Crazy traitor leaker got Congress to notice vast surveillance state By Alex Pareene

[Douglas Carpenter]

Pols from both parties are all of a sudden demanding more transparency and pushing reforms. Thanks, leaks!


(Credit: Reuters/Bobby Yip)

There is a guy, a famous guy, who lives now in a Russian airport or something, no one is really sure, but everyone in the media (and lots of people not in the media) cannot stop fighting and arguing about this guy. Some people say he is a jerk and crazy and bad and others say he is a hero and super cool. Either way, mean jerk or cool hero, this guy that everyone won’t shut up about is actually responsible for the first major public displays of Congressional opposition to the unchecked surveillance state in 35 years or so.

Congress has always had a handful of privacy advocates and true civil libertarians. But for many years in political Washington it has been considered foolish and perhaps a bit treasonous to suggest that our intelligence agencies are even slightly overzealous in their collection of all information possible about everything on the globe. That is still the general consensus, but as McClatchy’s Washington Bureau wrote on Friday, there are suddenly a bunch of members of Congress who actually want to rein in the NSA.

The last time a significant number of Washington politicians favored additional restrictions on intelligence-gathering and surveillance powers was in the immediate aftermath of the Church Committee reports, in the mid-1970s. Since then, Congress has practically abandoned its oversight power over the intelligence communities, and it’s only gotten worse since 9/11. Fighting terrorism trumped privacy every time Congress was asked to expand government spying powers. For much of the last dozen years, civil libertarians weren’t just ignored by the political establishment, they were vilified. When Democrats took full control of Congress, they still rubber-stamped Bush’s surveillance programs.

So what happened, exactly? Well, the American people learned a bunch of scary sounding stuff about how much data the NSA is collecting, on everyone. They learned this because of illegal leaks of classified information, to reporters, from the guy everyone is fighting about. Everyone can keep fighting about the guy, I guess, but no one can now say that the guy’s leaks were entirely gratuitous. Because before the leaks, people who were alarmed at what the intelligence agencies could be up to were ignored and politicians who had pretty good notions of what they could be up to (or who could’ve learned what they were up to if they cared to) weren’t concerned.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/22/crazy_traitor_leaker_got_congress_to_notice_vast_surveillance_state/?source=newsletter

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Evil traitors act like nothing's wrong and the dismiss it

when we find out there is. Like Connie Rice asking " Do you know the seats on the plane the terrorists are seated ? " when asked why she didn't act on warnings of 9/11 .

[RC]

2. How could this not make Edward Snowden a good guy?

He, Snowden, single handily did what scores of people trying for 30+ years could not do. Bring to light the out of control Shadow government.

[Douglas Carpenter]

4. I think that even those who don't think he is a good guy have to admit that he did make something

happen - an open discussion of the surveillance state - something that would not be happening now if he had not executed the leaks and done so in a flamboyant style.

[Douglas Carpenter]

22. /

[JoePhilly]

3. The author missed the opportunity to point out that creation of the secret FISA court

was a direct response to the Church Commission.

Ironic.

Overall a good article.

[sabrina 1]

5. And you forgot to point out that that FISA Bill was seriously weakened in 2006 when

Bush and his war criminal friends were caught violating the law, and instead of holding them accountable, our Congress decided to, INCREDIBLY, add an Amendment that would be, again, INCREDIBLY, retroactive to cover the period of Bush's crimes and thus save him and his telecom co-conspirators from what should have happened to them, for him, Impeachment would have been too good and the rest of them, the normal consequences for anyone who violates the law.

Instead we now have a revision of the Church Committee's FISA BIll which allows, again INCREDIBLY the NSA and worse, their Private Security Contractors to do their spying without getting a warrant until AFTER the fact, which pretty much gives them free reign now and the FISA Bill's previous protections have been eviscerated.

To put it simply, Congress made Bush's illegal activities LEGAL with one of the worst most blatant protections of a criminal ever.

How nice it must be to have Congress CHANGE THE LAW when you break it, and legalize your crimes.

Another law that needs to be fixed .... so many, so little time and so few elected officials with the will to restore the rule of law.

[RobertEarl]

7. Thanks Sabrina

We can always count on you. Now, I wonder if Joe will fess up to his ignorance? Or will he, like a guerrilla fighter, fade away so he can come back and attack again?

The crux of the current spying ops was designed and built by the republicans.

Like the op says, until now even questioning the nsa was tantamount to being unpatriotic. I'd say being ignorant, today, about the nsa is being unpatriotic.

[ProSense]

8. Absolute

"To put it simply, Congress made Bush's illegal activities LEGAL with one of the worst most blatant protections of a criminal ever."

...nonsense. Bush's activities are not legal today.

Republicans passed a bill to do that, and tried to extend it. That law expired in 2008.

