In the rush to the August recess, Congress gave the Bush administration nearly unchecked power to listen to and read all communications to and from the United States.
On Sunday, President Bush signed the Protect America Act of 2007, (Public Law No: 110-55 — you can read it here) a law that expands authority to eavesdrop on international phone calls and e-mails. National Public Radio (NPR) covers the story in depth.
Ryan Singel of Wired Blog Network’s “Threat Level“, a blog that addresses privacy, security and crime online, writes that the law:
* Defines the act of reading and listening into American’s phone calls and internet communications when they are “reasonably believed” to be outside the country as not surveillance.
* Gives the government 6 months of extended powers to issue orders to “communication service providers,” to help with spying that “concerns persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States.” The language doesn’t require the surveillance to only target people outside the United States, only that some of it does.
* Forces Communication Service providers to comply secretly, though they can challenge the orders to the secret Foreign Intelligence Court. Individuals or companies given such orders will be paid for their cooperation and can not be sued for complying.
* Makes any program or orders launched in the next six months last for a year after being authorized
* Grandfathers in the the current secret surveillance program — sometimes referred to as the Terrorist Surveillance Program — and any others that have been blessed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
* Requires the Attorney General to submit to the secret surveillance court its reasons why these programs aren’t considered domestic spying programs, but the court can only throw out those reasons if it finds that they are “clearly erroneous.”
* Requires the Attorney General to tell Congress twice a year about any incidents of surveillance abuse and give statistics about how many surveillance programs were started and how many directives were issued.
* Makes no mention of the Inspector General, who uncovered abuses of the Patriot Act by the FBI after being ordered by Congress to audit the use of powerful self-issued subpoenas, is not mentioned in the bill.
Slate’s Patrick Radden Keefe had this to to add in his Wiretap at Will:
“In an editorial last year, the New York Times likened the Bush administration’s efforts to retroactively make its warrantless wiretapping program legal, to a person caught speeding who persuades the legislature to raise the speed limit. The new surveillance bill President Bush signed into law Sunday takes this analogy to its logical extreme: Where government surveillance is concerned, the new law eliminated speed limits altogether. The infrastructure this nation established following Watergate to govern domestic spying has died many little deaths in the years since 9/11. But Sunday was the last sequel in a tired series. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is now dead, and it’s never coming back.”
What this means for us abroad is that we no longer have any privacy in communications with loved ones, business contacts, college friends, or anyone else back home. Naturally, the law is aimed at nabbing terrorists, not the secret recipe for Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies. Still, it’s troubling that while many in Congress are upset with Attorney General Gonzales and some even want to impeach him, that they would elect to cede him this unchecked power to eavesdrop, particularly in light of his lack of veracity in testifying to Congress on matters in his current portfolio.
Another sliding step down the slippery slope.
