The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed on Wednesday night.
It is not clear whether similar orders have gone to other parts of Verizon, like its residential or cellphone services, or to other telecommunications carriers. The order prohibits its recipient from discussing its existence, and representatives of both Verizon and AT&T declined to comment Wednesday evening.
The order was marked “TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN,” referring to communications-related intelligence information that may not be released to noncitizens. That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government, and its disclosure comes amid a furor over the Obama administration’s aggressive tactics in its investigations of leaks.
The collection of communications logs — or calling “metadata” — is believed to be a major component of the Bush administration’s program of surveillance that took place without court orders. The newly disclosed order raised the question of whether the government continued that type of information collection by bringing it under the Patriot Act.
For several years, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, have been cryptically warning that the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under that section of the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming to the public if it knew about it.
“We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot Act,” they wrote last year in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
They added: “As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.”
The senators were angry because the Obama administration described Section 215 orders as being similar to a grand jury subpoena for obtaining business records, like a suspect’s hotel or credit card records, in the course of an ordinary criminal investigation. The senators said the secret interpretation of the law was nothing like that.
The New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2011 for a report describing the government’s interpretation of its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act. But the Obama administration withheld the report, and a judge dismissed the case.
No, that's not how it works and would only protect the NSA from future civil litigation (they can rightfully assert they had a warrant). The FISA judge in this case must believe there is probable cause, but he can be proven wrong in any court case where info derived from the warrant is used by the prosecution. At that point everything collected under the warrant is no longer available for use by the prosecution. Further the defendents involved can sue civilly at that point.
Doesn't Smith v. Maryland render the 4th Amendment argument invalid in this instance?
Smith v. Maryland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Good golly, Zyph... did you read the OP???? Frankly it stops just short of trolling. And for the love of God, why do you call it "attacking" Bush when all I am doing is setting the facts straight???
yes, but from what I understand, you needed a court-approved warrant to do so. That's what keeps these spying programs from getting out of hand, IMO. But since the Bush Administration--or, pretty much the Patriot Act--that has changed. That is the biggie, eye-opening change.
Like you just did above? :roll:
However, some steps are broader. Stopping the courts from getting involved was a big one, and that happened under Bush. Obama has certainly continued the program, but I am not sure he's done anything differently than staus quo.
Sensenbrenner, the author of the Patriot Act, doesn't like this. "As the author of the Patriot Act, I am extremely troubled by the FBI’s interpretation of this legislation. While I believe the Patriot Act appropriately balanced national security concerns and civil rights, I have always worried about potential abuses. The Bureau’s broad application for phone records was made under the so-called business records provision of the Act. I do not believe the broadly drafted FISA order is consistent with the requirements of the Patriot Act. Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American."
I would like to echo that by adding that things like this will never stop as long as people continue to provide cover by pointing to the past transgressions of the opposition.It is very depressing to realize that neither of our major parties has any interest whatsoever in protecting our right to privacy. The Obama administration has proved to be just as hostile to the fourth amendment protection against warrantless searches as the Bush administration was. On one hand, it's nice to know that this sort of thing isn't a partisan issue. On the other hand, it's only that way because neither side seems to care.
This crap needs to stop. If there was ever a reason for a bipartisan, grassroots movement to exist, this is it.
U.S. border agents should continue to be allowed to search a traveler’s laptop, cellphone or other electronic device and keep copies of any data on them based on no more than a hunch, according to an internal Homeland Security Department study. It contends limiting such searches would prevent the U.S. from detecting child pornographers or terrorists and expose the government to lawsuits.
The 23-page report, obtained by The Associated Press and the American Civil Liberties Union under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, provides a rare glimpse of the Obama administration’s thinking on the long-standing but controversial practice of border agents and immigration officers searching and in some cases holding for weeks or months the digital devices of anyone trying to enter the U.S.
Since his election, President Barack Obama has taken an expansive view of legal authorities in the name of national security, asserting that he can order the deaths of U.S. citizens abroad who are suspected of terrorism without involvement by courts, investigate reporters as criminals and — in this case — read and copy the contents of computers carried by U.S. travelers without a good reason to suspect wrongdoing.
The DHS study, dated December 2011, said the border searches do not violate the First or Fourth amendments, which prohibit restrictions on speech and unreasonable searches and seizures. It specifically objected to a tougher standard in a 1986 government policy that allowed for only cursory review of a traveler’s documents.
The U.S. government has always maintained that anything a person carries across the border — a backpack, a laptop, or anything hidden in a person’s body — is fair game to be searched as a means of keeping drugs, child pornography and other dangerous goods out of the country, and to enforce import laws. But as more Americans enter the U.S. with sophisticated computers, thumb drives, smartphones, cameras and other electronic devices that hold vast amounts of information about who they are and how they conduct business, privacy rights advocates have pressed for more checks on such authority, particularly if digital files are copied and shared with other federal agencies, such as the FBI.
The ACLU, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and other groups have sued to stop the practice, saying that it violates First and Fourth amendment rights. They say allowing agents to act on a hunch encourages racial profiling. Some activists say they also worry that the FBI and other federal investigators are using laptop searches at the border to collect intelligence on terror and criminal suspects without judicial checks.
Catherine Crump, the ACLU lawyer who first requested the report, said it is the first detailed explanation of why the government believes it doesn’t need a reason to open a laptop or storage device and download files for further review. She described as inadequate the government’s argument that imposing a legal threshold to perform such searches would lead to lawsuits.
“That’s just not good enough,” Crump said. “A purely suspicionless search opens the door to ethnic profiling.”
Since the 2011 report, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has objected to searching electronic devices without reasonable suspicion.
“A person’s digital life ought not be hijacked simply by crossing a border,” Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the appeals court majority in March.
Yeah, I don't understand some people's reactions here. This is unacceptable under Obama just as it was unacceptable under Bush. It's really not that complicated.
I would like to echo that by adding that things like this will never stop as long as people continue to provide cover by pointing to the past transgressions of the opposition.
So it's the press's fault. If they hadn't reported this, nobody would be upset, and Sensenbrenner wouldn't be a hypocrite. I believe I've heard this argument before.What hypocrite!
It's been going on for years, and he has been briefed on this.
But now that it's being reported in the press, suddenly he has objections
So it's the press's fault. If they hadn't reported this, nobody would be upset, and Sensenbrenner wouldn't be a hypocrite. I believe I've heard this argument before.
There is still a warrant.
And lets not forget...
ECHELON - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is so far from new... that it is funny that it is being used to attack Obama, when it has been going on since forever.
The only reason past transgressions matter is that it causes a severe gap in any sort of credibility in actually caring about the issue.I would like to echo that by adding that things like this will never stop as long as people continue to provide cover by pointing to the past transgressions of the opposition.
Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily
Seriously, spin that, Obama fans.
Oh relax. I was kidding. When I make crap up, I admit it.I never said "nobody would be upset"
Your making crap up about what I said demonstrates your desperation to make a point.
As I have been saying since the Patriot Act was first proposed: Never seek political power you wouldn't trust to your worst enemy.
Once you get that power it is a foregone conclusion that one day your opponent will too.
Oh relax. I was kidding. When I make crap up, I admit it.
Maybe that didn't come across the way I meant it to.Yes and no. Yes, don't use past transgressions as an excuse for current and future ones. But no, don't pretend that these ills can be cured by partisan politics and simply electing the other party.
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