G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
Congress's Orwellian Compromise
By Nat Parry
Created Aug 15 2007 - 9:35am
A little over a year ago, I wrote an article called "Washington's Orwellian
Consensus [1]," which faulted Congress for rubberstamping many of George
Bush's sweeping assertions of presidential power, particularly his claimed
right to spy on some American citizens without warrants.
The article noted that "the near-term outlook appears to be for a
consolidation of George W. Bush's boundless vision of his own authority" -
but added the caveat, "at least until the November elections."
It now seems that the caveat was not necessary. The implication that a
Democratic victory in the 2006 congressional elections might rein in the
authoritarian inclinations of the Bush administration appears to have been
unfounded.
Despite some attempts at more stringent oversight of the Executive Branch -
on issues such as the administration's no-bid contracts to Halliburton, its
politically motivated firing of nine U.S. attorneys, and the mysterious
circumstances surrounding the death of football-star-turned-war-hero Pat
Tillman - Congress continues to capitulate to the President's demands for
evermore authority on some of the biggest constitutional issues of the day.
The most recent example was the hasty pre-recess passage in the House and
Senate of a bill revising the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA). The "Protect America Act of 2007 [2]" amends FISA by lowering the
standard by which the President's subordinates can issue a surveillance
order.
The new rules permit the nation's vast intelligence apparatus to conduct
surveillance without a court order against anyone who is "reasonably
believed" to be outside the borders of the United States.
"Notwithstanding any other law," the bill states, "the Director of National
Intelligence and the Attorney General may for periods of up to one year
authorize the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning
persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States."
The bill's proponents insist the targets are foreign terrorists. But the
word "terrorist" is nowhere in the legislation, whose broad language simply
grants the Executive Branch power to spy on communications of anyone
"reasonably believed" to be abroad, including calls and e-mails to the
United States.
No Judicial Oversight
Former constitutional law litigator Glenn Greenwald noted the significance
of the bill's vague language on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal." As Greenwald
explained [3], the law allows the government to "listen to our
conversations, read our e-mails, with no connection to terrorism, with no
proof that anyone has ever done anything wrong" - with no judicial
oversight.
The implication is far-reaching, according to Greenwald. "The government can
monitor every single phone call that London is making to you in Washington,
D.C.," he noted. "They can listen to every single international call that
you make or receive, every e-mail that you write, and e-mail that you
receive, in complete and total secrecy."
With the Bush administration's track record of targeting those it considers
its political opponents or obstacles to its ideological agenda - most
recently demonstrated in its firing of U.S. attorneys deemed insufficiently
loyal - it's baffling that Democrats in Congress would cede such sweeping
new powers.
It's especially curious since Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is under
fire for potentially committing perjury in congressional testimony relating
to National Security Agency's surveillance activities.
Gonzales testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was no
significant internal disagreement about the legality of the surveillance
program undertaken by the NSA. But former Deputy Attorney General James
Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller recounted high-level threats to resign
over the project's legality. Senior senators questioned Gonzales's
truthfulness.
In an Aug. 1 letter to senior committee members, Gonzales acknowledged that
he had parsed his words narrowly.
"I recognize that the use of the term Terrorist Surveillance Program and my
shorthand reference to the 'program' publicly 'described by the President'
may have created confusion, particularly for those who are knowledgeable
about the NSA activities authorized by the presidential order," he wrote.
A day earlier, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell made a
similar point in a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania. McConnell
wrote that after the 9/11 attacks, Bush signed a single executive order
which authorized "a number of . intelligence activities."
Defending Gonzales from perjury accusations, McConnell revealed that, in
administration jargon, the Terrorist Surveillance Program is only "one
particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more." [Washington Post,
Aug. 1, 2007 [4]]
The implication - which seemed to be lost on congressional Democrats - was
that there were other still-secret NSA surveillance activities.
Allayed Concerns
Nevertheless, despite Gonzales's credibility at an all-time low, Democrats
seem to have been swayed by McConnell, so much so that they allowed the new
wiretapping bill to speed through to passage largely on the DNI's assurances
about its necessity -- and fear of being called "soft on terror."
But much of McConnell's perceived credibility may be unwarranted. At his
confirmation hearings last February, a month after the Democrats took
control of Congress, he wasn't pressed on his professional ethics or views
on individual privacy, instead facing a generally friendly and polite Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence.
