Athenae: Democrats Need to Step Up on FISA

Allison Hantschel has a great column in the Southtown Star today on the FISA fight. Hantschel is better known to most in the blogosphere as Athenae of First Draft. The whole column’s worth a read for its retrospective analysis of what the Bush administration is asking for and how compliant the Senate has been in allowing legislation to proceed in a path that seems to ensure Bush and Cheney and their buddies in the telecom industry will get everything they want. Here’s a short excerpt:

There are many aspects of the Bush administration’s actions in the past eight years by which George Orwell would be impressed, but none perhaps so much so as the Protect America Act.

It’s called the Protect America Act so that anyone who votes against it is voting against the Protect America Act, and don’t think for one minute that’s not why it’s called that. Why else would you be so discourteous to your native tongue?

What it did, when initially passed in 2007, was revise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to give cover to the Bush administration’s illegal program of wiretapping the conversations of Americans without court order. That program was exposed by the New York Times in 2005; Congressional hearings quickly deteriorated into fights about the best way to make lawbreaking legal so nobody felt bad about it.

To listen to Senate Republicans tell it, the act needs to be renewed now so we can stop another Sept. 11, 2001, from happening, which is their rationale for why everything they want needs to be enacted immediately.

But the only bill Bush could stomach was one that protected telecommunications companies from lawsuits stemming from their compliance with illegal wiretapping by the administration. It wasn’t enough to immunize everyone in government from what had been done to Americans for the past six years; we had to make sure AT&T didn’t need to call a lawyer. Or, as Ted Kennedy put it on the Senate floor, if you believe what Bush is saying, then “the president is willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies.”

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad, and what makes it even sadder is that Democrats had to be prodded to fight illegal wiretapping at all. Only relentless citizen pressure convinced Sen. Chris Dodd, of Connecticut, to take up the issue of retroactive telecom immunity, though he has carried it admirably since, offering amendments and promising a filibuster when it looked like there was no other way to get the job done.

You can read the whole column at the Southtown Star.
Cross posted at the CREDO Blog.

A Thought

John McCain is the John Kerry of 2008.

In the 2004 cycle Kerry was the presumptive nominee early on, which allowed him to build an A-list campaign with top staff,  he fell far behind in the polls, and in the end was able to surge back to the nomination.

In 2008, McCain has played out on very similar terms as Kerry.

Money Race

The big news yesterday afternoon was a double negative story about the Clinton campaign’s money situation. First it came out that Hillary Clinton had loaned her campaign $5 million late last month. Then it came out that top staff on the Clinton campaign were foregoing pay, including the campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle.

The Obama campaign followed with a fundraising email to his supporters asking them to try to raise $5 million online in small dollar donations to match Clinton’s loan. Sarah Lai Stirland reported late last night that Obama had already raised over $6.3 million online since Super Tuesday; checking the Obama fundraising widget on their blog this morning, the number is now approaching $6.9 million. And to top that off, the Clinton campaign has announced that they’ve raised over $3 million online in the last 24 hours. Clearly both campaigns are entering Ron Paul territory when it comes to rapid online giving from their supporters.

While I was still on the Dodd campaign, I remember having a conversation with a number of our more experienced and savvy staffers who’ve been around campaigns much longer than I have about how the race might shape up if it got down to just Clinton and Obama (trust me, campaign staffers are just as much political junkies as folks online). The consensus was that, if it were close, the race would go to the convention because neither candidate would have an incentive to drop out as long as they had money and the assumption was that these two would always have enough money to compete.

I think money is a factor that will be most instructive for how things proceed over the coming weeks. The Clinton campaign is clearly in a tight financial situation, but is certainly capable of raising enough in spurts online to do what they need to do. I don’t know whether the Obama campaign’s speculation that Clinton might sink up to another $15 million comes from, but both Bill and Hillary have had many big book deals, and the former President has cleaned up as a consultant and speaker. But if they can’t keep the funds flowing in online, then the Clinton campaign will be in trouble. Obama’s support isn’t shrinking, it’s growing at a rapid rate. He’s probably going to easily pass the $30+ million he raised last month in February and don’t be shocked if they’re able to hit $10 million later today.

