Bipartisan Group Of Senators Introduces Bill To Limit Government Spying Against Americans

June 19th, 2013 | Posted by jclifford in Democrats | Homeland Insecurity | Legislation | Liberty - (0 Comments)

Earlier today, Jim wrote about the newly-introduced H.R. 2399, legislation that would somewhat restrict, but not end, massive wiretapping of Americans’ electronic communications by the U.S. military through the National Security Agency.

Another piece of legislation with the same goal, though perhaps not the same mechanisms, was introduced yesterday in the U.S. Senate. The bill is S. 1182, “A bill to modify the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to require specific evidence for access to business records and other tangible things, and provide appropriate transition procedures”.

senate privacy billThe text of the legislation is not yet available from the Government Printing Office, but bill’s author, Senator Mark Udall, said in a floor speech yesterday that it is “designed to narrow Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, known also as the “business records” provision, to better balance the authorities we give the federal government while protecting our constitutional rights. More specifically, my legislation would prevent the federal government from collecting millions of law-abiding Americans’ phone call records without first establishing some nexus to terrorism. We all expect the NSA to target terrorists, but the revelations in the past few weeks have made clear that the information of millions of law-abiding Americans is being swept up in the process… While this legislation would still allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies to use the PATRIOT Act to obtain a wide range of records in the course of terrorism and espionage-related investigations, it would require them to demonstrate that the records are in some way connected to terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities – which is not the case today.”

As you can see, the bill’s cosponsorship is bipartisan, though most of the cosponsors are Democrats.

The Democrats Who Support S. 1182:

Mark Begich
Jeff Merkley
Mark Udall
Tom Udall
Ron Wyden

The Republicans Who Support S. 1182:

Mike Lee
Lisa Murkowski

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Before you jump on the H.R. 2399 Libert-E Bandwagon, Read the Bill: Reform or Institutionalization?

June 19th, 2013 | Posted by Jim Cook in Homeland Insecurity | Legislation | Politics - (5 Comments)

This morning, the Twitterverse is filled with replicating messages of support for H.R. 2399, the self-titled “Libert-E” bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers and Rep. Justin Amash. Four typical Tweets:

Amash leads challenge to NSA surveillance with LIBERT-E act: http://wtim.es/11KVGSC

Action Alert: Stop NSA Snooping with the LIBERT-E Act http://wp.me/p2fInh-WJ

Thanks @repjohnconyers & @justinamash for intro’ing the bipartisan Libert-E Act, HR 2399, to rein in PATRIOT 215 & combat secret law #NSA

So glad to see @RepSinema & @RepMattSalmon join on board with @repjustinamash with the LIBERT-E act! http://yoho.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-yoho-co-sponsors-bipartisan-libert-e-act … #Bipartisanship

But hang on a minute. It’s more than a little early to be passing around the congratulations, action alerts and expressions of support. John Conyers hasn’t published anything about the bill on his House website, and Justin Amash has published a general press release describing the bill in very general terms but not providing the text of the bill itself. THOMAS, the Library of Congress website that will eventually publish the text of the bill here, hasn’t gotten around to it yet, at least not as of the morning of June 19. All these declarations and statements about H.R. 2399 are therefore occurring before the public gets a chance to read the bill, and that doesn’t seem right. Perhaps the most reasonable statement of the morning on Twitter is this request by Kathy Neiheisel: “@repjustinamash want link to actual bill LIBERT-E and summary.”

By poking around the back-ends of a few news websites, I’ve found a PDF version of H.R. 2399 here, and have transcribed it into a searchable text form here. Before you declare your support (or opposition) read the bill.

I’d like to know what you think of the bill. My own reaction is split and unsure. On the positive side, H.R. 2399 includes requirements that the executive branch regularly report to the Congress (and in a more limited form to the public) regarding the scope and extent of warrantless surveillance activities. The bill also contains some language that could be construed as containing warrantless searches to those that “pertain to an individual” under investigation, but that language may itself be limited. Consider also that the effect of the bill, in imposing minor constraints and reporting regulations, is to regularize, institutionalize and legitimize massive warrantless surveillance. Is what we want to receive regular reports on the warrantless surveillance, or for the warrantless surveillance to end?

Please read the bill and tell me what you think.

Update, 12:24 pm: Responding to requests, Rep. Justin Amash’s office has not only posted the text of H.R. 2399, but also added an interpretation of some of the more opaque sections. An excerpt regarding Section 2:

Section 2. Reforms to Access to Certain Business Records for Foreign Intelligence and International Terrorism Investigations. This section changes Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act in order to prevent the mass collection of business recordsthat are not material to an authorized foreign intelligence investigation, an international terrorism investigation, or clandestine intelligence activities.