Chairman Jay Rockefeller said McConnell's "testimony has given me an
enormous sense of hope and confidence" in his ability to do the job. The
West Virginia Democrat added, "You have precisely the personality" needed to
be an effective DNI.
Little attention was given to McConnell's background as a private consultant
with Booz Allen Hamilton, where he earned $2 million a year working for some
of the same intelligence officials he would supervise as DNI.
Booz Allen also participated in development of the controversial Total
Information Awareness data-mining program, which was revealed in 2002 and
supposedly was shut down in 2003. But McConnell faced only one question
regarding his company's role in that controversial project, from Sen. Ron
Wyden, D-Oregon.
Devised by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Total
Information Awareness sought to merge vast bodies of electronic data about
almost everyone operating within the modern economy.
The plan was to map out "transactional data" collected from every kind of
activity - "financial, education, travel, medical, veterinary, country
entry, place/event entry, transportation, housing, critical resources,
government, communications," according to the DARPA Web site.
The program would then cross-reference this data with the "biometric
signatures of humans," data collected on individuals' faces, fingerprints,
gaits and irises. The Bush administration put retired Admiral John
Poindexter in charge of the sensitive project despite his five felony
convictions in the Iran-Contra Affair (though a conservative-dominated
appeals court later reversed the jury verdicts).
Public Outrage
Although public outrage and congressional opposition supposedly killed the
TIA program in 2003, the National Journal revealed [5] in February 2006 that
the project was ended in name only, kept alive within NSA's secret budget.
One TIA component, called the Information Awareness Prototype System [6],
was renamed "Basketball" at NSA, but still provided the basic architecture
tying together information extraction, analysis and dissemination tools
developed under TIA.
Another part of TIA, called Genoa II [7], was shifted to NSA and re-titled
"Topsail." It builds information technologies to anticipate and pre-empt
terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, the NSA's own data-mining program seeks to construct the largest
database in the world, according to a report by USA Today. It ultimately
would store the records of every phone call made in the United States and
apply "social network" models to the calling patterns of Americans
supposedly to match them up with patterns of known terrorists.
When asked about Booz Allen's contract work on the earlier TIA project,
McConnell responded by saying that his advice had been that information
should be used only if it adhered to the Constitution and current laws and
values. No other senator pursued this line of inquiry.
In giving McConnell a pass, the senators missed a unique opportunity to
explore exactly which of these programs Booz Allen participated in, and to
what extent. The senators also failed to pin down McConnell on precisely
what his views were on individual privacy and civil liberties.
Further, by waving McConnell through the committee, and then confirming him
in the full Democratic-controlled Senate, the senators sent a clear signal
that they were willing to overlook civil liberties concerns and continue
granting Bush the authority he desired for conducting surveillance on the
American people.
Now, by authorizing the DNI and Attorney General to issue warrantless
surveillance orders against anyone "reasonably believed" to be outside U.S.
borders, Congress has again given its tacit approval to widespread
surveillance activities that infringe on the privacy rights of Americans and
foreigners alike.
Since creation [8] of the DNI post in early 2005, its independence has been
in doubt. In calling on Congress to create the position in 2004, Bush made
clear [9] that the director would serve "at the pleasure of the President."
Yet, despite McConnell's dependence on Bush for continued employment, the
Democratic-controlled Congress again has expanded the DNI's authority.
The Intelligence Authorization Act of 2007, for instance, provided the DNI
"access to all national intelligence . concerning the human intelligence
operations of any element of the intelligence community" and authorized
DNI-chosen personnel "to make arrests without warrant for any offense
against the United States committed in the presence of such personnel."
History of Abuse
Creating the post of DNI required extensive revision of the 1947 National
Security Act, which established the Central Intelligence Agency and the
National Security Council. These new government entities set in motion
decades of a foreign policy characterized by a global effort to undermine
and contain the spread of communism around the world.
Also in 1947, President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9835, known
as the Loyalty Order, initiating a campaign to stamp out any "infiltration
of disloyal persons" in the U.S. government, specifically communists and
communist sympathizers.
An internal security campaign was subsequently launched in which 6.6 million
Americans would be investigated. Although no cases of espionage were
uncovered in the ensuing five years, about 500 Americans were identified as
subversives with "questionable loyalty."
