When Senator Claire McCaskill was asked by constituents why she voted for the FISA overhaul in early August, she said the following in a form letter:
It is important to recognize that this legislation is a temporary fix to provide our intelligence community with the most immediate tools needed to protect our country – it will be in place for only six months, and it cannot be renewed before it is thoroughly reviewed and authorized by Congress. This gives us six months to create a more acceptable permanent intelligence collection process that that allows us to effectively monitor terrorist communications overseas while also protecting the privacy of law-abiding American citizens. I can assure you I will be one of the Senators working hard to re-establish the constitutional protections that have been eroded by this President and this temporary FISA legislation.
The House Democratic leadership has introduced a bill, the RESTORE Act, that supposedly does just that. To review, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 was supposed to allow the executive branch some flexibility in surveilling Americans suspected of spying, while at the same time keeping the executive branch in check with a special court to review all warrants. For some reason, the Bush Administration decided that in many cases it was no longer necessary to consult with the FISA court, that no warrant was necessary to spy on American citizens. For reasons even more unfathomable to me, Congress not only avoided censuring the administration, but in August they actually passed a bill to grant legality to what Bush was doing! Under Democratic leadership!
Luckily, the measure sunsets in February, which leads us to where we are now. I imagine that the RESTORE Act was introduced by House Democrats in order to build up steam to head off a compromise bill currently being negotiated by our very own Senator Kit Bond. And as Glenn Greenwald notes, it’s not without good points, including compelling the Bush Administration to detail all electronic surveillance conducted without a warrant since Sept. 11, 2001. The bill also does NOT offer immunity to the telecom industry for their acquiescence in the illegal wiretapping. Unfortunately, there is one big problem, and that’s the allowance of “blanket” or “basket” warrants, which doesn’t require the government to narrow the target of the surveillance to a single person. In other words, it practically contradicts the idea of a warrant.
This is important. You need to pick up your phone and call your representatives RIGHT NOW and tell them the following:
1) Only pass a FISA Modernization Bill, such as the one introduced by Representative Rush Holt, that does NOT authorize blanket warrants. Blanket or basket warrants allow the government to suck up telephone calls and e-mails from unrelated individuals.
2) Do NOT give telecommunications companies or Bush Administration officials immunity for possible illegal acts in the last several years. There’s no need to reward them for doing the wrong thing in the past. And if they’ve supposedly done nothing wrong, why do they need immunity?
For more info on those two points, please see the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
To find the contact info for your representatives in Congress, click here. Keep it to the point and polite but firm.
Make some noise, people!
UPDATE: I just got word that the draft of the Senate bill contains a provision for telecom immunity. Make sure McCaskill knows that this is NOT acceptable.
I called Carnahan’s office with that message. After the aid and I talked about the need for real warrants (well, I talked and he listened) I said that more than anything I wanted to see Carnahan and the House stand up to the SENATE, because we could all be sure that whatever the Senate came up with will be completely unacceptable from a constitutional point of view. He actually chuckled appreciatively and said he completely understood what I was saying there.
Unfortunately, the House markup session yesterday was only for the RESTORE Act. We need to get our representatives to understand that blanket warrants are a sham and we see through them. We want them to protect our 4th Amendment rights. Make the calls!
BTW – great synopsis.
McCaskill was the only Democrat from Missouri who voted for the “Protect America” Act in August. Carnahan and Cleaver voted against, and Clay and Skelton missed the vote. You can guess which way the Repubs voted (and you’d be right.)
Clay, not surprisingly, is opposed to allowing blanket or basket warrants. The person I spoke to at McCaskill’s office was neutral. He just said he’d be sure she got the message.
I called Ike Skelton’s office. His staff is unfailingly polite (as always). I asked that Congressman Skelton consider Holt’s bill. They took down my name and address.
Senate FISA bill with it’s retroactive immunity for telcom companies, I hope she looks long and hard at that Quest CEO’s insider trading case. I enjoyed KagroX’s Front Page story over at dKos where he speculates based on a time line he put together from the news story. Of course I know nothing of the evidence presented at court about the insider trading but the timeline IS interesting.
Basically Quest was in line for a bunch of government contracts when, in February 2001, the CEO had a meeting with the govt about them. The the CEO sold over $50 million dollars worth of stock in April, then in July Quest wasn’t awarded the government contracts. Of course at the meeting about the contracts something else was discuss that is redacted out but the CEO said Quest couldn’t do because it was illegal. hmmm wonder what THAT was? Maybe the stuff that AT&T wants retroactive immunity for? Anyway, apparently the CEO wanted to raise the secret stuff as some kind of defense but wasn’t allowed … national security. The usual.
What’s interesting, as the people at TalkLeft are pointing out, is that the meeting where the illegal stuff came up happened in February 2001. If I were Claire I’d be asking some pointed questions about this illegal spying program. 9/11 may have changed everything … but this happened BEFORE 9/11. Bush wanted to illegally spy on us all along. Within a month of his inauguration.
It makes me sick that the Democrats continue to cave to this man and his cronies.
I just got off the phone with Claire McCaskill’s office in Washington. I think I got a sympathetic aide.
When I stated that telecom immunity was ridiculous – “If the telecoms did nothing wrong they don’t need immunity, if they did something wrong the shouldn’t get immunity” – the aide chuckled. After I further stated that the 4th Amendment was supposed to mean something the aide asked for my zip code and told me that he would forward my comments to Senator McCaskill.
over at dKos.
He has a good post up today that analyzes what went wrong in August on the FISA bill in terms of process (similar to what Selise posted in August) and talks about how it can all happen again.
As he points out, the fact that the Telcom immunity is ALREADY in the Senate bill is bad news – because we now have to fight to get it out rather than fight to keep it out. Always harder. And that means that the House Republicans get some leverage. (Yes, the House not the Senate – read the whole thing, it’s good.)
He ends with lobbying advice:
Emphasis is mine. To me, the House is going to be the most important part. Because I don’t have many illusions about the Senate anymore.
One caveat – even though I think think this is a good post by Kagro I also think he misses the obvious and more important point that we should be lobbying the House not to pass the current bill with the basket warrants.
But I didn’t say how the Clay and McCaskill’s staffers responded to me. I expressed my concerns, which they said that they would pass along. I also asked what sort of position Clay and McCaskill would be taking on FISA. None of the staffers I talked to had a clue. They did say that they would get back with me, and took down my contact info.