Wiretapping

Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, found guilty of insider trading in April, is claiming in his appeal that part of the reason Qwest stock dropped in value is that the NSA cancelled some lucrative contracts with the company as punishment for its failure to cooperate in illegal warrantless wiretapping (unlike AT&T and Verizon). The Bush administration is pushing for retroactive immunity to be granted to AT&T and Verizon for its participation in these unconstitutional programs by threatening to veto any surveillance bill that doesn’t include such immunity. If the Democrats were smart, they’d go ahead and send him a surveillance bill without the immunity, and then criticize him when he vetoes it for taking action that is going to kill Americans. ...

The Bush administration, commenting on Congress’ expansion of the Executive branch’s warrantless wiretapping powers without needing approval of the FISA Court, says that the legislation is “just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do." Constitution? What Constitution? (Via Talking Points Memo.)

Julian Sanchez points out the staggering misrepresentation by those arguing that the recent increase in wiretapping power amounts to nothing more than an update of FISA procedures to reflect current technology. (Hat tip to Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.)

Both houses of Congress have passed a bill that updates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow warrantless wiretapping when at least one party is a foreigner, without any requirement that the foreigner be suspected of having connections to terrorists. Wiretaps in such cases do not require approval of the FISA court, only of the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. As Tim Lee at Technology Liberation Front observes: So let me get this straight: the White House says “we think we should be able to eavesdrop on virtually any domestic-to-foreign phone call without court oversight, based on the say-so of one of the president’s subordinates.” And the Democrats response was “Hell no! Warrantless spying should require the say-so of two of the president’s subordinates!”Arizona’s Congressmen voted along party lines except for Harry Mitchell, who sided with the Republicans in favor of the bill, which provides for this expansion of powers for the next six months. (UPDATE, August 8, 2007: Actually, McCain didn’t vote on this bill at all, it’s another of his no-shows.) Kudos to Pastor, Grijalva, and Giffords for voting against this. (Hat tip to Technology Liberation Front and Stranger Fruit.) UPDATE (August 7, 2007): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more on how this bill has gutted any oversight of what the Executive branch is doing. ...

The New York Times editorialized that vice president Dick Cheney was the person who sent then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card to the hospital bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft to try to get him to reauthorize the warrantless wiretapping program that the acting Attorney General James Comey and many Department of Justice staff (including Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller) threatened to resign over. Larry King asked Cheney about it, and his response is that he had no recollection of such an event, and besides, he didn’t read the New York Times editorial. Sounds like a lie to me, and Larry King seems to suggest he thinks so as well. Talking Points Memo thinks they’ve identified a Cheney “tell." (And no, it’s not just that his lips are moving…)

There’s now much discussion in the blogosphere about former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey’s testimony before Congress. Comey related that in 2004, the warrantless wiretapping program had come up for reauthorization–the previous authorization was due to expire the following day. Comey, filling in for Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in the hospital for emergency gall bladder surgery, refused to sign Bush’s order for reauthorization. Bush secretly sent his White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card to Ashcroft’s hospital bedside to get his signature, but an aide to Ashcroft tipped off Comey. Comey rushed to the hospital, and obtained from FBI Director Robert Mueller a directive to Ashcroft’s security staff to not remove Comey even if Gonzales and Card insisted upon it. At the hospital, Ashcroft also refused to sign the reauthorization directive. Comey related that the entire senior staff of the Department of Justice, including himself and FBI Director Mueller, were prepared to resign over the issue. Had that happened–in an election year, no less–perhaps the outcome of that election would have been different. Bush consulted directly with Comey and Mueller, and gave them assurances that the program would be modified to comply with Department of Justice recommendations, and Comey signed the reauthorization several weeks later. It’s not clear whether it continued to operate without authorization for that period of weeks. A Talking Points Memo reader comments: ...