As of now, I don’t think that either campaign will be forced into conceding because of money. But the Clinton campaign, while showing strength in some areas financially, is showing weakness in others and is certainly not looking like it can match Obama’s small dollar tsunami. We’ll see how the rest of this week shakes out and if Clinton can keep her smaller (though still incredibly impressive) wave of online donations coming in to buoy the campaign in the next few days.

Verizon’s Selective Regard for Customer Privacy

There’s been a number of stories recently about the potential for telecom companies to begin filtering all internet content to search for copyright violations, a move that would assist the entertainment industry police digital piracy. Early indication was that AT&T and others would also be filtering content for illegal or immoral material. In short, it’s a horrible idea that involves a complete invasion of privacy by telecom companies.

Thomas Mennecke of Slyck and Brad Reed of Network World had a good piece on the story when it broke. Joel Johnson of BoingBoing Gadgets took a shot at AT&T when he found out about this too.

Apparently, though, not all the big telecoms are going to go along for the ride. In an interview with the New York Times‘ Saul Hansell, Verizon VP Thomas Tauke says his company doesn’t want to participate in this kind of internet filtering, for a variety of self-interested and other reasons. One that caused me to raise my eyebrow throw the ceiling and quickly up six floors to the roof of my building: customer privacy.

“Anything we do has to balance the need of copyright protection with the desire of customers for privacy.”

This is the same company that turned over millions of its customers private records to the NSA. Recall the USA Today broke the story of this database in spring 2006.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

At the time the story broke, Verizon offered no comment beyond they follow the law and try to protect customer privacy. They are now facing an unknown number of civil cases, presumably for this and other violations of customer privacy and eavesdropping laws. Not all telecom companies complied with

Verizon’s sentiment on this matter is certainly correct. I don’t think we want any of the big telecoms filtering the internet in an effort to track down copyrighted, illegal, or immoral content. But it’s a fantasy to think Verizon has a genuine regard for their customers’ privacy. They’ve disregarded privacy concerns at the behest of the Bush administration, without proper court order for years. They’ve lobbied the Senate heavily to try to secure retroactive immunity for their law breaking and pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into campaign war chests this cycle.

While I welcome Verizon’s new desire to ensure customer privacy, I have to presume that it is their desire to avoid incurring costs for liability for copyright violations that motivates them here. Draping themselves in the concern for privacy is disingenuous at best and a slap in the face of anyone who has watched them partner with the Bush administration to violate the rights and liberties of Americans over the last seven years.

(Hat tip to Brett Schenker for alerting me to the story)

Update:

Martin Bosworth at Scholars & Rogues has more thoughts on Verizon’s new-found regard for customer privacy. He’s been writing a lot about the AT&T filtering the internet story and is a very good resource for people who want more information about this.

Cardin Amendment Fails

Ben Cardin’s Amendment 3930 to FISA legislation just failed 49-46. 60 “yes” votes were needed to pass, based on the negotiated agreement by the Senate Democratic and Republican leadership.

The Cardin Amendment would have limited the SSCI bill to a 4 year extension. Since it failed, whatever new legislation is passed will sunset in 6 years.

We expect more votes on FISA amendments today, but doubt that the Dodd-Feingold amendment to strip retroactive immunity.

Bush Admin Continues to Show Its True Colors on FISA

Marcy Wheeler continues to have some of the most detailed analysis out there on the FISA amendments and what the Bush administration’s responses to them mean.

Recall that the administration has claimed, repeatedly, that its only goal with amending FISA is to make sure it can continue to wiretap overseas, even if that communication passed through the US. We always knew that claim was a lie, but the letter from McConnell and Mukasey finally makes that clear. Even still, they’re rebutting Feingold’s amendments–which they say “undermine significantly the core authorities” of the bill–with a bunch of misrepresentations about them, to avoid telling two basic truths (which Whitehouse and Feingold have said repeatedly, but which the Administration refuses to admit).