  • Currently, in order to obtain a Section 215 court order, the government needs to show that the records only are “relevant” to such an investigation. Recent reports suggest that the government’s view of the “relevance” standard includes records of every telephone call on a
    given network.
  • This section would require that the governmentshow that the relevance of these records to the investigation is based on “specific and articulable” facts, that the records are material to the investigation, and that the records “pertain only to individuals under such investigation.”
  • The section removes a list of “presumptively relevant” records. The government should be required to show that the records it seeks are, in fact, material to a particular investigation.
  • The section also guarantees the recipient of a Section 215 order the right to challenge an accompanying gag order, and it ensures notice and due process for any such challenger.

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Alan Grayson Uses Cover of “Mind Your Own Business Act” … to Collect Your Personal Information

June 14th, 2013 | Posted by Jim Cook in Democrats | Legislation | Politics - (2 Comments)

At Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, Firedoglake and other large liberal multiuser blogs, Representative Alan Grayson issued a fiery call this week condemning the warrantless surveillance of all American phone calls and grand-scale data sweeps of most big-site internet traffic, all undermining your privacy:

Microsoft, Google, Apple – they’re all in on it. Former NSA official William Binney has said that we are “on a slippery slope to a totalitarian state.” I don’t know what’s worse: that I’m not sure he’s right, or that I’m not sure he’s wrong.

Fortunately, I’m a Member of Congress, so I can do something about it. And you are likely an American citizen and voter, which means that you can help.

I’m introducing a bill that I call the “Mind Your Own Business Act”. This bill prohibits our government from spying on us, or collecting data on us, unless there’s probable cause that you have committed or you will commit an act of terrorism or similar criminal offense.

I submitted this provision as an amendment to the House Rules Committee today. I am attempting to attach it to the National Defense Authorization Act, which will come up for a vote in the House later this week. Sign your name here to show your support for the Mind Your Own Business Act:

http://MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com/

…

Click here for freedom.
Courage,

Rep. Alan Grayson

“Click here for freedom.” Is that what “clicking here” really accomplishes? In a word, no.

Let’s start with the articles in Democratic Underground, Daily Kos and Firedoglake. The links in those articles have special tracking codes … so Alan Grayson can track people who follow them back to the source from which they visited Grayson’s website.

Moving on to the website itself, here’s a screen capture of the entire one-page website:

Mind Your Own Business Act Website

Pay attention to what’s not on the website: the text of the amendment you’re being asked to support. Alan Grayson is asking you to support an amendment that he doesn’t let you read. In case you’re wondering, his articles on Firedoglake etc. don’t link to the text of the amendment either. If you’re really interested in reading the amendment, here’s a copy that I found after some poking around.

Pay further attention to what’s not on the website: the contact information for members of the House Rules Committee, which was to consider Alan Grayson’s amendment on June 13. That is the second piece of information missing that, if present, would have allowed citizens to take informed political action.

What is on the website, if not the text of a bill or contact information for the Rules Committee?

  • A banner declaring that Alan Grayson is a “Congressman with Guts”
  • A link for you to publicize mindyourownbusinessact.com on Facebook and Twitter
  • A big red link for you to contribute to Alan Grayson’s campaign coffers
  • Another big red link for you to “sign the petition.”
  • A counter indicating that 13,467 people have “signed the petition.”
  • A link to a “Privacy Policy.”

That “Privacy Policy” explains that when you “sign the petition,” your name, employment information, demographic information, contact information and “other information relevant to the efforts of the Committee” is collected by Alan Grayson’s re-election campaign. That information is used to add to Alan Grayson’s mailing list, to ask you for money, and to be sent to third-party vendors to gather more information about you and ask you for money again.

Real petitions are used to show support for change in a policy. But go ahead and look through Alan Grayson’s press releases, Twitter feed, #nsamindyourownbusiness hashtag and Facebook account. Alan Grayson failed to share the results of his “petition” drive in any of these locations. Rep. Grayson spoke before the Rules Committee on the subject of this amendment, but as you can see (via this House Rules video, 3 hours and 55 minutes into broadcast), Rep. Grayson never brings up the petition or its signatories.

Alan Grayson speaks before the House Rules Committeee on June 12, 2013. Any mention of the so-called petition he gathered? None whatsoever.

It appears that Rep. Grayson did not actually share the petition signatures with anyone to any political effect. Instead, he used the idea of a “petition” to make people feel that they had engaged in a significant political action when all they had done was surrender their personal information to a government entity — the government entity of Representative Alan Grayson.

