks. In other words, the so-called protective surveillance is merely an extended fishing expedition that often scarfs up incidental private material of average Americans.

Most pertinent: Nine of 10 internet account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

What sort of stuff was caught? According to the Post:


"Medical records sent from one family member to another, résumés from job hunters and academic transcripts of schoolchildren. In one photo, a young girl in religious dress beams at a camera outside a mosque.   Scores of pictures show infants and toddlers in bathtubs, on swings, sprawled on their backs and kissed by their mothers. In some photos, men show off their physiques. In others, women model lingerie, leaning suggestively into a webcam or striking risque poses in shorts and bikini tops."

Can this even be believed? I mean, this is insight into an agency gone rogue and even crazy!

Taken together, the files offer an unprecedented vantage point on the changes wrought by Section 702 of the FISA amendments, which enabled the NSA to make freer use of methods that for 30 years had required probable cause and a warrant from a judge. One program, code-named PRISM, extracts content stored in user accounts at Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and five other leading Internet companies. Another, known inside the NSA as Upstream, intercepts data on the move as it crosses the U.S. junctions of global voice and data networks. According to the Post:

"No government oversight body, including the Justice Department, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, intelligence committees in Congress or the president’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, has delved into a comparably large sample of what the NSA actually collects — not only from its targets but also from people who may cross a target’s path."

Let's also reference here the basis of how this crap evolved, and make reference here to Jim Sensenbrenner who co-authored the Patriot Act (with Patrick Leahy). In the Summer 2014 issue of the ACLU STAND magazine, Sensenbrenner writes:

"Section 215 was intended to give the government the ability to secure 'any tangible thing' connected to specific terrorism investigations. As is now common knowledge, the Bush and Obama administrations took the limited power Congress intended and went rogue. If we had known during any subsequent re-authorizations what we now know about Section 215's blatant misinterpretation, Congress would have allowed it to sunset.  And if it's not fixed by the 2015 re-authorization, Congress will.

The basic idea behind the American search and seizure law is that you can't investigate unless you can first provide at least some articulable reason to do so. Investigations just can't be arbitrary. The government's definition, on the other hand, is the very definition of arbitrary. "

Thus Snowden's revelations have consistently shown the extent of overreach by the NSA in its illegal mass surveillance, via assorted programs including PRISM, XKeyscore and MUSCULAR. Congress refuses to act in a substantial and coherent way (with the exception of the USA Freedom Act- which trolls like Feinstein have vowed to gut) because they see an advantage in looking the other way. Besides, most are cowards and don't want to be criticized as "unpatriotic" by the FOXite orbit.

By law, the NSA may “target” only foreign nationals located overseas unless it obtains a warrant based on probable cause from a special surveillance court. For collection under PRISM and Upstream rules, analysts must state a reasonable belief that the target has information of value about a foreign government, a terrorist organization or the spread of nonconventional weapons.

But the indiscriminate NSA net discloses "warrants based on probable cause" are mostly a contrived fiction. Most  of the people caught up in those programs were not the targets and would not lawfully qualify as such. “Incidental collection” of third-party communications is inevitable in many forms of surveillance, but in other contexts the U.S. government works harder to limit and discard irrelevant data. In criminal wiretaps, for example, the FBI is supposed to stop listening to a call if a suspect’s wife or child is using the phone. Why does the NSA get a pass or take a pass? Because as Sensenbrenner notes: "the Bush and Obama administrations took the limited power Congress intended and went rogue".


Worse, many congress critters and Senators have since signed on to this perfidy and encouraged even stronger surveillance.  Recall back in November, Feinstein tabled her own bill to counter the USA Freedom Act of Sensenbrenner and Leahy. It basically codified the ability of the National Security Agency to search its troves of foreign phone and email communications for Americans’ information, and permit law enforcement agencies to search the vast databases as well. In effect, it would both make permanent a loophole permitting the NSA to search for Americans’ identifying information without a warrant – and, formalize an ambiguity that might allow the FBI, the DEA and other law enforcement agencies to do the same thing.