Thousands more became the target of aggressive investigations and
questioning before government or private-industry panels, including the
Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, chaired by Sen. Joseph McCarthy,
R-Wisconsin. Although many convictions from this period were later
overturned, countless innocent people suffered loss of employment, ruined
careers, and even imprisonment.
At times, the hysteria reached truly absurd and ironic levels. In an effort
to appear more "patriotic," the State Department began purging its libraries
of books that were deemed too radical and subversive, including The Selected
Works of Thomas Jefferson.
Despite its aggressiveness in trying to stamp out disloyalty during those
early years of the Cold War, the U.S. intelligence community's spying tools
were relatively crude. To modernize the government's electronic spying
capabilities, Truman issued a secret presidential directive in 1952
establishing the National Security Agency.
The NSA grew rapidly into a giant intelligence-gathering apparatus, delving
ever-deeper into the private lives and communications of Americans.
An NSA program called Operation Shamrock intercepted millions of telegrams
to and from the United States. The NSA placed the names of law-abiding
American citizens on "watch lists" and then disseminated their private
communications to other government agencies such as the FBI and CIA.
Much of the surveillance was conducted on civil rights and antiwar
organizations. In the 1950s and 1960s, the NSA and other agencies viewed
movements for peace and racial equality through a Cold War prism, using
terms like "subversive activity" to describe civil rights activism.
Considered security threats, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil
rights and antiwar leaders were subjected to unlawful surveillance, with the
information gathered then used to undermine their work.
After some abuses came to light in the 1970s, Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho,
began holding hearings to investigate the conduct of intelligence agencies
including the NSA and FBI. At the end of the investigation, Church cautioned
against the potential for abuse when the NSA targeted American citizens.
The NSA's "capability at any time could be turned around on the American
people," Church warned, "and no American would have any privacy left . There
would be no place to hide." [NYT, Dec. 25, 2005 [10]]
Reforms Abandoned
These concerns led to enactment of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act and other limits on intelligence gathering inside the
United States. After the 9/11 attacks, however, many safeguards were voided
by the USA Patriot Act of 2001 or were cast aside by unilateral actions of
the Bush administration.
In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft loosened restrictions that had been
placed on the FBI after the COINTELPRO political-spying scandal of the
1970s.
Under the new Ashcroft guidelines, the FBI must have only a reasonable
indication that "two or more persons are engaged in an enterprise for the
purpose of . furthering political or social goals wholly or in part through
activities that involve force or violence and a violation of federal
criminal law."
The investigation need not be approved by FBI headquarters, but rather, may
be authorized by a special agent in charge of an FBI field office.
Civil libertarians noted the potential for abuse, especially considering the
extraordinarily vague definition of "terrorism" as laid out under the
Patriot Act. Section 802 of that law broadly defines terrorism as acts that
"appear to be intended ... to influence the policy of a government by
intimidation or coercion," which could include confrontational protests and
civil disobedience.
One early indication of how the government might use its expanded powers
came in 2003, when the FBI sent a memorandum [11] to local law enforcement
agencies before planned demonstrations against the war in Iraq. The memo
detailed protesters' tactics and analyzed activities such as the recruitment
of protesters over the Internet.
The FBI instructed local law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for
"possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal
acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force."
Despite growing concerns about erosion of civil liberties, the
Democratic-controlled Congress allowed the "Protect America Act of 2007" to
be rushed through to passage on the weekend before its August recess.
The law further undercuts the reforms of the 1970s, most significantly by
lifting the requirement for a warrant before surveillance of communications
that involve at least one person on American soil.
But the worst potential for abuse may lie ahead, as the government amasses a
growing arsenal of capabilities that can pry into the most intimate details
of a person's private life.
With Bush calling the so-called "war on terror" the "decisive ideological
conflict of our time" and drawing parallels between Osama bin Laden and V.I.
Lenin, the overriding question is whether the United States is in store for
a replay of Cold War paranoia, except this time with 21st century technology
that Joe McCarthy never could have imagined.
