Pelosi To Conyers and Reyes--Revisit the FISA Bill As Soon As Possible And This Time Do It Right.

I don't know what to make of this, but Nancy Pelosi has written a letter concerning the "interim" FISA bill passed just yesterday.

August 4, 2007

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Silvestre Reyes
Chairman, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
H 405 The Capitol
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Conyers and Chairman Reyes:

Thank you for your leadership on matters affecting the security of the American people and the protection of the liberties that define our country.

I know that your committees have been working diligently on a proposal by the Administration to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). I also understand that your work has been hindered by the Administration’s refusal to provide all of the documents you believe are relevant to your consideration of the proposal.

Tonight, the House passed S. 1927, a bill approved by the Senate yesterday, which is an interim response to the Administration’s request for changes in FISA, and which was sought to fill an intelligence gap which is asserted to exist. Many provisions of this legislation are unacceptable, and, although the bill has a six month sunset clause, I do not believe the American people will want to wait that long before corrective action is taken.

Accordingly, I request that your committees send to the House, as soon as possible after Congress reconvenes, legislation which responds comprehensively to the Administration’s proposal while addressing the many deficiencies in S. 1927.

Thank you for your attention to this request and for your service to our country.

best regards,

Nancy Pelosi

In related news, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek is reporting that last week the administration served a secret search warrant on a former justice department attorney who is known to have opposed the President's Domestic Surveillance Program. It is rumored that the attorney is suspected of leaking the existence of the program to The New York Times in December 2005.

When somebody at the water cooler tells you that the President must pursue the leaker because merely telling the American people of the existence of a possibly unconstitutional program is helping the "enemy," you might remember the following quote from Al Gore's book The Assault on Reason.

(T)his intricate clockwork mechanism of American Government has always depended on a "ghost in the machine." The ghost animating the Constitution's machinery is not holy;it is us, all of us, the proverbial "well-informed citizenry. We may be endowed with individual rights by our Creator, but we act to protect those rights and govern our nation with the instruments of reason. page 51

How can we citizens be a "well-informed citizenry" if the Congress passes secret laws, creating secret Courts to oversee secret activities that might violate the Constitution? How can we keep our Democracy alive if the Executive is clearly going beyond what has been authorized by Congress apparently bypassing the secret court altogether? How can we protect our democracy if the Administration is executing secret search warrants on people whose only crime is to have informed us, the electorate, that our constitutional rights are being violated? Disclosing a program that violates the United State's Constitution might justify the application of something that could be called a whistleblower's defense.

Good luck, Nancy, we will be watching.

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Dems going soft on FISA reform?

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes sounds like he’s ready to agree to a fair extent with President Bush on reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a big red flag.

I agree with the ACLU: The Clinton Administration had cell phones and the Internet on its hands and was perfectly able to work with the current FISA provisions. I don’t think there’s a need for change and certainly not for wholesale ones, such as immunizing telecom companies from criminal charges for what would right now be criminal cooperation with BushCo-type demands.

There's more: "Dems going soft on FISA reform?" >>

House Intelligence Committee To Hold Hearings Before Amending FISA. Oversight, What A Concept?

Congressman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has announced plans for the committee to hold a series of Intelligence Committee hearings on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell has asked Congress to rewrite FISA to, among other things, grant retroactive immunity to individuals and companies facilitating electronic surveillance activities in support of the NSA surveillance program disclosed by President Bush in December 2005.

Reyes says that before granting immunity for any activities, it is important for the committee to review what those activities were, what was the legal basis for those activities, and what would be the impact of a grant of immunity.

The committee's hearings will begin in June and will focus on the following questions:

What surveillance activities has the President authorized under the NSA surveillance program disclosed in December 2005? What was the legal basis for these activities, and how did those activities change since the inception of the program? What activities are occurring today?

How does the current FISA system operate? Can this system be improved?

Are current legal authorities adequate for tracking terrorist communications, or are changes to the law required?

Whether current and proposed legal authorities adequately protect the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans.

In April 2006, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed Tash Hepting, et al v. AT&T et al, Case No. C-06-0672-VRW, in the Northern District of California, alleging that for years AT&T has purposely and improperly diverted customer traffic to the NSA as a means of aiding the NSA's covert surveillance program. At the time of the filing EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston said that

The evidence that we are filing supports our claim that AT&T is diverting Internet traffic into the hands of the NSA wholesale, in violation of federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment. More than just threatening individuals' privacy, AT&T's apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans' Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now.

You can find out more about both the lawsuit and the hearings at Ars Technica's news desk. These are hearings we don't want to miss. Gee, I hope at least some of them are public.

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