The Rules Committee voted down Alan Grayson’s amendment, so it will not be moving forward. But regardless, Alan Grayson’s campaign committee moves forward with over ten thousand new names of potential donors in a fake “petition” that was never deployed. Indeed, in the few minutes since obtaining the screen capture you see above, I notice that Alan Grayson’s “petition” has sucked in the personal information of 900 more citizens who feel that they are making a difference but have only been well-meaning dupes.

I might be a tiny bit more sympathetic to Alan Grayson on this account were it not for the fact that in 2010, Rep. Grayson voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act without any reforms — the very same Patriot Act that enabled the government to collect all of our phone records.

When Alan Grayson had the chance to take action and stop warrantless, suspicionless government surveillance, he voted to enable it instead — and now he’s manipulating people who want to take action into surrendering their personal information to his self-serving political campaign machine. Shame on him.

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These Senators Voted To Fund Big Tobacco By Cutting Food Stamps

June 12th, 2013 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Economy | Legislation - (0 Comments)

By what criteria could we define a heartless politician?

There’s a great deal of moral room between the points of callousness, corruption and cruelty, but I would like to think that most Americans would agree that a politician who…

First votes to protect government payments to keep tobacco farmers in business,
and Second votes to cut billions of dollars from programs that feed hungry people

… should be categorized as among the heartless. After all, who could make such a cruel pair of votes?

Too many members of the U.S. Senate, that’s who.

cigarettes and food stampsEach of the following U.S. senators voted against an effort to end government payments to tobacco farmers, and then, just a few days later, voted for a bill that cuts 4 billion dollars in food stamps aid to hungry Americans.

The Cruel Caucus Of The U.S. Senate:

Lamar Alexander – Republican
Max Baucus – Democrat
Roy Blunt – Republican
John Boozman – Republican
Richard Burr – Republican
Saxby Chambliss – Republican
Thad Cochran – Republican
Chris Coons – Democrat
Bill Cowan – Democrat
Joe Donnelly – Democrat
Deb Fischer – Republican
Lindsey Graham – Republican
Charles Grassley – Republican
Kay Hagan – Democrat
Tom Harkin – Democrat
Heidi Heitkamp – Democrat
Mazie Hirono – Democrat
John Hoeven – Republican
Mike Johanns – Republican
Tim Kaine – Democrat
Angus King – Independent
Mary Landrieu – Democrat
Patrick Leahy – Democrat
Jerry Moran – Republican
Christopher Murphy – Democrat
Bill Nelson – Democrat
Mark Pryor – Democrat
Harry Reid – Democrat
Debbie Stabenow – Democrat
Jon Tester – Democrat
David Vitter – Republican
Roger Wicker – Republican

Who said that bipartisanship was dead? Here we see both Republicans and Democrats, protecting Big Tobacco while telling hungry people to go to hell.

They all ought to be ashamed of themselves.

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The CHURCH Act in Congress is a Flop

June 11th, 2013 | Posted by Jim Cook in Legislation | Religion - (0 Comments)

Back in 2009, Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas decided he’d had enough of Americans galavanting about, exhibiting the religion of their choice or no religion at all, willy-nilly, hither and thither, all around the town just as they saw fit. To correct this disturbing trend of religious pluralism. Rep. Gohmert introduced the Congressional Hope for Uniform Recognition of Christian Heritage Act, also known as the CHURCH Act. The CHURCH Act rejects the separation of church and state, and mandates instead that a sign be erected in Congress avowing Gohmert’s vision of true religious freedom: that people should be allowed to choose between different Christian denominations.

Since 2009, Louie Gohmert has repeatedly introduced the measure. In the 111th Congress of 2009-2010, Gohmert attracted 14 supporters for his special mandated sign law. That figure rose in the 112th Congress of 2011-2012 to 28 supporters. But something happened in between the 112th Congress and the 113th Congress of 2013-2014: religious conservatives in the Republican Party got pummeled in the election booth. In the 113th Congress, Louie Gohmert’s Christians-only sign bill for the Congress has attracted only 4 supporters.

CHURCH Act supporters plummet in the 113th Congress

Even within the GOP, the CHURCH act is getting old.

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Dianne Feinstein’s Flawed Homeland Security Logic Shows PRISM Is A Sham

June 9th, 2013 | Posted by jclifford in Democrats | Homeland Insecurity | Liberty - (5 Comments)

When the Guardian newspaper discovered that the US government has been spying on Americans’ phone calls, emails, and Internet behavior for years without any reasonable suspicion of criminal behavior, Senator Dianne Feinstein leaped to the defense of the electronic surveillance dragnet. The Big Brother program, called PRISM, is necessary to preserve America’s national security, she said: “It’s called protecting America!”