  • They’re spying on Americans and refuse to stop
  • They intend to keep spying on Americans even if the FISA Court tells them they’re doing so improperly

As I explained, the letter includes a list of amendments that, if they were passed, would spark a veto. Those include three Feingold amendments:

  • 3979: segregating information collected on US persons
  • 3913: prohibiting reverse targeting
  • 3915: prohibiting the use of information collected improperly

All three of these amendments share one overall purpose–the limit the way the government uses this “foreign surveillance” to spy on Americans.

The Mukasey-McConnell attack on segregation is most telling. They complain that the amendment makes a distinction between different kinds of foreign intelligence (one exception to the segregation requirement in the amendment is for “concerns international terrorist activities directed against the United States, or activities in preparation therefor”), even while they claim it would “diminish our ability swiftly to monitor a communication from a foreign terrorist overseas to a person in the United States.” In other words, the complain that one of the only exceptions is for communications relating terrorism, but then say this will prevent them from getting communications pertaining to terrorism.

Wheeler has much more in defense of Feingold’s amendments from Mukasey and McConnell’s attacks. She concludes:

We’ve been talking about this FISA stuff for almost a year now. All this time, the Administration has claimed that it was only interested in wiretapping foreign circuits that transited the US. But that’s obviously just the start of what they insist on doing with this law.

They want to be able to spy on communications between the US and other countries without having to protect US person data through minimization or adequate targeting procedures. George Bush is basically trying to legalize his illegal spying program, all with the willing assistance of the US Congress.

Read her whole post here.

Threatening Congress

Just in time for another round of FISA legislative debate, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is on the Hill drumming up the threat of Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

A senior intelligence official said Tuesday evening that the testimony was based in part on new evidence that Qaeda operatives in Pakistan were training Westerners, most likely including American citizens, to carry out attacks. The official said there was no indication as yet that Al Qaeda had succeeded in getting operatives into the United States.

I can’t tell you if this threat is real or not. But I can remind you and everyone in the Senate that any time the US government wants to eavesdrop on an American, they need a court order. The FISA Court (FISC) has an approval rate of 99.9% of government surveillance requests, meaning that even if Al Qaeda is developing Americans into terrorists, the FISC is more than capable of recognizing the threat and giving our intelligence and law enforcement agencies the tools they need to monitor them.

Last August the Protect America Act was rushed through the Senate under a cloud of fear-mongering and terror threats by the White House and their top intelligence officials. Glenn Greenwald writes:

they sent out Mike McConnell days before the August recess to tell everyone in Congress that they better pass the bill before they leave or The Terrorists would kill us all and the blood would be on the hands of Congress for failing to give the President what he wanted

So Congress hastily passed the PAA, leading us to where we are now, with the Senate debating whether or not to give George Bush and Dick Cheney everything they want again. Greenwald sarcastically captures the operable Republican argument surrounding the FISA legislation and McConnell’s warnings:

We better forget about checks and balances and oversight and restraints of any kind and everything else and just make sure that the President can spy on our emails and telephone calls with no oversight, otherwise Al Qaeda is going to slaughter us in our Homeland. And we also better make sure that telecommunications corporations don’t have consequences when they break the law, otherwise we’re doomed, because Al Qaeda is coming.

The simple reality is that when we are governed by fear, we are less safe. Requests to hand over our rights and our liberties in the face of the latest threat must be met with outright distain. Americans are not prepared to live in fear, even if the Republicans are. The threat posed by Al Qaeda is not an existential one to the United States, but if we respond to it by stripping powers from co-equal branches of government, removing civil liberty protections from our citizenry, and suspending the rule of law to protect the financial interests of our largest telecom companies, then we are allowing the fundamental shape of our nation to change in the face of these terror threats.

