Yesterday really marked the point at which this occurred, but today it became official. President Bush signed the FISA bill today making it a US law, which changes a large number of important laws about federal spying laws. I won’t bore you with the story, since you know it already. I would, however, like to highlight some of the things it does and reflect on how these affect Americans.

Retroactive Immunity

By far the most well-known aspect of this law is the hotly-debated provision which provides retroactive immunity to telecom corporations which aided the Bush administration in a number of unwarranted wiretaps. Lets look at how it has changed, in the words of the law:

OLD:

The FISA Amendments Act passed by the Senate in February contained what everyone agreed was immunity. Under that bill, the court would have to dismiss the cases against the telecoms if the Attorney General certified that the companies got a piece of paper from the government saying that the President had authorized the surveillance and that the surveillance had been determined to be legal (by someone). The court would only be reviewing whether or not it was an abuse of discretion for the Attorney General to certify to that fact, a fact that we already know is true based on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the bill. The court wouldn’t be ruling on whether the telecoms broke the law, so this legislation fails the litmus test and is clearly immunity.

NEW:

…The Hill makes clear, the legislation would only allow the court “to determine whether telephone companies seeking legal immunity received orders from the Bush administration,” and “[the] courts would not decide whether those orders constitute a violation of the law, according to people familiar with the language.” Just like the original Senate bill, and just like the Bond proposal, this “compromise” fails the litmus test by failing to provide for a ruling on the legality of the surveillance.

Both of these are sourced from the EFF writeup found here: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/06/howto-analyze-immunity-provisions-fisa-legislation

Essentially, there seems to be almost no change except that rather than the Attorney General providing the “get out of jail free” card, its the President himself, and you can bet your bottom dollar that he is already writing them as we speak.

This provision is a giant gripe because it undermines the system of law we have in this country entirely. We always say that people are accountable for their actions and that actions have consequences. Apparently if you have the right amount of money and the right friends who have the right agendas, you are not responsible for your actions. The government will bail you out of anything with a swift and sweeping piece of law.

I will, for the sake of argument, only BRIEFLY mention that MANY(if not, all)of the House of Reps that flipped their votes from nea to yea were offered increased sums of money from telcos. I thought the taxpayers paid these people to prevent this sort of collusion. Guess I thought wrong.

Wiretapping is easy-mode

One of the more important aspects of this law, and one that is not typically told to you, is that this law grants lax restrictions to wiretapping laws. Aside from granting bullshit retroactive immunities, it now, essentially, says that if the government wants, it can drag its feet in providing evidence for a warrant.

This means they can tap your phone and promise evidence later. Then, just forget to ever give up the evidence and by that point your rights have already LONG been infringed.

Warrants are a part of our legal system that provide a bit of safety to suspected persons. It prevents police from just busting into any home they want, whenever you want. The same does for wiretaps: it prevents police or law enforcement from tapping and listening to whoever they want, whenever they want. Apparently this important piece of judicial over-sight is just too darn slow.

What’s in a name?

This law is so incredibly pathetic to me. But, thankfully, I am not the only one. Countless news stations, blogs, and analysts continue to refer to it as one thing: “…that spying law.”

That name probably has one of the most negative and despicable connotations to it that I have ever heard. “That spying law”, “the spying law”, “the wiretapping law”… all of them send shivers down my spine. To think that we have laws in this country that grant them the ability to spy on us.

I believe that the name alone shows the terrible side of this law.

Only the Supreme Court can save us now

I had a discussion with a fellow guildly last night about this very topic. I made the argument that we can only hope a case makes it to the Supreme Court in some fashion or another. This way, they will find it unconstitutional and we can move on from this mess.

He countered with the very good point that at least five members of the current Supreme Court are Conservatives and have traditionally voted in Conservative favor.

My counter to this is a key one: the ability to spy on your citizens is a neither Conservative nor Liberal view and, even though it was a GOP sponsored bill, will likely not find safety in a GOP Supreme Court.

“Why?” you ask. Supreme Court justices are appointed with the task of deciding if a law is in the spirit of the Constitution and, whether they find for or against, give an explanation of their interpretation of Constitutional law versus this law. I can think of MANY reasons why this law goes against the Constitution, and none that support it.

The Constitution deals with protecting the citizens from the government and the citizens from each other. It has no dealings in allowing the government certain abilities to spy on its own people for the good of the people. It doesn’t offer any sort of stipulations for “killing a few to save the mass”, that is, spying on some to assure the safety of the many.

If the Supreme Court justices take their jobs seriously and intend to do the job for which the people look to them to do, they can only really see it one way. This law infringes on civil rights of American’s in more ways than are imaginable for a single law. If they were to find for it, I would love to hear their justification for doing so.

Safety vs. Privacy, Government vs. Terror

I have mentioned before, in previous blog posts, that there is often a hot trade-off between safety/security and privacy.This latest law really does nothing to offer me any more security than I felt before. In fact, it makes me feel less so secure because I now feel that I should be afraid of my own government.

The government touts this law as being a way for homeland security officials to have the tools that they need to combat terror at home and prevent another 9/11. Before totally discounting this, I have a slew of questions:

1. Do you believe that, now that everyone knows wiretapping is going on, that terrorists are still communicating via the phone?
2. Putting yourself in a terrorists shoes, would you have ever made calls on a federally over sighted phone to talk about your big plans to blow up important American shit?
3. If they are talking on the phone, how come this big phone plan has netted us almost ZERO success in thwarting any sort of meaningful terror risk, assuming one actually exists?

Even if I had the answer to these questions in my hand, it wouldn’t really matter. At this point, I fear more over-sight from the government more than I fear “the terrorists”. If given the opportunity to continue along on our current path or revert to the path we had before 9/11, I would revert in a heartbeat. I feel the 9/11 is a tragedy and I am sorry to the families that lost their loved ones, but we do them a terrible disservice by three major mistakes:

1. Gun-slinging our way into Afghanistan to “get the terrorists”.
2. Gun-slinging our way into Iraq to “get the WMDs”.
3. Infringing on some of the essential rights and liberties that made this country great.

It’s a shame that people trade away the things they really should be cherishing in return for almost nothing.