By helping to eliminate more of the intelligence reforms of the 1970s, the
Democratic-controlled Congress has now made itself a full partner in what
looks like a new round of abuses aimed at the constitutional protections of
the American people.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Nat Parry
Created Aug 15 2007 - 9:35am
A little over a year ago, I wrote an article called "Washington's Orwellian
Consensus [1]," which faulted Congress for rubberstamping many of George
Bush's sweeping assertions of presidential power, particularly his claimed
right to spy on some American citizens without warrants.
The article noted that "the near-term outlook appears to be for a
consolidation of George W. Bush's boundless vision of his own authority" -
but added the caveat, "at least until the November elections."
It now seems that the caveat was not necessary. The implication that a
Democratic victory in the 2006 congressional elections might rein in the
authoritarian inclinations of the Bush administration appears to have been
unfounded.
Despite some attempts at more stringent oversight of the Executive Branch -
on issues such as the administration's no-bid contracts to Halliburton, its
politically motivated firing of nine U.S. attorneys, and the mysterious
circumstances surrounding the death of football-star-turned-war-hero Pat
Tillman - Congress continues to capitulate to the President's demands for
evermore authority on some of the biggest constitutional issues of the day.
The most recent example was the hasty pre-recess passage in the House and
Senate of a bill revising the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA). The "Protect America Act of 2007 [2]" amends FISA by lowering the
standard by which the President's subordinates can issue a surveillance
order.
The new rules permit the nation's vast intelligence apparatus to conduct
surveillance without a court order against anyone who is "reasonably
believed" to be outside the borders of the United States.
"Notwithstanding any other law," the bill states, "the Director of National
Intelligence and the Attorney General may for periods of up to one year
authorize the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning
persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States."
The bill's proponents insist the targets are foreign terrorists. But the
word "terrorist" is nowhere in the legislation, whose broad language simply
grants the Executive Branch power to spy on communications of anyone
"reasonably believed" to be abroad, including calls and e-mails to the
United States.
No Judicial Oversight
Former constitutional law litigator Glenn Greenwald noted the significance
of the bill's vague language on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal." As Greenwald
explained [3], the law allows the government to "listen to our
conversations, read our e-mails, with no connection to terrorism, with no
proof that anyone has ever done anything wrong" - with no judicial
oversight.
The implication is far-reaching, according to Greenwald. "The government can
monitor every single phone call that London is making to you in Washington,
D.C.," he noted. "They can listen to every single international call that
you make or receive, every e-mail that you write, and e-mail that you
receive, in complete and total secrecy."
With the Bush administration's track record of targeting those it considers
its political opponents or obstacles to its ideological agenda - most
recently demonstrated in its firing of U.S. attorneys deemed insufficiently
loyal - it's baffling that Democrats in Congress would cede such sweeping
new powers.
It's especially curious since Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is under
fire for potentially committing perjury in congressional testimony relating
to National Security Agency's surveillance activities.
Gonzales testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was no
significant internal disagreement about the legality of the surveillance
program undertaken by the NSA. But former Deputy Attorney General James
Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller recounted high-level threats to resign
over the project's legality. Senior senators questioned Gonzales's
truthfulness.
In an Aug. 1 letter to senior committee members, Gonzales acknowledged that
he had parsed his words narrowly.
"I recognize that the use of the term Terrorist Surveillance Program and my
shorthand reference to the 'program' publicly 'described by the President'
may have created confusion, particularly for those who are knowledgeable
about the NSA activities authorized by the presidential order," he wrote.
A day earlier, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell made a
similar point in a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania. McConnell
wrote that after the 9/11 attacks, Bush signed a single executive order
which authorized "a number of . intelligence activities."
Defending Gonzales from perjury accusations, McConnell revealed that, in
administration jargon, the Terrorist Surveillance Program is only "one
particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more." [Washington Post,
Aug. 1, 2007 [4]]
The implication - which seemed to be lost on congressional Democrats - was
that there were other still-secret NSA surveillance activities.
Allayed Concerns
Nevertheless, despite Gonzales's credibility at an all-time low, Democrats
seem to have been swayed by McConnell, so much so that they allowed the new
wiretapping bill to speed through to passage largely on the DNI's assurances
about its necessity -- and fear of being called "soft on terror."
But much of McConnell's perceived credibility may be unwarranted. At his
confirmation hearings last February, a month after the Democrats took
control of Congress, he wasn't pressed on his professional ethics or views
on individual privacy, instead facing a generally friendly and polite Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence.
