Scare Tactics and FISA
Sen. Jay Rockefeller is condemning what he calls “scare tactics” from the Bush administration in regards to the FISA bill. The bill, held up in the House after achieving bipartisan Senate approval, extends executive authority for wiretapping of international communications while granting immunity to telecommunications companies from lawsuits filed by privacy groups as well as political action groups seeking to score points against Bush in the final days of his presidency.
Rockefeller’s criticism is well-placed in that the Bush administration exaggerates the impact of the delay in wiretapping authority. The nation’s intelligence gathering did not “go dark” as a result of the delay, it merely reverted to earlier procedures that, while cumbersome and technologically outdated, nonetheless allow most intelligence gathering capabilities to continue. The dramatic hyperventilating in some segments of the right-wing media about looming disaster from terrorists exploiting a newfound hole opened by Democrats in Congress is not legitimate.
But accusations of name-calling and demonization directed towards Republicans and conservatives on this issue alos carry more than a slight whiff of hypocrisy. Indeed, the always foaming Glenn Greenwald has spilled gallons of bile lamenting the utter loss of all privacy that supposedly accompanies wiretapping authority. Without a single factual scenario, Greenwald and his ilk routinely claim that granting the government the authority to monitor international terrorist communications is somehow the leading edge of a right-wing police state instead of a necessary defense against it. And it is almost always nearly impossible to find a single substantive point within the bulk of Greenwald’s venom against conservatives and pretty much everyone he disagrees with.
The problem here is that even the most routine national security policies are subject to massive politicization, as left and right both often prioritize their domestic political spats over the actual enemies that the United States faces. What remains to be seen is whether either party will be willing to set aside their hatred of the other long enough to actually create policy after the Bush administration leaves office.
"Greenwald and his ilk routinely claim that granting the government the authority to monitor international terrorist communications is somehow the leading edge of a right-wing police state instead of a necessary defense against it."
Interesting point.
Some people have been charged with violating wiretapping laws when they videotape the police in public. However, I do not know of any instances where these charges weren’t dropped.
The immediate and direct impact of not extending the August 2007 provisions may not be catastrophic, but neither is it negligible. The downright idiotic legal circumstances that led to the specific "fix" of August 2007 once again apply to American troops in the field, and there is a real price associated with that. Both sides have indeed pumped up the hyperbole, but the price of lawyering a war has not decreased and the basic problem is a real one.
Soldiers in the field should not have to ask the AG or a FISA court in Washington for emergency wiretap authorizations or warrants to listen in to enemy communications in the field just because the media channels used by the enemy may at some point cross a U.S.-operated or U.S.-located server or relay.
The body of Pvt. (promoted posthumously to Corporal) Joseph Anzack is interred at Arlington National Cemetery. The bodies of Army Spec. Alex Jimenez and Pvt. Byron Fouty have never been found.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_blaine_k_080213_the_powerful_and_obn.htm