Observe!
"With wiretap law set to expire, accusations fly in capital"
"By Pamela Hess, Associated Press | February 16, 2008
WASHINGTON - With a government eavesdropping law set to expire, Washington is awash in accusations.
President Bush said yesterday that "our country is in more danger of an attack" because Congress did not pass a Senate bill that would have renewed a law that made it easier for the government to spy on foreign phone calls and e-mails that pass through the United States.
That bill also would have shielded from lawsuits telecommunications companies that helped the government wiretap US computer and phone lines after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks without clearance from a secret court that was established specifically to oversee such activities. In its competing version of the legislation, the House intentionally left out that feature.
Readers, when they lie day after day after day, what are we too think?I mean, Bush's Wiretapping Began BEFORE 9/11!! and the New York Times Admits Bush Administration Spying Began in December of 2000... BEFORE TAKING OFFICE!
"American citizens must understand, clearly understand, that there's still a threat on the homeland. There's still an enemy which would like to do us harm," Bush said. "We've got to give our professionals the tools they need to be able to figure out what the enemy is up to so we can stop it."
"By blocking this piece of legislation, our country is more in danger of an attack," he said.
Yeah, from YOU and your FALSE-FLAGGING INSIDE JOB buddies!!!
NOT FOOLED ANYMORE, shitter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Democrats, in turn, accused Bush of fear-mongering and misrepresenting the facts.
"This is not about protecting Americans. The president just wants to protect American telephone companies," Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, head of the House Democratic Caucus, said yesterday.
Beyond the rhetoric, the central issue is what the government can and can't do after 12 a.m. today, when a temporary eavesdropping law adopted by Congress in August is set to expire.
That law let the government initiate wiretaps for up to one year against a wide range of targets. It also explicitly compelled telecommunications companies to comply with the orders, and protected them from civil lawsuits that may be filed against them for doing so.
The wiretaps can go on after the law expires, but the compliance orders and the liability protections would disappear. That's because of a quirk in the way the law was written, said Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence.
"There is no longer a way to compel the private sector to help us," he said in an Associated Press interview.
Democrats dispute that assertion. Representative Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat and the House majority leader, said that even when the law expires, existing wiretapping orders would continue to protect telecommunications companies.
Regardless of who's right about that point, the government can eavesdrop after the law expires. It would simply have to go back to its old procedures, getting orders approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
McConnell rejects that option. He said the process of getting court orders is cumbersome and ties intelligence agents up in red tape.
This is such bullshit!
They have all the authority and all the power they ever needed!
The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, requires the court to approve wiretaps inside the United States, a process meant to protect US citizens from potential government abuses of authority. But changes in technology since then mean that most of the world's computer and phone traffic passes through the United States, much of it on fiber-optic cable. Successive court cases say court orders are needed to listen in on any of those communications, McConnell said.
To get a court order, intelligence agents have to prove they have probable cause to believe a target is a foreign agent or a terrorist before being allowed to tap a line inside the United States, even if the communication originates and ends in a foreign country.
Yeah, right, like this government follows the law!
If it did, what is with the signing statements then?
It is difficult for intelligence agents piecing together shreds of information to get enough to merit probable cause, McConnell said. By the time they can amass enough information to do that, the phone number they wanted to track might already be obsolete, he said.
"More than likely we would miss the very information we need to prevent some horrendous act from taking place in the United States," he said.
I am REALLY SICK of the GOD-DAMN LYING FEAR-MONGERING!!!!!
Anything happens in this country and we will RIP YOUR FUCKING THROATS OUT you FASCIST FUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!
The FISA law does make provisions for emergencies - instances where there is no time to fill out the paperwork. Within a few days, though, the paperwork must be completed and probable cause must be proved to get an order approved.
McConnell said any further delay in providing retroactive immunity for telecommunications firms in the warrantless wiretapping program could result in phone companies challenging FISA court orders as a way to insulate themselves from future lawsuits.
Already, he said, the roughly 40 lawsuits filed against companies nationwide have chilled the private sector's willingness to help the intelligence agencies in ways unrelated to electronic surveillance. Exactly how is classified, and he won't elaborate.
"I'm talking about the things they've done to help us track terrorists," said McConnell. "They did lawful things at the request of the government under the conditions they've done it for 50 years."
But that help has waned over the past two years, he said. "Your country is at risk if we can't get the private sector to help us, and that is atrophying all the time," he said.
Lawmakers left town Thursday for a 12-day recess."The last section of this article is ominous!!
And did you notice Hess leave out what McConnell said on NPR yesterday?
"Well, Renee it's a very complex issue. It's true that some of the authorities would carry over to the period they were established for one year. That would put us into the August, September time-frame. However, that's not the real issue. The issue is liability protection for the private sector."
Yeah, the AmeriKan MSM is always objective in reporting facts!
Considering that they REPEATEDLY COVER UP Bush's ILLEGAL SPYING on AMERICANS, I no longer believe a stink word of their AGENDA-PUSHING GARBAGE!
