What They're Afraid Of

Whether we talk about Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton or John Poindexter, John Dean, and Dick Cheney, when we refer to "national security" and "intelligence information" we run across specific priorities and viewpoints.

These don't necessarily reflect the viewpoints and priorities of the American people--the sovereign.

Under the current FISA debate, the Senate Intelligence Committee, Chaired by Jay Rockefeller, seeks to pass a bill extending the provisions of the Protect America Act into permanent law. The provisions include authorization to surveil persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States. This means that communications can be collected and sifted for such information, as the amendment distinguishes between communications and persons.

Furthermore, the Department of Justice and the Director of National Intelligence seek the ability to compel independent private telecommunications carriers to provide whatever information (read: communications) they want, and to get a court order, if necessary, to do so.

As spelled out in a November 14, 2007 letter from Attorney General Michael Mukasey and National Intelligence Director, Michael McConnell, a substitute amendment to FISA, which does not permit these functions, is unacceptable to the administration.

Why? Because the intelligence community still hasn't come clean about the fact that they are scooping up all communications between everybody they can here and abroad before determining whether a person should be spied on. The don't want to allow for any reversal on the National Security Letters that were enacted by the Patriot Act Legislation. These letters let them search people's effects without a warrant and are not allowed under the FISA statutes.

Also, the Intelligence community depends on information controlled by private telecom carriers, so they have to have unfettered access to and unreserved compliance by such carriers. The original FISA statutes don't account for this and therefore jeopardize the whole mass spying, data-gathering, warrantless wiretapping scheme the Bush Administration has put in place.

Finally, without "retroactive immunity" for telecoms who broke the (FISA) law at the request of the Bush Administration, there is a risk that telecom representatives will tell the courts and the press things about the Bush Administration's tactics in the so-called war on terror that the Bush Administration doesn't want people to know. Whenever they say, "National Security" you know they mean, "criminal coverup."