I would hope that the Senate changes course from last August and stands tall in the face of the latest fears being hawked by the administration. No threat warrants the creation of a police state. No threat warrants the shredding of the US Constitution.

Cross posted at the CREDO Blog.

Put Her Out To Pasture

Back to back posts bashing the NY Times Opinion section!

Molly Ivors takes down the latest Maureen Dowd column. Here’s the rub:

My point all along has been that MoDo, in focusing on the most meaningless and shallow terms, makes all the candidates unelectable. And look where she’s focusing her eyes. Don’t let her do it to another Democratic candidate. She needs to be put out to pasture somewhere she can use her gifts. Joan Rivers is getting pretty long in the tooth, maybe E! needs another red carpet catty bitch. That’d be an excellent job for her. But she absolutely must stop fucking up the country from the Op-Ed page of the NY Times.

I agree. I can’t recall the last time Dowd wrote a column on presidential politics that wasn’t trite, petty, demeaning bunk. The overwhelming majority of it is focused on the Clintons and has reach a level that is undoubtedly pathological hatred. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Times continues to allow her to devote so much of her energies towards destroying Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. And Molly I. is right – Obama’s in her sights and if he wins the nomination, we can no doubt expect her preening psychobabble-filled deconstructions to be aimed at him.

Contrary to what Dowd thinks, we have some very electable, talented candidates for President. She doesn’t get to change that fact.

Dem vs GOP Unity

I have a lot of issues with today’s Times editorial on the divisions in both parties. At ground, though, is the notion that the Democrats face the same post-nomination hurdles as the Republicans with regards to the winning candidate bringing the loser’s coalition along with them.

The splits between Democratic voters over Obama and Clinton do not seem to reside in ideological segments. It’s not as if all the union voters are with one candidate and all of the anti-war voters are with another and the Democratic coalition faces an irreparable division as a result. Rather, while both Obama and Clinton are securing some unique demographics, the reasons for the splits seem more around what the candidate offers as opposed to ideology. In the end, I imagine both candidates’ Democratic supporters staying with the Democratic nominee.

The opposite is true on the Republican sides. Major Republican figureheads like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and James Dobson have said they won’t campaign for McCain or would prefer Hillary Clinton to him. Huckabee is pulling Southern, evangelical “values” voters. Romney is taking a share of conservatives and and big business Republicans. This is a divided party and they will have major hurdles to overcome to have John McCain put together a winning coalition if he is the nominee.

Until Democratic talking heads and icons like Randi Rhodes, Rachel Maddow, James Carville, and Jesse Jackson announce they won’t vote for one candidate or the other, I find it impossible to see the Democrats facing anything close to the divisiveness that the Republicans are staring at come the McCain nomination.

Update:

I’m trying to find similar results showing this elsewhere, but CT is an example of how Dems like their candidates and will be content with who ever gets the nomination. DemFromCT at Daily Kos notes:

As it happens, 72% of CT D primary voters will be satisfied if Clinton wins, and 73% feel the same about Obama. There’s no deep divisions and poison in CT Dem circles. The candidates don’t despise each other the way McCain and Romney do, although it wouldn’t matter if they did.

Update II:

OK, Steve Benen has the national exit poll numbers I mentioned above showing how happy Dems are with their candidates:

Despite rumors to the contrary, Democratic voters are not bitterly divided between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — 72% of all Dems said they’d be satisfied with Clinton as the nominee, and 71% said they’d be happy with Obama.

Update III:

Here’s D-Day’s take (via D. Aristophanes):

That’s what I see when I talk to actual Democrats, particularly those who don’t spend all their time on the Internet. Not only do Democrats like both candidates, not only do they think they are going to get to vote FOR someone instead of AGAINST the Republican this year, but the primary is improving that view.

All of this just goes to show that (a) the Times editorial board made a comparison that falsely equated the Democratic and Republican electoral situation and (b)  from a statistical, anecdotal, and editorial stand point, Dems are pretty happy with where we are right now.