Democratic Senators Issue Strong Warning About Use of the Patriot Act

[TampaYankee]

Democratic Senators Issue Strong Warning About Use of the Patriot Act

By CHARLIE SAVAGE Published: March 16, 2012

WASHINGTON For more than two years, a handful of Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee have warned that the government is secretly interpreting its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming if the public or even others in Congress knew about it.

On Thursday, two of those senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado went further. They said a top-secret intelligence operation that is based on that secret legal theory is not as crucial to national security as executive branch officials have maintained.

The senators, who also said that Americans would be stunned to know what the government thought the Patriot Act allowed it to do, made their remarks in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. after a Justice Department official last month told a judge that disclosing anything about the program could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.

The Justice Department has argued that disclosing information about its interpretation of the Patriot Act could alert adversaries to how the government collects certain intelligence. It is seeking the dismissal of two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by The New York Times and by the American Civil Liberties Union related to how the Patriot Act has been interpreted.

The senators wrote that it was appropriate to keep specific operations secret. But, they said, the government in a democracy must act within publicly understood law so that voters can ratify or reject decisions made on their behalf even if that obligation to be transparent with the public creates other challenges.

We would also note that in recent months we have grown increasingly skeptical about the actual value of the intelligence collection operation, they added. This has come as a surprise to us, as we were initially inclined to take the executive branchs assertions about the importance of this operation at face value.

The dispute centers on what the government thinks it is allowed to do under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, under which agents may obtain a secret order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing them to get access to any tangible things like business records that are deemed relevant to a terrorism or espionage investigation.

There appears to be both an ordinary use for Section 215 orders akin to using a grand jury subpoena to get specific information in a traditional criminal investigation and a separate, classified intelligence collection activity that also relies upon them.

The interpretation of Section 215 that authorizes this secret surveillance operation is apparently not obvious from a plain text reading of the provision, and was developed through a series of classified rulings by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The letter from Mr. Wyden and Mr. Udall also complained that while the Obama administration told Congress in August 2009 that it would establish a regular process for reviewing, redacting and releasing significant opinions of the court, since then not a single redacted opinion has been released.

See original article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us/politics/democratic-senators-warn-about-use-of-patriot-act.html?_r=1

[Guest EXPAT]

The entire law is unconstitutional in my view and should be repealed. This was a Dick Cheney concoction just to circumvent rights after 911.

[RA1]

I agree that at least parts of it are unconstitutional and whole thing needs to be repealed. I am not as sure about Dick Cheney's motives (or anyone else's) about enacting this but at the time I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt because we could have been facing a "big" war. During "declared" war with an expiration thereof (the act) I would be OK with it.

Starting with the Viet Nam conflict and maybe the Korean Police Action the US has not been willing to fully declare war and go on a war time footing. That is a political decision that has a lot of economic ramifications, most of them negative. The last several to many years have been no exception.

Best regards,

RA1

[lookin]

At last! Let's hope they (and we) follow through in dismantling this unchecked assault on our democratic values.

Even the name gives me the willies. Who should ever be given the right to label some citizens "patriots" and exclude others at will. The problem with a word like "patriot" is that it has no objective meaning, and is far too subjective as a basis for enacting legislation.

As far as I can tell, the only way such an act could ever have got through a thinking Congress is that Congress was not thinking in the aftermath of 9/11. The government was caught with its pants down and was determined to never again be in a position to be blamed for the series of failures that led to three thousand civilian deaths at the hands of amateurs.

The easy solution was a new piece of legislation, rather than fixing the problems and failures that let the terrorists get through in the first place. No one wanted to say that "We screwed up, the legislation we have is plenty good enough to prevent this in the future, and we need to do a better job of working with what we have."

Like TampaYankee, I believe that Cheney was the force behind getting this unjustifiable legislation passed. But the majority of Congress and the President went along with it ten years ago, just as they go along with it today.

I believe that the average citizen is used to thinking that the government knows what it's doing and that our democracy hasn't really been hurt by this legislation. But it has, not only because of the specific laws that have sprung from it, but by the attitude it has fostered that the government can do any damned thing it pleases just by invoking the bogeyman of terrorism.

Thank Heaven for the ACLU and for Congressmen like Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. I think it will take decades to undo this legislation and the attitudes it has fostered. It will also take involvement from ordinary citizens, beginning with a clear statement that we do not want a government with unlimited power. I thought we had made this clear a couple centuries ago, but apparently it's time for a reminder.

/rant

[Guest EXPAT]

And the politicians continue to support it because they fear if they don't that they will be viewed as weak on terror or weak on crime.

[Guest hitoallusa]

Lookin are you a tea party member? Just kidding... I am leery about how private intelligent companies operate and those unlawful PIs for major law firms and businesses. That's only talking about the internal threats. Foreign threats from China and Russia are other things... I am for modifying the law in a little to protect people's privacy as much as possible but a law like this inevitable in the end. As I have said before, it's not how much information we have but the quality of information and how we interpret and process gathered info that matter. I hope these law makers can concentrate on those issues rather than something unrealistic. I find what these law makers are doing out of touch from the intelligence world and don't know what is really needed in the community. That's why a journalist like Tim Weiner can write a trashy book and sell it.

[RA1]

lookin'-

Your post excites me. We have always been willing to respect each other's opinions but this post is near and dear to my heart. I salute you (but then I always do).

Best regards,

RA1

[JKane]

You know we have a winner when all of us can agree on something!

And many of us seem to agree that Cheney deserved criminal charges, though now I'm just wishing somebody would stop winding the heartless fuck's spring.