In other words, it's surveillance on PCP plus crack. Multiplied "warrants" issued, all without proper cause, since such cause (under the 4th) must be attached to individual warrants. You simply cannot extract individual cause or guilt from mass, warrantless search. Once you cross that boundary you go over the precipice and become - if not already - a fascist surveillance state.  According to Michelle Richardson, the surveillance lobbyist for the ACLU:

"For the first time, the statute would explicitly allow the government to proactively search through the NSA data troves of information without a warrant.   It may also expand current practices by allowing law enforcement to directly access US person information that was nominally collected for foreign intelligence purposes. This fourth amendment back door needs to be closed, not written into stone.”

And yet, fellow citizens, that is what we are on the verge of, unless courageous people dedicated to the Constitution act and stand up on principle.

The problem is that as the hysteria over the ISIS group in Iraq increases, and "national security" again instills fear in too many, more congress critters may prefer to opt for "security" than civil liberty. In other words, another round of terrorist fear may well spark even more draconian national security dragnets with more Americans caught up in the web.

Obviously, many Americans are simply too lame or dumb to care.  And probably see nothing wrong in the Post's revelations. Wives picked up in skimpy Victoria's Secret lingerie  posing on their beds, or toddlers frolicking in bathtubs? No problem! These mock  'Muricans will simply lay down like dogs and say 'I  just wanna  be made safe from Baghdadi and ISIS, so do it some more!"   Which shows they have no grasp of the 4th amendment and probably don't deserve liberty in any case. They are an affront to what my Revolutionary War ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh fought for.

Worse, they are like the 'good Germans' who looked the other way as Hitler's Gestapo collected information on all their friends and neighbors - and they even provided extra help. Sadly, we have to share the country with these security lap dogs, as we do Neoliberal traitors to the Constitution like Dianna Feinstein and Lindsey Graham.

The true citizen can only hope that at some stage a real patriot -  or preferably patriots - stands with Edward Snowden to help collar the NSA nuts gone wild, and steer this nation back to surveillance sobriety and temperance. If not, the last vestiges of privacy will soon be a long lost memory never to be resurrected again. We will then be on our way to mutating to a full fascist state.
  
See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-scheer/56797/hillary-clinton-flaunts-her-surveillance-state-baggage

A Day for All Americans to Be More Aware of Their 4th Amendment Rights- And How They've Been Eroded

Above, Edward Snowden receives his ACLU membership card from Anthony Romero, head of the ACLU

As Americans fire up their grills and barbecue pits today, and quaff gallons of beer, one hopes they also give a thought to what the day is really about. Hint: It's not just about entertainment and eats, but also about history.  What was the War of Independence fought over anyway? Do most people today even know? Did they ever study it or track relatives who participated in it?

Fortunately, I hail from a family that's documented much of the associated history. (Which my wife has excavated via ancestry.com and discussions with cousins, other relatives discovered in her genealogical searches)  My great grandmother, Eliza Brumbaugh Stahl,  also had many occasions to regale grandson, Curtis Jr. (my dad), regarding the exploits of ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh - who fought with the Pennsylvania Regiment in the War of Independence. Like many of the colonists, Conrad was enraged by the Stamp Act of 1765 (which imposed stamp taxes on all publications originating in the colonies) but his greatest ire was reserved for the Writs of Assistance. This was one of the outrages in the 1770s that led directly to the Revolutionary War and involved the use of indiscriminate mass warrants.  The British used the Writs to defy and besmirch any concept of the "personal" and smashed into colonists' homes on any pretext- tearing them apart.

By the 1770s the British use of the Writs of Assistance had become widespread and enraged all those affected. As one academic site explained:

"Most notably, the writs allowed officials to enter and ransack private homes without proving probable cause for suspicion, a traditional prerequisite to a search."

The Writs then provided the 'fuel' for the Revolution but the pamphlet 'Common Sense' -  by Thomas Paine, provided the spark to ignite it.  Make no mistake the pamphlet is an unapologetic polemic and I would recommend that readers unfamiliar with it at least read this key chapter:
http://www.bartleby.com/133/3.html

Try to put yourself back in the shoes of the colonists at the time, and imagine how Paine's words would spur them to action.

