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by "The time for debate is over," announced President Bush after threatening last week to the House of Representatives with a veto to any surveillance bill that prevents intelligence agencies from doing their jobs. President Bush stepped up pressure on the House to pass new rules for monitoring terrorists communications in a measure that passed the Senate on Tuesday. President Bush said, "terrorists are planning new attacks on our country ... that will make Sept. 11 pale by comparison."
The Surveillance Bill will give telecommunications companies retroactive immunity from privacy lawsuits so long as they cooperate with providing intelligence agencies the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails between suspected terrorists. "We need the cooperation of telecommunications companies," Bush said. "If these companies are subjected to lawsuits costing billions of dollars, they won't participate, they won't help us."
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No need for change by Occams :: NR6 :: on 13 February 2008
Interception of private telecommunications already requires a court order (warrant) from a judge.
Telecommunications carriers must obey a court order, and must refuse to do it without one.
No civil actions against carriers for doing this are possible if there is a court order.
This is already the law and there is no need to change it.
So what is Bush up to here?
RE: No need for change by wyldeling :: NR6 :: on 14 February 2008
There are two issues here. The first, is that the telecoms put in some wiretaps without a warrant, and the administration wants them to be immune from the lawsuits that resulted from it. Second, the administration wants the ability to tap any phone call between some one in the US and any other party that is reasonably believed to be outside of the US without the need for a warrant to be issued. (I don't know if they will have to apply for a warrant within some amount of time after the tap is activated, or not, like the current FISA court warrants.)
As to the first issue, we should all be outraged that the telecoms went along with the warrantless wiretaps, that the administration asked for wiretaps without securing the appropriate warrants, and that the Congress is voting to make the telecoms immune to the backlash. The fact that the Senate vote was 68 - 29 (the full bill, and motions) in favor shows that we are not outraged nearly enough. The good news is that the House version of the bill does not include the telecom immunity, but unless the dumbocrats get a collective spine ...
As to the second issue, it is conceivable that under this law, a US citizen within the country calling another US citizen outside of the country may have their phone call recorded by the US government. My question is: why does the mere fact that a citizen is outside of the country entail that they lose their rights as a US citizen?
RE: No need for change by Occams :: NR6 :: on 14 February 2008
RE: No need for change
Thank you. That explains it.
Yes I share your outrage if telco carriers, at the behest of government officials, are breaking serious federal laws and not being prosecuted by the feds for it, and being annoyed about civil suits. They should be sued into bankruptcy in my opinion and those who requested the taps or implemented them should be sent to a federal prison for a very long time.
Our existing interception laws are nicely balanced as a result of decades of fine tuning. If government agencies have a genuine concern then they can get a warrant. If that process is too slow then attention should be given to speeding the process up - even, in extreme cases, by letting them anticipate a warrant and justify it to a judge soon after.
You are logically correct that foreign citizens should have the same privacy rights as US citizens. However in our democracy the citizens have voting rights and this gets them special consideration. It has always been the case that innocent people calling a person whose phone is under interception will be recorded. US law even tries to get around that problem by requiring that the officials monitoring the call should terminate the recording if there is no suspicious content during the first few seconds. Fat chance! In some comparable overseas jurisdictions citizens are not permitted to record even their own conversations without first warning the other person that they are doing so. The Film "Bonfire of the Vanities" was based on this aspect of our law.
We gave a stupid young citizen, David Hicks, of our most loyal ally in the War on Terror, Australia, the full shameful rendition and GitMo treatment,doing terrible things to him that we would never have been able to do to a US citizen.
Many of us probably feel that this kind of thing is justified in the post 911 War on Terror and I will refrain from the tired cliche that this makes us more like them, but it certainly does appear that this US administration has gone overboard in tossing out priceless justice provisions in our free society to make life easier for the intelligence agencies. In doing so it has given a major victory to the terrorists
RE: No need for change by wyldeling :: NR6 :: on 15 February 2008
You are logically correct that foreign citizens should have the same privacy rights as US citizens.
I wasn't implying that at all. I was stating that a US citizen calling another US citizen, who happens to be overseas, could have their call tapped without a warrant regardless of their guilt or innocence. My question then is, why does a US citizen lose their rights with the US government just because they happen to be outside of the country?
Many of us probably feel that this kind of thing is justified in the post 911 War on Terror ... but it certainly does appear that this US administration has gone overboard in tossing out priceless justice provisions in our free society to make life easier for the intelligence agencies.
The reason is simply fear. It is the same type of fear that people have with regards to radiation; it is an invisible threat that can strike at any time withour warning. It's a powerful motivator, and politicians have always capitalized on it. The only defence is vigilance, and a healthy level of outrage.
RE: No need for change by Occams :: NR6 :: on 15 February 2008
Well the USA has no right to tap telephone calls in another country. It may request that the other country do it for them but such requests are (prior to 911 anyway) routinely refused because that would often be illegal under local law.
However, using the immense technological resources of the NSA, the USA can crudely tap into almost any radio-based trunk services, cell phones and satellites (all radio signals on earth travel up to space) capturing millions of calls and then try to narrow down on a particular person. Extracting a particular single call from this broadband traffic is difficult and iffy - they may get one call and not the next. Domestic law requires all calls to be captured in case a later one provides exoneration
The problem for the Administration is that NSA inevitably captures the calls of thousands of US citizens as well as foreigners as it goes about its normal business - which it has been doing since WWII. This is its fundamental charter and reason for exisence stemming from Pearl Harbour. So it cannot ever testify that it is not monitoring US citizens in its international interception operations.
Anyway, I believe that most US citizens would feel that international telecommunications are fair game for the foreign intelligence agencies: CIA , NSA, FBI and NRO. Their view would be that terrorism usualy starts overseas, and citizens travelling abroad should not adversely impact on intelligence collection. I personally don't agree with this view because I think we should respect the laws of other countries, but I think the majority of US citizens would, and therefore such legislation will be passed.
Yes, I agree that the motivation is probably fear, but I don't accept that as a justification. This is the home of the brave and it is high time we started acting like it in defense of our hard-won legislated freedoms.
RE: No need for change by VnutZ :: NR8 :: on 15 February 2008
Of course, every country does the same to their respective foreigners. So it's one of those "games" in which everyone plays, everybody denies but everyone knows about.
No nation makes a fuss about the international monitoring because they have their hands in the cookie jar, too.
RE: No need for change by anthonyanthony :: NR5 :: on 15 February 2008
As to the first issue, we should all be outraged that the telecoms went along with the warrantless wiretaps, that the administration asked for wiretaps without securing the appropriate warrants, and that the Congress is voting to make the telecoms immune to the backlash.
I agree. When I read that the Senate voted in favor of immunity for telecoms, I was surprised. Well, what actually surprised me was the balance of yea vs nay. So many in favor?
RE: No need for change by Anonymous :: NR0 :: on 15 February 2008
Well there is no need to give immunity to Telecoms. NSA does not do its interception through telecos and does not need their help. The FBI does, but it is accustomed to getting warrants and is generally well regulated. The other 3 letter agencies can do it via the NSA or FBI.
US carriers providing services to US citizens in the USA should have no immunity from the current laws. All interception of any calls of US citizens should remain illegal without a warrant.
The security services of many countries probably do perform interception operations in other countries if they can find a way to do so (alligator clips on wires!!) but the scale of it is likely to be tiny and therefore concentrated on their most serious problems. The scale of the activities of the NSA are in no way comparable. So what we are doing to them is much worse than what they are doing to us.
I fear that our senators have succumbed to pressure or simply do not understand that there is no technical moral or legal need to provide any indemnities.