Is that what it’s about? Actually, the record shows the spying of PRISM is about failing to protect America.

dianne feinstein prismThe logic of Senator Feinstein’s argument is as follows:

Premise: America needs to be protected.
Premise: Sacrificing liberty enables the protection of America.
Conclusion: Liberty needs to be sacrificed.

Flaw in Feinstein’s first premise: There is no part of the Constitution that states that the American people have a right to security. Security is a function of some parts of the federal government, but it is not the primary function of the federal government. America has other needs besides security, and those needs come before security.

Flaw in Feinstein’s second premise: Sacrificing liberty has not enabled the protection of America. PRISM, created through the FISA Amendments Act and the Patriot Act, sacked the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution in order to spy on hundreds of millions of Americans in billions of instances per day. Yet, the system failed to provide warning of the bombing of the Boston marathon.

Conclusion: Liberty does not need to be sacrificed.

Our constitutional right to protection from unreasonable search and seizure has been taken away from us, and we haven’t even received security in return.

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Which Senate Democrats Have Failed To Confront Discrimination On The Basis Of Sexual Orientation?

June 5th, 2013 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Democrats | Legislation | Sex and Gender - (1 Comments)

There’s good news for Americans who care about freedom from discrimination in the workplace. In the U.S. Senate, Al Franken has introduced S. 1088, a bill that would prohibit discrimination in public schools based on the sexual orientation, or perceived sexual orientation, of students.

But then, only 33 Senate Democrats actually have signed their names to support the bill. That’s not something to be proud of.
The Senate Democrats who seem not to give a damn about discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans are:

sneering donkeyMax Baucus
Tom Carper
Joe Donnelly
Dianne Feinstein
Heidi Heitkamp
Mazie Hirono
Tim Johnson
Tim Kaine
Mary Landrieu
Carl Levin
Joe Manchin
Claire McCaskill
Robert Menendez
Bill Nelson
Mark Pryor
Harry Reid
John Rockefeller
Jon Tester
Mark Warner

These Democrats are the congressional equivalent of the kids in high school who would look the other way while the gay kids got beat up. They’re cowards.

By the way, independent senator Angus King is refusing to support this legislation as well. How are you feeling about that, Maine voters?

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Democrat Controlled Senate Votes Today On Cutting Food Stamps

June 3rd, 2013 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Democrats | Economy | Legislation - (2 Comments)

The Democratic Party likes to tell economic progressives that it is their ally. The Democrats claim that they would happily advance an economically progressive agenda, if only the Republicans didn’t control the U.S. House of Representatives.

The legislative record of the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate shows a different picture. When the Senate Democrats have been given opportunities to pass economically progressive legislation, they have typically failed to do so.

For example, last year, independent senator Bernard Sanders, currently tied for the position of the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, introduced the End Polluter Welfare Act, which would have eliminated more than 110 billion dollars in government subsidies for the oil industry, which continues to charge Americans high prices for fossil fuels in spite of receiving huge amounts of corporate welfare. Not even one Democrat in the Senate would support the bill.

That was last year, of course. Today, the Democrats have a stronger hand in the U.S. Senate, and so, if they really wanted to advance a progressive economic agenda, we’d see more clear evidence of it.

Instead, we’re seeing the opposite from the Senate Democrats. We’re seeing S. 954.

S. 954 is commonly referred to as the Farm Bill. It might more accurately be referred to as the Starve Impoverished Americans Bill. Part of the program of “reform” that will be created if S. 954 is passed into law will be the elimination of 4 billion dollars in food stamps that are used to provide food to impoverished American families.

The Democratic Party isn’t just going along with this starvation legislation. It helped to create it in the first place. What’s more, last month, the Democrats were given the chance to fix S. 954 by restoring food stamps spending to normal levels, with Senate Amendment 931. However, 26 Senate Democrats voted against this amendment. These Democrats voted specifically to cut billions of dollars in food aid to desperate Americans.

made in usa tshirtSenate Democrats refused to reduce 110 billion dollars in gifts to oil companies. Then, they refuse to restore just a fraction of that spending to feed people in need.

Today, the Senate Democrats have a final chance to repair this injustice. They have a chance to vote against the draconian S. 954. S. 954 is scheduled to be considered for passage by the entire U.S. Senate.

What do you think the chances are that the Democrats will finally keep their promises, and vote to defend a progressive economic vision for America?

If you’ve been paying attention, you know the chances are next to nothing. It’s time for sincere progressives to recognize that the Democratic Party doesn’t represent their point of view. It’s time for American progressives to invest in the Green Party.

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