Now come forward 238 years and look at today's situation. What do you see? How would Conrad Brumbaugh react if informed of the changes in 4th amendment rights since he shed blood for those rights?  In writing the 4th amendment, the framers were motivated more than anything by the excesses of the Writs of Assistance.  This is why they deliberately singled out the need for authorities to obtain specific or individual warrants - mass warrants were anathema. The framers wanted no repeat of the outrages that launched the Revolution.

Yet that is exactly what's transpired! The Writs of Assistance bear perfect analogy to what the NSA is getting away with today using the mass warrants and its PRISM, Xkeyscore and MUSCULAR programs. And who today would be the new Thomas Paine? None other than Edward Snowden! In his recent interview (ACLU Stand, Summer 2014) with Anthony Romero of the ACLU (after being presented with his new ACLU membership card) Snowden was asked what he wanted to come out of all the turmoil and disruption to his life.  Also what he aspired to. He responded:

"My main purpose was simply to allow the average American to understand the policies of his government, that he wasn't asked about. And to allow us, as a civil body, to decide if this was the right thing and the direction we want to continue in.....there's a danger when the government is drafting and implementing policies in the dark, without the input of the voting public. Even the full body of congress wasn't aware of these programs"

Asked then about the relevance of the Fourth amendment today in relation to the past, Snowden answered:

"I think the 21st century Fourth Amendment can actually be the same as the 20th century version, and the 19th century version and the 18th century version because it's written in such clear terms that it doesn't need to be rewritten. It's couched in language like "unreasonable search and seizure", right?  If we have a specific reason - if we have an oath or affirmation that there is probable cause to peel back and intrude upon the civil rights of a target individual. That's the traditional purpose of investigative authorities, whether it's a law enforcement or intelligence investigation.

But the two parts of which we have to keep in the 21st century are not only that unreasonable searches are prohibited - where the NSA can't go in and look at someone's information in the first place unless they have a suspicion for doing so.

It's not reasonable for the NSA to collect every phone call of every American...without  suspicion justifying it."

Co-author of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, supports Snowden's take, pertaining to Sec. 215 enfolded into the "FISA Amendments Act of 2008"  which ratified and expanded the warrantless surveillance program originating under Bush Jr. Sensenbrenner, in the same issue (op. cit. 'I Wrote the Patriot Act - Now Let's Fix It', p. 10) writes:

"Section 215 was intended to give the government the ability to secure "any tangible thing" connected to specific terrorism investigations. As is now common knowledge, the Bush and Obama administrations took the limited power Congress intended and went rogue. If we had known during any subsequent re-authorizations what we now know about Section 215's blatant misinterpretation, Congress would have allowed it to sunset.  And if it's not fixed by the 2015 re-authorization, Congress will.

The basic idea behind the American search and seizure law is that you can't investigate unless you can first provide at least some articulable reason to do so. Investigations just can't be arbitrary. The government's definition, on the other hand, is the very definition of arbitrary. "

Indeed, Snowden's revelations have shown us the extent of the NSA mass surveillance,  the arbitrary use of mass warrants and  discloses a rejection not only of citizens’ fundamental right to privacy but any right to be secure in one’s person, papers, effects.  Conrad Brumbaugh and all of his cohort would be outraged and want to take up arms again if presented with Snowden's findings.  He would assert there's little difference between the current excesses and the British Writs of Assistance.

