Some Highlights with Daniel Ellsberg
1. Why does the vote this Tuesday, July 8th matter to normal people
who have nothing to hide?
Ordinary citizens who want to live in a democracy — including those
with nothing to hide — should be concerned about the ability of the
government to use private, sensitive personal information to
blackmail, manipulate, and intimidate their representatives,
journalists and their sources, potential whistleblowers, and activists
or dissenters of any sort.
2. Couldn’t it be argued that this type of surveillance ability has
prevented another 9/11 from happening? Isn’t it possible that this
type of legislation has saved American lives?
The administration has claimed that is has, but without presenting a
single piece of evidence that this is so, even in closed hearings to
Senators with clearances on the Intelligence Committee. The FISA court
has granted warrants in virtually every request that’s been made of it
that has any color of helping national security. The administration’s
decision to bypass that court, illegally, leads to a strong suspicion
that they are abusing domestic spying, as some of their predecessors
did, in ways that even the secret FISA court would never approve.
3. What are the most im****tant factual inaccuracies about FISA found
in the media?
Advocates of the bill take pride that it makes this amended FISA the
exclusive basis for overhearing citizens, but that exclusivity is, in
fact, in the current 30-year-old FISA bill already. President Bush
simply ignored it in bypassing FISA, and there’s not reason that he
and his successors would not continue to do the same here.
It’s been inaccurately stated that if this amendments didn’t pass,
FISA would expire. This is flatly false. FISA is open-ended and will
continue as it already has, adequately for 30 years. What would expire
are some blanket surveillance orders authorized last year, which the
majority of Democrats, including Senator Obama, voted against.
The current bill does include one useful amendment to FISA, which
could be passed with virtually unanimous approval in an afternoon, to
allow warrantless interception of foreign-to-foreign communications
that happen to pass through the United States. No one opposes this.
Various administration officials have claimed that the requirement of
applying for a warrant from the FISA court deprived them of speed and
flexibility. This is false. The FISA allows for surveillance to be
implemented in an emergency situation before a warrant is sought, and
that could undoubtedly be extended with Congressional approval without
controversy.
What the administration seeks, and this bill provides, is permanent
warrantless surveillance.
4. Let’s consider an analogy: police officers have the legal right to
stop you if you’re going 56 mph in a 55-mph zone, but this right isn’t
often abused or applied to harass citizens. What makes you think the
administration would abuse their surveillance powers if this amendment
is approved?
The abuses of surveillance to which governments are drawn are those
that keep them in office, used to intimidate and manipulate their
rivals, and to avoid debate and dissent on their policies. These are
exactly the abuses that the Church Committee discovered in 1975, which
had been conducted on a wide-scale by the Johnson and Nixon
administrations, and in some cases even earlier, which is what lead to
FISA in the first place.
To remove judicial oversight, which this amendment would effectively
do, is to invite the same kind of repressive abuse that lead to FISA
in the first place.
5. Why would the current administration want this amendment to pass,
if not for safety of citizens and prevention of attacks?
Using NSA to spy without judicial oversight or constraint on American
citizens provides the infrastructure for dictator****p. George W. Bush
has frequently said what other presidents may only have thought: “It
would be a heck of a lot easier in a dictator****p, if only I were the
dictator.”
Other presidents have violated the law and the Constitution in much
the same way as Bush, so long as they could do it secretly, but they
haven’t proclaimed that as a right of their office as Bush, Cheney and
their legal advisors have done.
The oath of office they took, along with all members of Congress, was
to sup****t and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or
domestic. I believe that, in the matters we’ve been discussing, the
Founders had it right, not only for their time but for ours.
###
Extended bio of guest:
Daniel Ellsberg’s earlier career includes serving as a Marine Corps
company commander and earning a PhD. in Economics from Harvard. In
1959 he joined the Rand Cor****ation’s Economics Department as an
analyst, and consulted for the Kennedy Administration on the command
and control on nuclear weapons. In 1964 he was recruited to serve in
the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Following two
years in Vietnam for the State Department, Ellsberg eventually
returned to Rand. In 1971 he made headlines around the world when he
released the Pentagon Papers. Ultimately his actions helped end not
only the Nixon presidency but the Vietnam War.
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/07/07/what-every-american-needs-to-know-and-do-about-fisa-before-tuesday/
_
--
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government
talking
about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order.
Nothing has
changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists,
we're
talking about getting a court order before we do so"
-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004
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