Chairman Jay Rockefeller said McConnell's "testimony has given me an
enormous sense of hope and confidence" in his ability to do the job. The
West Virginia Democrat added, "You have precisely the personality" needed to
be an effective DNI.
Little attention was given to McConnell's background as a private consultant
with Booz Allen Hamilton, where he earned $2 million a year working for some
of the same intelligence officials he would supervise as DNI.
Booz Allen also participated in development of the controversial Total
Information Awareness data-mining program, which was revealed in 2002 and
supposedly was shut down in 2003. But McConnell faced only one question
regarding his company's role in that controversial project, from Sen. Ron
Wyden, D-Oregon.
Devised by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Total
Information Awareness sought to merge vast bodies of electronic data about
almost everyone operating within the modern economy.
The plan was to map out "transactional data" collected from every kind of
activity - "financial, education, travel, medical, veterinary, country
entry, place/event entry, transportation, housing, critical resources,
government, communications," according to the DARPA Web site.
The program would then cross-reference this data with the "biometric
signatures of humans," data collected on individuals' faces, fingerprints,
gaits and irises. The Bush administration put retired Admiral John
Poindexter in charge of the sensitive project despite his five felony
convictions in the Iran-Contra Affair (though a conservative-dominated
appeals court later reversed the jury verdicts).
Public Outrage
Although public outrage and congressional opposition supposedly killed the
TIA program in 2003, the National Journal revealed [5] in February 2006 that
the project was ended in name only, kept alive within NSA's secret budget.
One TIA component, called the Information Awareness Prototype System [6],
was renamed "Basketball" at NSA, but still provided the basic architecture
tying together information extraction, analysis and dissemination tools
developed under TIA.
Another part of TIA, called Genoa II [7], was shifted to NSA and re-titled
"Topsail." It builds information technologies to anticipate and pre-empt
terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, the NSA's own data-mining program seeks to construct the largest
database in the world, according to a report by USA Today. It ultimately
would store the records of every phone call made in the United States and
apply "social network" models to the calling patterns of Americans
supposedly to match them up with patterns of known terrorists.
When asked about Booz Allen's contract work on the earlier TIA project,
McConnell responded by saying that his advice had been that information
should be used only if it adhered to the Constitution and current laws and
values. No other senator pursued this line of inquiry.
In giving McConnell a pass, the senators missed a unique opportunity to
explore exactly which of these programs Booz Allen participated in, and to
what extent. The senators also failed to pin down McConnell on precisely
what his views were on individual privacy and civil liberties.
Further, by waving McConnell through the committee, and then confirming him
in the full Democratic-controlled Senate, the senators sent a clear signal
that they were willing to overlook civil liberties concerns and continue
granting Bush the authority he desired for conducting surveillance on the
American people.
Now, by authorizing the DNI and Attorney General to issue warrantless
surveillance orders against anyone "reasonably believed" to be outside U.S.
borders, Congress has again given its tacit approval to widespread
surveillance activities that infringe on the privacy rights of Americans and
foreigners alike.
Since creation [8] of the DNI post in early 2005, its independence has been
in doubt. In calling on Congress to create the position in 2004, Bush made
clear [9] that the director would serve "at the pleasure of the President."
Yet, despite McConnell's dependence on Bush for continued employment, the
Democratic-controlled Congress again has expanded the DNI's authority.
The Intelligence Authorization Act of 2007, for instance, provided the DNI
"access to all national intelligence . concerning the human intelligence
operations of any element of the intelligence community" and authorized
DNI-chosen personnel "to make arrests without warrant for any offense
against the United States committed in the presence of such personnel."
History of Abuse
Creating the post of DNI required extensive revision of the 1947 National
Security Act, which established the Central Intelligence Agency and the
National Security Council. These new government entities set in motion
decades of a foreign policy characterized by a global effort to undermine
and contain the spread of communism around the world.
Also in 1947, President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9835, known
as the Loyalty Order, initiating a campaign to stamp out any "infiltration
of disloyal persons" in the U.S. government, specifically communists and
communist sympathizers.
An internal security campaign was subsequently launched in which 6.6 million
Americans would be investigated. Although no cases of espionage were
uncovered in the ensuing five years, about 500 Americans were identified as
subversives with "questionable loyalty."