Incredibly, despite this, the most recent insult is the finding by a recent report — produced by a five-person panel picked by the president  that the Section 702 program was important and "narrowly legal".  This, after the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board had more than 100 facts declassified, whereupon board chairman David Medine boasted at a press conference, for its report on NSA’s Internet surveillance program and how it used Section 702 of the "FISA Amendments Act". (Again, which validated the illegal warrantless surveillance of the Bushies)

Before anyone congratulates Medine, let's bear in mind that the PCLOB relied heavily on a report written by NSA’s privacy officer that purported to provide new information; even when NSA released the report in April, however, that report stopped short of reporting all the known details about the 702 program and as such read like a press release. Compounding this 'fox helping the henhouse' meme is the fact that Medine did not say what those newly declassified facts included, but there are a number of footnotes that refer to and describe still-redacted parts of at least one previously released report.   In addition, in recent days, the government has released a transparency report admitting that the government collected 89,138 targets under the Section 702 program, and released a report to Sen. Ron Wyden providing the numbers of “back door searches” various agencies conducted last year.

Anyone paying attention? Americans should be, especially now as the hysteria over the ISIS punks and wannabe jihadists ramps up, and which will likely be used for even more warrantless searches. All done to keep us "safe" of course.

But let's recognize that PCLOB's finding has been limited by the government’s own desire to pretend nothing Snowden released has been released. (Got that?) Given that there’s a copy in the public domain, there’s really little excuse for the government to hide the most current procedures (except, perhaps, to make court challenges to the program more difficult).

"NSA programs narrowly legal?' ROTFL! What discredits the PCLOB report are its claims that both Americans and non-Americans will be protected by a requirement the government tell criminal defendants if it uses Section 702-derived information against them. In fact, the government had never complied with this requirement until last year, simply ignoring that requirement of the law for five years. Worse still, when the ACLU tried to challenge Section 702, DOJ falsely told the Supreme Court it had been "complying with that requirement".  But it still hasn’t corrected that false claim. While true,  the government has started giving a few defendants the required notice, it has not given notice to all known defendants caught using Section 702. In fact, the two people named in its report (and one named in their earlier report) as having been identified using Section 702 never got such notice.

It is public and unclassified information that the government has not complied with a crucial aspect of the law. Not only did PCLOB not consider that non-compliance in its assessment of the program’s legality and constitutionality. But it claimed it had found no instance of deliberate non-compliance. 1984 anyone?  Where is Emmanuel Goldstein and his Newspeak expose when we need him?

It is long past time, given Snowden's revelations, Americans sit up and take notice on how their precious 4th amendment rights have been eaten away, especially on a day dedicated to American Independence.

Are Americans truly independent? Or are they ever more dependent on a metastasizing, national security "Pappy" state to keep them out of harm's way from them nasty jihadists....while their most basic rights become redundant?

TIME's PERSON of the YEAR? It Has to be Edward Snowden!

Anti-NSA demonstrators pay homage to Ed Snowden back in October.

As the scuttlebutt heats up over who will be TIME's Person of the Year, most of those who've been paying any attention at all believe it to be a no-brainer: Edward Snowden! The reason is simple: No other man or woman on this planet has done more to enhance the knowledge of citizens as to how their rights have been gutted by mass, indiscriminate surveillance, than Ed Snowden.  No other person has done more to expose maleficent deeds, including spying on allies and setting up an ancillary 'Patriot Act' program called "Main Core" to identify future "enemies of the state".  No other person has disclosed the extent to which the national security fascists have run amuck - even to the extent of seizing citizens' laptops - as disclosed by Green Greenwald on the UK Guardian some months ago (as occurred to his partner at Heathrow Airport - compliments of the GCHQ, NSA's Brit "sister".). 

Given this, and the fact knowledge is power, and the knowledge transmitted by Snowden also amounts to a global influence on world events, decisions -  on which the  'Person of the Year' is supposedly based, Snowden is a simple choice.  Yes, yes, the political class -  all in bed with the national security state   - will howl like stuck pigs, what would you expect? Their warp and woof is lies, political subterfuge and keeping us all deaf, dumb, blind and stupid. If we all had been kept as quiet, ignorant little sheep left to our own material consumption, debt and distractions,  they'd have no complaints about Snowden. But because this one Constitutional patriot opened daylight on their shenanigans he thereby became Public Enemy Number One. Never mind, to real citizens he's a hero for exposing the extent to which our 4th amendment rights have been gutted by false legislation that actually rendered legal what was once lawless.