The program was in fact a wide range of covert surveillance activities authorized by President Bush in the aftermath of 9/11. At that time, White House officials, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, had become convinced that FISA court procedures were too cumbersome and time-consuming to permit U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to quickly identify possible Qaeda terrorists inside the country. (Cheney's chief counsel, David Addington, referred to the FISA court in one meeting as that "obnoxious court," according to former assistant attorney general Jack Goldsmith.) Under a series of secret orders, Bush authorized the NSA for the first time to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails between the United States and a foreign country without any court review. The code name for the NSA collection activities—unknown to all but a tiny number of officials at the White House and in the U.S. intelligence community—was "Stellar Wind."

http://web.archive.org/web/20081216011008/http://www.newsweek.com/id/174601/output/print

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023032225

Senator Mitch McConnell introduced the act on August 1, 2007, during the 110th United States Congress. On August 3, it was passed in the Senate with an amendment, 60–28 (record vote number 309). On August 4, it passed the House of Representatives 227-183 (roll number 836). On August 5, it was signed by President Bush, becoming Public Law No. 110-055. On February 17, 2008, it expired due to sunset provision.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_America_Act_of_2007#Legislative_history

Another misleading media report implies that warrantless wiretapping is legal.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023026724

[JoePhilly]

10. +1 ... Bush was bypassing FISA.

Its a complex topic, where the details matter ... and where the complexity provides ample opportunity for some to mislead people.

That's how "mining meta data", incorrectly became "wiretapping", which has now became "spying".

More ambiguous and scary terms used to muddy details.

[JDPriestly]

13. What we object to is the remaining collection of metadata.

That has to end. It is a total waste of money. If we don't want terrorists in the country, we should not let people from countries that have terrorists into ours, and we should not let people who allow those people into their countries in either. Just countries that do nothing to rid themselves of terrorism. And if that means end diplomatic relations with the UK or Germany, so be it.

I don't let thieves into my house. If they want in, they will have to come in without my permission. We allowed the 9/11 terrorists into the country. Why? Because they came in on passports from countries that we trusted. We should have retaliated against the countries they came from by ending diplomatic relations with those countries until they cleaned up their terrorism problems.

If we can't bring ourselves to do that, we should not complain about terrorism and terrorize Americans and destroy our democracy because we can't break our relationships with countries that harbor terrorists. We have to make that choice.

I have trouble with raccoons. It's my job to put out traps for them. I don't have to put up cameras and place every squirrel, every bird, every worm under surveillance to persuade the raccoons to stay out. I just put out moth balls near my plants. The raccoons don't like the moth balls and pretty much keep away. The terrorist threat is an excuse to control Americans. And the rest of the world while we are at it.

[sabrina 1]

16. What has that got to do with the weakening of the FISA after

Bush was caught breaking it, where Congress rushed to save him from prosecution?

[JoePhilly]

9. I didn't need to mention that because, unless you

were living under a rock, you know that Bush was bypassing the FISA court completely.

The omission in the article of how the FISA court came into being is relevant particularly because there are so many who seem to be surprised that it exists at all. Just reexamine some of the threads on DU over the last month or so.

Many seem to be unaware that the FISA court was created in direct response to an over reach in domestic surveillance. As I said, ironic.

And if we want to fix the law, we'll need to replace lots of Rs with Ds. As the article notes, the Rs tend to be pretty lock step on this.

[sabrina 1]

17. Yes and unless you were living under a rock you would know why what he did is now LEGAL because

Congress made it LEGAL to protect him. So what is going on now could NOT have gone on under the old FISA Bill.

There was outrage when that Amendment passed to protect Bush and his telecoms accomplicies, Dick Cheney et al.

I wonder why this sudden amnesia has occurred since then?

[JoePhilly]

18. Why would I have needed to mention the law from 2006 ...

... when its already mentioned IN THE ARTICLE?

The re-authorization of the Patriot Act in 2006 is mentioned in the article, the origins of the FISA court were not, which is why I brought it up.

The BIG issue with Bush was his bypassing of FISA.

Much of the hyperventilating going on now, is by people who either did not pay attention, or who think some of these things just occurred ... and GASP ... they are outraged.

We've had many threads in which people are SHOCKED to learn that we have a secret court, as if it was created last week.

[NealK]

12. +1

Well said.

[99th_Monkey]

6. K & R ~ nt

[lark]

11. Think ":whistleblower" is more correct.

Snowden isn't a traitor in my books.

[Douglas Carpenter]

21. I of course agree - but even if someone does thinks he is a Crazy traitor leaker

they cannot deny the reality that he has forced a discussion about an issue that was not being publicly and would not be publicly discussed now to any serious level if he had not done what he did with the flamboyance that he did it.

[WillyT]

14. K & R !!!

[woo me with science]

15. K&R

[nashville_brook]

19. k and r

[Douglas Carpenter]

20. knr

[Douglas Carpenter]

23. another kick for that crazy traitor who has forced Congress to examine the surveillance state

[Douglas Carpenter]

24. kick

[Douglas Carpenter]

25. knr

[snappyturtle]

26. K&R nt