Thousands more became the target of aggressive investigations and
questioning before government or private-industry panels, including the
Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, chaired by Sen. Joseph McCarthy,
R-Wisconsin. Although many convictions from this period were later
overturned, countless innocent people suffered loss of employment, ruined
careers, and even imprisonment.
At times, the hysteria reached truly absurd and ironic levels. In an effort
to appear more "patriotic," the State Department began purging its libraries
of books that were deemed too radical and subversive, including The Selected
Works of Thomas Jefferson.
Despite its aggressiveness in trying to stamp out disloyalty during those
early years of the Cold War, the U.S. intelligence community's spying tools
were relatively crude. To modernize the government's electronic spying
capabilities, Truman issued a secret presidential directive in 1952
establishing the National Security Agency.
The NSA grew rapidly into a giant intelligence-gathering apparatus, delving
ever-deeper into the private lives and communications of Americans.
An NSA program called Operation Shamrock intercepted millions of telegrams
to and from the United States. The NSA placed the names of law-abiding
American citizens on "watch lists" and then disseminated their private
communications to other government agencies such as the FBI and CIA.
Much of the surveillance was conducted on civil rights and antiwar
organizations. In the 1950s and 1960s, the NSA and other agencies viewed
movements for peace and racial equality through a Cold War prism, using
terms like "subversive activity" to describe civil rights activism.
Considered security threats, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil
rights and antiwar leaders were subjected to unlawful surveillance, with the
information gathered then used to undermine their work.
After some abuses came to light in the 1970s, Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho,
began holding hearings to investigate the conduct of intelligence agencies
including the NSA and FBI. At the end of the investigation, Church cautioned
against the potential for abuse when the NSA targeted American citizens.
The NSA's "capability at any time could be turned around on the American
people," Church warned, "and no American would have any privacy left . There
would be no place to hide." [NYT, Dec. 25, 2005 [10]]
Reforms Abandoned
These concerns led to enactment of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act and other limits on intelligence gathering inside the
United States. After the 9/11 attacks, however, many safeguards were voided
by the USA Patriot Act of 2001 or were cast aside by unilateral actions of
the Bush administration.
In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft loosened restrictions that had been
placed on the FBI after the COINTELPRO political-spying scandal of the
1970s.
Under the new Ashcroft guidelines, the FBI must have only a reasonable
indication that "two or more persons are engaged in an enterprise for the
purpose of . furthering political or social goals wholly or in part through
activities that involve force or violence and a violation of federal
criminal law."
The investigation need not be approved by FBI headquarters, but rather, may
be authorized by a special agent in charge of an FBI field office.
Civil libertarians noted the potential for abuse, especially considering the
extraordinarily vague definition of "terrorism" as laid out under the
Patriot Act. Section 802 of that law broadly defines terrorism as acts that
"appear to be intended ... to influence the policy of a government by
intimidation or coercion," which could include confrontational protests and
civil disobedience.
One early indication of how the government might use its expanded powers
came in 2003, when the FBI sent a memorandum [11] to local law enforcement
agencies before planned demonstrations against the war in Iraq. The memo
detailed protesters' tactics and analyzed activities such as the recruitment
of protesters over the Internet.
The FBI instructed local law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for
"possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal
acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force."
Despite growing concerns about erosion of civil liberties, the
Democratic-controlled Congress allowed the "Protect America Act of 2007" to
be rushed through to passage on the weekend before its August recess.
The law further undercuts the reforms of the 1970s, most significantly by
lifting the requirement for a warrant before surveillance of communications
that involve at least one person on American soil.
But the worst potential for abuse may lie ahead, as the government amasses a
growing arsenal of capabilities that can pry into the most intimate details
of a person's private life.
With Bush calling the so-called "war on terror" the "decisive ideological
conflict of our time" and drawing parallels between Osama bin Laden and V.I.
Lenin, the overriding question is whether the United States is in store for
a replay of Cold War paranoia, except this time with 21st century technology
that Joe McCarthy never could have imagined.
By helping to eliminate more of the intelligence reforms of the 1970s, the
Democratic-controlled Congress has now made itself a full partner in what
looks like a new round of abuses aimed at the constitutional protections of
the American people.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson