Surveillance
Posted at 11:36am on Jun. 19, 2008 BREAKING: FISA Deal
A Deal, Maybe A Good One. Thank Your GOP Representatives And Senators.
By Dan McLaughlin
Jed Babbin reported the rumors this morning and explained why telecom immunity is a sticking point, and the WSJ is now reporting ($) that in the House, at least, a deal has finally been struck to move a 'compromise' FISA bill. You should read the whole thing; here's how the WSJ describes the telecom immunity provision:
The agreement would also pave the way for [telecom] companies ... to shed the nearly 40 lawsuits they face for allegedly participating in a prior version of the NSA program... To win immunity, they would have to pass review from a U.S. District Court.
...Critical to sealing the deal was a compromise that would grant conditional immunity to telecommunications companies for assistance they provided from September 2001 through January 2007. If the companies can show a federal district court judge "substantial evidence" they received a written request from the attorney general or head of an intelligence agency stating the president authorized the surveillance and determined it to be lawful, the cases against them will be dismissed.
UPDATE: The Politico has the story along with the text of the compromise bill. The House is scheduled to vote tomorrow.
Provisionally, this seems like a win for national security and a win for the GOP, and a defeat for the far Left, the 'netroots,' and the plaintiffs' bar. The bill, if passed, will institutionalize even under an Obama Administration surveillance that has previously been conducted only because President Bush ordered it. On the presidential level, the deal sounds like one that John McCain will happily fall in with, and vindicates his longstanding position that the President, regardless of what he can do, should go to Congress for authority on surveillance. And it puts Barack Obama in a tough spot: if Pelosi and Reid are marshalling their troops behind it (even though they both personally oppose the deal), and he opposes them, he will yet again be shown to be an extremist outside the mainstream of his own party; yet if he supports the deal, he will have flip-flopped on his prior votes against FISA bills that contained telecom immunity.
More below the fold.
Posted in Barack Obama | FISA | John McCain | National Security | Surveillance — Comments (6)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 2:21pm on Nov. 16, 2007 9th Circuit: Responding to NY Times Waives State Secrets Privilege
Heads We Win The PR War, Tails You Lose The Real War
By Dan McLaughlin
When the New York Times disclosed a top-secret program of surveilance of international phone calls with suspected terrorists, the Bush Administration faced a critical choice: defend the program in public - including correcting misimpressions left by press reports - or try to preserve such secrecy as had not been shattered by the Times. Both choices had substantial downsides, but today the Ninth Circuit held (in a decision that is otherwise somewhat of a split decision* in a challenge brought to the program by "Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a designated terrorist organization, and two of its attorneys") that the Bush Administration waived its legal defense that a full judicial review of the program would involve disclosure of state secrets because the Administration responded to the Times in a way that confirmed the program's existence and some facts about it:
Read On...
Posted in 9th Circuit | National Security | NYT | Surveillance — Comments (3)/ Email this page » / Read More »
