Kit Bond isn’t surprising, of course, being the loyal, rabid Republican he is. McCaskill, however, surprised me. She was voted in during the last elections on a wave of anger over Republican policies and strategies. Both her and Obama (who campaigned on her behalf) have decided to vote in favor of the recent FISA bill, which passed. According the the ACLU this is what the bill contains:
• H.R. 6304 permits the government to conduct mass, untargeted surveillance of all communications coming into and out of the United States, without any individualized review, and without any finding of wrongdoing.
• H.R. 6304 permits only minimal court oversight. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) only reviews general procedures for targeting and minimizing the use of information that is collected. The court may not know who, what or where will actually be tapped.
• H.R. 6304 contains a general ban on reverse targeting. However, it lacks stronger language that was contained in prior House bills that included clear statutory directives about when the government should return to the FISA court and obtain an individualized order if it wants to continue listening to a US person’s communications.
• H.R.6304 contains an “exigent” circumstance loophole that thwarts the prior judicial review requirement. The bill permits the government to start a spying program and wait to go to court for up to 7 days every time “intelligence important to the national security of the US may be lost or not timely acquired.” By definition, court applications take time and will delay the collection of information. It is highly unlikely there is a situation where this exception doesn’t swallow the rule.
• H.R. 6304 further trivializes court review by explicitly permitting the government to continue surveillance programs even if the application is denied by the court. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever it gathered in the meantime.
• H.R. 6304 ensures the dismissal of all cases pending against the telecommunication companies that facilitated the warrantless wiretapping programs over the last 7 years. The test in the bill is not whether the government certifications were actually legal – only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that they were, all the cases seeking to find out what these companies and the government did with our communications will be killed.
• Members of Congress not on Judiciary or Intelligence Committees are NOT guaranteed access to reports from the Attorney General, Director of National Intelligence, and Inspector General.On top of all of that; the bill exempts telecommunications companies from lawsuits pertaining to the possibly illegal wiretapping and spying programs aimed at American citizens by the Bush administration. You heard that right people, Claire McCaskill, our (Missouri) Senator has decided that telecommunication’s companies should be literally above the law.
Now, it would be great if I could get together a million or so dollars and lobby congress to be exempt from, say, parking tickets, domestic abuse, or vandalism. Don’t all of you just wish you had a huge amount of money that would allow you to be above the law, just like the Bush administration and its corporate patsies?
This law pretty much gives the telecommunications companies, other industries, and maybe even individuals encouragement to break the law just as long as a government agency is telling you to do so.
The reasons are silly and petty, acting as if the telecom companies couldn’t have known that what they were doing was illegal. It isn’t as if they don’t have high priced lawyers that regularly check to make sure the companies are in compliance with U.S. law, it isn’t as if they couldn’t have contacted law professors, judges, or other experts in Federal, State, and constitutional law. It’s also not as if some companies have already resisted, successfully, and in a high-profile fashion, government requests for information on customers.
For those of you who live in Missouri, here is where you can contact McCaskill and tell her how you feel:
http://mccaskill.senate.gov/contact/locations.cfm
http://mccaskill.senate.gov/contact/
I suggest the rest of you find out if your senator(s) decided to vote in favor of this horrible bill and give them a piece of your mind as well.
