Today in TimesWatch:
(Headlines link to online postings with links to cited
articles & sources)
The
Times Spies Phony Dangers in FISA
Legislation
Sunday's lead story focused on the alleged dangers hidden in the
updated version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act recently
passed by Congress and signed into law by Bush. "Concerns Raised
On Wider Spying Under New Law" emanated from James Risen and
Eric Lichtblau, the same pair of reporters who put the
terror-surveillance debate on public display back in December 2005
with a scoop that revealed the details of the classified
National Security Agency program, which detailed methods of
surveillance of international communications of terrorism suspects.
"Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month
could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go
well beyond wiretapping to include -- without court approval -- certain
types of
physical searches on American soil and the collection of
Americans' business records, Democratic Congressional officials and
other experts said."
Andrew McCarthy of the Foundation for Defense and Democracies
responded at National Review Online:
"The Times is engaged here in the worst kind of journalistic abuse.
Risen and Lichtblau sprinkle their story with the names of several
experts, but not a single one is identified as standing behind the
explosive claims quoted above. Those are attributed to 'experts'
-- unnamed. And unnamed for good reason: What the Times
represents as a respectable, mainstream interpretation of the new
law is actually a fringe construction unsupportable by any coherent
reading."
Back to Risen and Lichtblau:
"Administration officials acknowledged that they had heard
such concerns from Democrats in Congress recently, and that there
was a continuing
debate over the meaning of the legislative language.
But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions
based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation.
"They also emphasized that there would be strict rules in place to
minimize the extent to which Americans would be caught up in the
surveillance.
"The dispute illustrates how lawmakers, in a frenetic, end-of-session
scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may
have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought.'
McCarthy noted:
"Nor, moreover, does it seem plausible that, as the Times report
suggests, Democrats voted for the reform bill without grasping what
was in it. This was no omnibus, multi-volume budget extravaganza.
We're talkin' 14 double-spaced pages -- straightforward, easily read,
and reread in nothing flat, bereft of crevices for hiding explosive
provisions."
Risen and Lichtblau again emphasize the "complex" legislation that
evidently befuddled the poor Democrats.
"It also offers a case study in how changing a few words in a complex
piece of legislation has the potential to fundamentally alter the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, a landmark national security law. The new
legislation is set to expire in less than six months; two weeks after it
was signed into law, there is still heated debate over how much power
Congress gave to the president.
"'This may give the administration even more authority than people
thought,' said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in
the Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of 'National Security
Investigation and Prosecutions,' a new book on surveillance law.
"Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of 'electronic
surveillance,' the new law narrows the types of communications covered in
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly
giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far
beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted
inside the United States.
"These new powers include the collection of business records, physical
searches and so-called 'trap and trace' operations, analyzing specific
calling patterns.
"For instance, the legislation would allow the government, under certain
circumstances, to demand the business records of an American in Chicago
without a warrant if it asserts that the search concerns its surveillance
of a person who is in Paris, experts said.
"It is possible that some of the changes were the unintended
consequences of the rushed legislative process just before this month's
Congressional recess, rather than a purposeful effort by the
administration to enhance its ability to spy on Americans."
But as McCarthy sharply pointed out, the "experts" that agree with
Risen and Lichtblau's strange interpretation are never actually identified.
The Times continued:
"Some civil rights advocates said they suspected that the
administration made the language of the bill intentionally vague to allow
it even broader discretion over wiretapping decisions. Whether
intentional or not, the end result -- according to top Democratic aides
and other experts on national security law -- is that the legislation ma
grant the government the right to collect a range of information on
American citizens inside the United States without warrants, as long
as the administration asserts that the spying concerns the monitoring
of a person believed to be overseas.
[…]
"The measure, which President Bush signed into law on Aug. 5,
was written and pushed through both the House and Senate so quickly
that few in Congress had time to absorb its full impact, some
Congressional aides say.
"Though many Democratic leaders opposed the final version of the
legislation, they did not work forcefully to block its passage, largely
out of fear that they would be criticized by President Bush and Republican
leaders during the August recess as being soft on terrorism." |
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