What are some of the many contributions Edward Snowden has made in the last 6 months?

- Revealing the PRISM and XKeyscore programs of the NSA to gobble terabytes of "metadata" and other data, simply because the technology allows it. This, in direct violation of the 4th Amendment which demands specific warrants apply. But because a cowardly congress couldn't bring itself to prosecute the Bushies (who used warrantless wiretaps from 2005-07) then it made their lawlessness legal retroactively via a  2011 Fisa redo, with new rubber stamping Fisa courts replacing real ones (set up under the original 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act).

To acknowledge these mighty contributions of a true patriot, not a paper patriot, Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department ethics advisor,  now a director with the Government Accountability Project, read a statement from Snowden to a crowd of NSA protestors back in October:

 

 

"This isn't about red or blue party lines, and it definitely isn't about terrorism. It's about being able to live in a free and open society."

Indeed! But Snowden's June-July revelations were just the beginning.


- In September, before a U.S. -Brazil meeting Snowden revealed how the U.S. and NSA had spied upon the email messages of Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff. Outraged, Rousseff took to a UN podium to decry the tactics, e.g.

She said:

"Without respect for a nation's sovereignty, there is no basis for proper relations among nations,"

This ought to be a no-brainer. Because to spy on another country is to display malignant distrust of the spied -on nation. It therefore undermines polity, as well as civility, and in the process destroys any potential for normal relations or mutual respect. I would advance the same regarding the relation between a state and its citizens. If the former intrudes and spies on its people, then it mistrusts them at the core, and the citizen - knowing this - has no choice but to mistrust the state.

Rousseff added:

"Without the right of privacy, there is no real freedom of speech or freedom of opinion, and so there is no actual democracy."

In other words, people denied this right - by NSA intrusiveness - via XKeyscore, PRISM or whatever, are inhabiting a Potemkin democracy. They have no true freedom of speech because they can't know how their (spied and mass-grabbed) speech is being used.

But without Snowden's justifiable revelations we'd never had been made aware of this!

Rousseff went on to say (ibid.):

"Tampering in such a manner in the affairs of other countries is a breach of international law and is an affront of the principles that must guide the relations among them, especially among friendly nations. A sovereign nation can never establish itself to the detriment of another sovereign nation. The right to safety of citizens of one country can never be guaranteed by violating fundamental human rights of citizens of another country."


- Within another month, Snowden revealed the extent of the NSA's spying on our own European allies.  This centered on grabbing up the cell phone messages of Germany's Angela Merkel. As the word leaked out, German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere told German ARD television the alleged surveillance would be “really bad” if confirmed. He added:  “The Americans are and remain our best friends, but this is absolutely not right.”


These revelations prompted a full court press to rein in the NSA spooks via new legislation ('USA Freedom Act')  touted by Patriot Act co-authors, Jim Sensenbrenner and Patrick Leahy.  Quoted in the UK Guardian, Sensenbrenner said:


"Oversight only works when the agency that oversight is directed at tells the truth, and having Mr Clapper say he gave the least untruthful answer should, in my opinion, have resulted in a firing and a prosecution,"

Referring to Clapper's lying before a Senate Committee earlier, in March. Sensenbrenner's outrage occurred even as it was disclosed that Americans' communications were supposed to be destroyed as soon as possible, but they could be kept by NSA  for up to six years to see if they meet certain criteria, according to recently declassified guidelines (pdf). In addition, it was learned that metadata about nearly every phone call made within the United States, kept in another NSA storehouse, can be saved for five years. 


Meanwhile, a New York Times report revealed that the NSA keeps a wide range of information about Americans' communications for up to five years in online databases and another ten years "offline for 'historical searches". Also revealed is that an FBI agent can open an intrusive investigation with no reason to suspect criminal activity, and any resulting information can be kept for 20-30 years, even if it has no relationship to the investigation.

All of which prompted Sensenbrenner to tell the Guardian:

"We had thought that the 2006 amendment, by putting the word 'relevant' in, was narrowing what the NSA could collect. Instead, the NSA convinced theFISA court that the relevance clause was an expansive rather than contractive standard, and that's what brought about the metadata collection, which amounts to trillions of phone calls." 


- Leading to the most recent revelations of the NSA "CO-TRAVELER" program which gobbles up 5 billion cell phone calls each day from around the world.  According to the most recent Guardian report, e.g. 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/04/nsa-storing-cell-phone-records-daily-snowden
 
"The spy agency is said to be tracking the movements of “at least hundreds of millions of devices” in what amounts to a staggeringly powerful surveillance tool. It means the NSA can, through mobile phones, track individuals anywhere they travel – including into private homes – or retrace previously traveled journeys.

The data can also be used to study patterns of behaviour to reveal personal information and relationships between different users."

If Edward Snowden doesn't receive the 'Person of the Year' award, then one can only conclude the award itself doesn't matter as it's not based on its own fundamental criteria!

Dianne Feinstein - A Certified Creep and Mass Surveillance Enabler

I don’t understand this being bamboozled into thinking that you have to do this to find bad guys. That’s false. There’s very simple principles you can use to find out who is the bad guy and who isn’t and you can do this without violating anybody’s privacy”. -   Bill Binney, former NSA code breaker on CBS Early Show, June 19

Is Dem Neoliberal Dianne Feinstein a defender of the Constitution? Hardly! She appears to be hell bent to disembowel all fourth amendment protections for Americans by pushing on congress a "FISA Improvements Act" which will, in fact, gut all remaining protections of privacy and basic rights for Americans - by legalizing a loophole known as the "backdoor search provision". I already went into some of this in previous blogs and the reasons why it's a terrible idea. Let's start out with the statement of the 4th amendment itself - which evidently Feinstein has no clue about:

“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 probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Note, “secure in one’s person, house, papers, effects” implies PRIVACY! These are after all MY private papers, my private effects, my house, etc. If an inherent right to privacy was a myth then by all accounts being secure in one’s person, papers, effects wouldn’t matter. Hell, let the whole freakin’ world see ‘em! This is why in a fascist dictatorship “personal effects” don’t exist. “Personal papers” has no meaning. The state has full monopoly, de facto ownership on whatever the person has, even his own body. Hence, in fascist dictatorships, such as existed in Nazi Germany, all personal effects, papers could be seized by the Nazis on a whim or remote suspicion - under the Reich Laws. A fundamental right to privacy, meanwhile, insists there exist bona fide entities that one can uniquely own, e.g. papers, effects – including photos or what not- that are private. Without this fundamental right, then, “personal papers, effects” has no meaning hence the 4th amendment is meaningless.

What we conclude then is the NSA, government mass surveillance, mass warrants recently revealed, discloses a rejection not only of citizens’ fundamental right to privacy but any right to be secure in one’s person, papers, effects. So, screw the citizen, the gov’t has arrogated to itself the right to seize anything deemed personal or private once it’s within its purview – whether a phone record, an internet communication, email or whatever. The powers -that- be may really argue they’re doing this for our own good, but in reality they are acting the part of a fascist dictatorship in denying any right of privacy or recognition of individuality at all.  Note the reasons or their declared motivations for doing so are irrelevant.  The wise citizen who's kept up with events knows that "terrorism" is an exploited gimmick and shtick merely used to justify uncontrolled, unregulated surveillance.

As I wrote about earlier (Nov. 1) reasonable alternative legislation is available to steer the NSA in the proper direction. It is cosponsored by Democrat Patrick Leahy and Jim Sensenbrenner, a co-author of the Patriot Act.  Their bill is called the "USA Freedom Act", and to see more go to: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-31/usa-freedom-act-would-leash-the-national-security-agency

Recall Sensenbrenner agreed with Snowden's take on the damage done by this indiscriminate mass spy shtick - ditching individual warrants through the ruse of a bogus Fisa court (set up as legal only after the Bush warrantless searches) . As he was quoted in a UK Guardian piece three weeks ago:

"Oversight only works when the agency that oversight is directed at tells the truth, and having Mr Clapper say he gave the least untruthful answer should, in my opinion, have resulted in a firing and a prosecution,"

So, realizing the 4th amendment-protecting  Leahy-Sensenbrenner bill posed  a threat to her security bonanza, Feinstein set about neutralizing it with her own bill.  This would codify the ability of the National Security Agency to search its troves of foreign phone and email communications for Americans’ information, and permit law enforcement agencies to search the vast databases as well. In effect, it would both make permanent a loophole permitting the NSA to search for Americans’ identifying information without a warrant – and, formalize an ambiguity that might allow the FBI, the DEA and other law enforcement agencies to do the same thing.

In other words, it's surveillance on PCP plus crack. Multiplied "warrants" issued, all without proper cause, since such cause (under the 4th) must be attached to individual warrants. You simply cannot extract individual cause or guilt from mass, warrantless search. Once you cross that boundary you go over the precipice and become - if not already - a fascist surveillance state.  According to Michelle Richardson, the surveillance lobbyist for the ACLU:

"For the first time, the statute would explicitly allow the government to proactively search through the NSA data troves of information without a warrant.   It may also expand current practices by allowing law enforcement to directly access US person information that was nominally collected for foreign intelligence purposes. This fourth amendment back door needs to be closed, not written into stone.”

Section 6 of Feinstein’s bill blesses what her committee colleague Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat and civil libertarian, has called the “backdoor search provision, which the Guardian revealed thanks to a leak by Edward Snowden.

This is serious shit. Are Americans paying attention, or are they  too tied up in their twitters, 'Survivor", Facebook or whatever?   Especially given that Feinstein’s bill passed the committee on an 11 to 4 vote on 31 October. An expanded report on its provisions released by the committee this week added details about the ability of both intelligence and law enforcement to sift through foreign communications databases that it accumulates under section 702 of the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008. (This is the specious law that legalized ex post facto Bush's warrantless wiretaps. Rather than hauling the Bushies over the coals, our traitors in congress found it easier to legalize the misdeeds).

But maybe there is no way to halt it because all the congress critters - Senators voting for it are already co-opted and compromised.  Think I'm jesting? Look, if LBJ had enough on Chief Justice Earl Warren to blackmail him back in '64 -  by invoking J. Edgar Hoover's files  about a little adventure in Mexico City (Michael R. Beschloss, Taking Charge:The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-64, 1997, p. 72) what do you think a fully-loaded NSA -CIA has on ALL congress folk today?  Hesitate to vote on Feinstein's bogus law? Well, they  might be in the same predicament as Chief Justice Warren after he initially balked at serving on any Warren Commission, and LBJ cited Hoover's files to terrify him into compliance.

See more of this at:  http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/dave-lindorff/52437/what-s-done-abroad-can-be-done-at-home-too-is-nsa-spying-really-about-blackmail


What we may be looking at, then, is a nation whose reps are no longer accountable to the people because all (or most) of them are compromised in some way by the national security state.  If the latter has enough goods on any of them, then how in hell can they vote their conscience? And if they can't exercise their conscience in a critical vote affecting all citizens, how can they be any more than controlled Zombots- whether by the NSA, Feinstein or whoever?

People also ought to be disturbed by the  ambiguity surrounding whether the FBI can currently search through the NSA’s foreign communications databases, or is reliant on the NSA to pass on information from the databases relevant to the bureau. A declassified Fisa court document from 2011 refers to “FBI minimization procedures,” but it is unclear what those procedures are. A copy of the FBI minimization procedures from 2009, acquired by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act is almost completely redacted.  So is the section in the government’s most recent report on its Section 702 collection dealing with the FBI’s role, though it contains references to how the FBI “receive[s] … unminimized Section 70 acquired communications” from the NSA.

Sadly, our votes may no longer count if -  once our chosen reps gain office-  their sundry pasts are revived by the NSA in assorted collected files and brought into sharp focus.  With one or more peccadilloes (or crimes) exposed, it's then a small matter to extract concessions on key legislation or total submission. In this case, we may be little different from Germany after the Enabling Act was passed.