Last night I attended a small event where Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) spoke about his candidacy for president as a Republican. I found it a bit of a disappointment. On the plus side, he is making opposition to both the drug war and the war in Iraq a major part of his campaign. He also opposes warrantless wiretapping, the USA PATRIOT Act, and the Military Commissions Act. And in response to a question from one of several atheists present, he indicated his support for the separation of church and state (and opposition to Bush’s faith-based initiatives). On the minus side, his stance on illegal immigration is to “secure the border,” deny benefits to illegal immigrants, and eliminate birthright citizenship. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s stance on illegal immigration (double Border Patrol officers, implement a guest worker program, and provide a mechanism for illegal immigrants to pay a fine and become legal residents) makes a whole lot more sense than that. Also on the minus side, as Sameer Parekh has pointed out at his blog, his stance on free trade is to oppose anything that he sees as a compromise on free trade (like major free trade agreements), which makes him look like he’s pandering to protectionists–his web page makes no indication that he support free trade, which strikes me as dishonest. Nutjob Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson was there, and she asked a question about Bush’s “stealth campaign” to establish a North American Union; Paul responded that he opposes creation of such an entity and a common currency for such an economic area (the “amero”). This is going into WorldNetDaily and Alex Jones conspiracy theorist territory, conflating the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (a meeting between the three heads of state to increase economic cooperation) with the ideas of Robert Pastor, a professor at American University, about creating a political union. If the EU can’t approve a Constitution (with France and the Netherlands rejecting it) and still has holdouts on the euro (Britain and Norway), how likely is it that countries as different as the U.S., Mexico, and Canada would combine into a single political entity? I’m glad Ron Paul has provided a consistent voice in Congress against the war in Iraq and erosion of our civil liberties in the name of the global war on terror, but I’m afraid he probably wouldn’t make a very good president (though I did make a small contribution to his campaign which I’m feeling some buyer’s remorse for this morning). My preference is to see a Democratic president and split control of Congress–gridlock seems to be the most effective way of achieving economic growth and slowing the erosion of our civil liberties. UPDATE (April 12, 2007): The argument that Paul makes about illegal immigration–that we should stop it because of the impact on welfare–is aptly turned on its head in this post from last year at David Friedman’s blog. UPDATE (February 11, 2008): Here’s a debunking of a number of Ron Paul claims, including the NAFTA superhighway. ...

News.com has a nice article about how Global Crossing (my employer) has criticized the extension of CALEA wiretapping rules to VoIP and broadband: Paul Kouroupas, vice president of regulatory affairs for Global Crossing, strongly criticized the Federal Communications Commission’s broadening of a 1994 law–originally intended to cover telephone providers–as disproportionately costly, complex, and riddled with privacy concerns. His company is one of the world’s largest Internet backbone providers. “Our customers are large Fortune 500 companies–not too many of those companies are conducting drug deals or terrorist activities out of Merrill Lynch’s offices or using their phones in that way,” Kouroupas said at an event here sponsored by the DC Bar Association. “By and large we don’t get wiretap requests, yet we’re faced with the costs to come into compliance,” which he estimated at $1 million. ...

In 2000, an article about “The Secret FISA Court: Rubber Stamping Our Rights” created outrage and prompted comments like this: This is beyond frightening. Thank you for this find. This does not bode well for continued freedom. Franz Kafka would have judged this too wild to fictionalize. But for us - it’s real. and this: Any chance of Bush rolling some of this back? It sounds amazing on its face.But today, when there’s warrantless NSA surveillance that makes the FISA Court look like significant judicial oversight, the comments are like this: Privacy is a false argument and has been for some time. Your insurance company and the credit bureaus have more on you than the feds do and you can do nothing about it. I would rather be secure knowing that the feds were looking over my shoulder and keeping me safe. I have nothing to hide, and in times of war, these steps are necessary.So when Clinton engages in eavesdropping (rubber stamped by the FISA Court), it’s a threat to the republic, but when Bush does it (without any judicial oversight), it’s no problem. Hat tip to Gene Healy at Cato, by way of The Agitator. ...

Although the ACLU’s lawsuit against AT&T in Illinois was thrown out, a separate case in Michigan filed on January 17 of this year against the NSA for warrantless wiretapping without approval of the FISA Court has resulted in a ruling by U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor that the practice is unconstitutional and must stop immediately. This is not the final decision in the case, but the granting of an injunction for the plaintiff. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit against AT&T also continues.