One of the most troublesome claims about the FISA Amendments Act, the law that would make the Protect America Act permanent, is that it only allows electronic spying by the government without a search warrant when the spying is to be done against non-Americans who are outside the United States. The truth is that the legislation allows for something called reverse targeting.
Reverse targeting is a legal loophole perpetuated by the FISA Amendments Act that enables the United States government to engage in electronic surveillance of any American through a kind of backwards social networking. First, the government identifies an American that it wants to spy against using electronic means such as reading email, listening to telephone calls, and tracking use of the Internet. Then, the government finds a person outside the United States that the American target has been in contact with, even just by email or by visiting a web page outside of the United States. Perhaps the American target has only been in contact with another American who has been in contact with someone outside the United States. With one or two degrees of separation, everyone who has ever been online has had some contact with people outside the United States.
The government then makes the pretense of targeting the person overseas, when all along the real purpose of the spying is to conduct electronic surveillance against the American. It could be you, or your mother, or your children. You’ll never know. The electronic spying against Americans enabled by the Protect America Act and FISA Amendments Act is to remain secret. Anyone who tells you about it can be thrown into prison.
Because there’s no search warrant or other court approval required of the electronic survillance, there’s no one outside the federal government’s spy agencies to stop abuses of the spy powers from taking place. The Director of National Intelligence and Attorney General don’t have to justify or explain their electronic spying against Americans to anybody. There isn’t even any real oversight by Congress. The Bush White House gets to tell Congress as much or as little about the spying as it wants, and Congress has no way to check to make sure that the White House is telling the truth.
Consider what these electronic spying powers could be used for. They could be used by the White House to spy on members of Congress, on federal judges, on presidential candidates, on state and local police conducting criminal investigations, on activists as they conduct their personal lives. Put into the hands of a President who wants to use it, the FISA Amendments Act and Protect American Act provide the power of an Executive Branch with absolute power.
Knowing this, Senator Russ Feingold offered an amendment to the FISA Amendments Act this week. Feingold’s amendment would prohibit warrantless reverse targeting, and so would protect American citizens from being purposefully targeted for electronic surveillance by the government. Senator Feingold explained that his amendment “requires the government to obtain a court order whenever a significant purpose of the surveillance is to acquire the communications of an American in the U.S.”. That’s a pretty mild protection, actually. It doesn’t fully stop electronic spying against Americans by the government. It only requires the government to get a court order of some kind recognizing that the spying is legitimate in purpose.
Still, 57 members of the United States Senate voted against Senator Feingold’s amendment to the FISA Amendments Act. These 57 senators actually voted to prevent any interference with the government’s electronic surveillance against American citizens. These 57 senators wouldn’t even allow for the small interference of a constitutionally-required search warrant.
Every Republican who was present in the Senate on Thursday voted against Feingold’s effort to stop the unrestricted electronic spying against American citizens. The only Republican who wasn’t there to vote for it was John McCain, who was merely marked absent because he was too busy campaigning to be made President to protect the American people’s fundamental freedoms.
It gets worse than that. Seven Democratic senators abandoned the Democratic majority in the Senate. They went over to the Republican side. They voted with Republicans like David Vitter, Larry Craig and James Inhofe. These seven Democrats voted to allow George W. Bush to keep the power to conduct electronic spying against Americans without any meaningful restriction at all:
Dianne Feinstein of California
Daniel Inouye of Hawaii
Tim Johnson of South Dakota
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana
Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas
Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia
Ken Salazar of Colorado
The tranquility with which these Democratic Party senators allowed George W. Bush to obtain unrestricted spying powers against American citizens is matched only by the tranquility of their constituents.
I just searched for blog articles written about the vote on Feingold’s amendment to the FISA Amendments Act. I only found about 50 articles written over the last couple of weeks – and those include articles written here on Irregular Times and on our other activist web sites.
Contrast that to the tens of thousands of blog articles written just over the last couple of days about rumors that the writers’ strike might be over. A blogger named AJ offered the headline, “Hooray! WGA strike – It’s over”. Over at In.Forml.com, Paul Mayne wrote, “Writers strike is OVER! Yay for more Lost!” Heather Salerno wrote, “Writers’ strike over?!? We can only pray.”
The pathetic message could not be more clear: Take away Americans’ freedoms, and most people won’t have a problem with it at all, just so long as nobody takes away their favorite TV shows.
The 57 senators who voted against Feingold’s amendment represent the shallow values of their constituents all too well.
