What Is the Current Law on Electronic Surveillence
This article by Silvestre Reyes, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, describes in some detail the already robust capabilities of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act (FISA). There's also some editorial commentary, but the description of the capabilites makes the article worthwhile.
Here is the link.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/opedne_silvestr_080214_congressman_calls_bu.htm
Here is the link.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/opedne_silvestr_080214_congressman_calls_bu.htm
This surveilance is corrupt at local levels and sadly it's legal.
If we could sue .......they would not tap innocent people. So make a law that terrorist can't sue, but innocent U.S.citizens should be allowed to sue to stop corruption and abuse of wire tapping to innocent citizens!
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I don't know much about this. Help me understand. I heard this was about terrorists calling people. Who are the innocent people?
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Pam,
Thank you for your question. Let me give you the bottom line first and then some background that hopefully makes this easier to understand.
The issue here is modernizing an existing law to make sure domestic surveillence is based on probable cause that someone is planning some event that will be harmful to the United States and is not being abused as a political weapon by those in power against their political competitors.
Now the background.
Our CIA and other monitoring agencies like the NSA can legally monitor any and all communications outside the United States without any kind of warrant. That is spying and spying is what they do.
As a result of the abuse of Executive Power in the Nixon Administration, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act (FISA) was passed in the late 1970's. As I understand it, FISA provides a check against that abuse of Executive Power. By abuse of executive power, I mean domestic (inside the US) spying on your political opponents in an attempt to gain information that will enable you to have an advantage over those opponents, up to and including blackmail.
The current controversy is based on the fact that not only did President Bush allow illegal wiretapping, but that the Telecom companies who are supposed to help protect our privacy, were an accomplice to this illegal act by allowing the illegal wiretapping to go on without demanding the warrants needed to conduct the surveillence. Now that the Telecom companies' illegal acts are exposed, they are worried (as well they should be) that they will the subject of civil suits. They should have thought of that before they did the wiretapping without warrants.
The bill that the Senate passed tried to give the Telecom companies immunity from those suits. The difficulty with doing so is this. We are a nation of laws. Over time our interpretation of those laws is grounded in something called precedent. In other words, if you give your teenager permission to stay out until 2 a. m. one time, then that teenager will ask for permission again based on the fact they had permission before and "nothing happened". As a parent, you either have rules you go by or you don't. If we are a nation of laws, then we either obey those laws or we don't. We either punish those who break the law or we don't. And if we don't, then we are no longer a nation of laws. We are sliding towards something else we don't want.
No one is saying there is not a terrorist threat to this country and we should not try to interrupt the plans of terrorists. At the same time, we should not write laws that put trust in the hands of only one individual. That old phrase about "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" is, unfortunately, true.
Does that help?
Larry
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Not really. I don't know anyone who is worried about this. Who are the innocent U.S. citizens?
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OK. Let's start over. First, what are the people you know worried about in a political sense?
Second, tell me in what way you are confused about "Who are the innocent U.S. citizens"?
Thanks.
Larry
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It's a simple question.
sara wrote:
This surveilance is corrupt at local levels and sadly it's legal.
If we could sue .......they would not tap innocent people. So make a law that terrorist can't sue, but innocent U.S.citizens should be allowed to sue to stop corruption and abuse of wire tapping to innocent citizens!
My question is who are these innocent US citizens who have been abused, or are you talking about something that might happen?
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Thanks for clarifying your question. I had asked Sara to respond, but she has not done so.
Re-reading her question and yours, I think what was intended was this.
"Innocent people" would be those people who are not suspected terrorists, but have been the targets of electronic surveillence as a means of gaining political or other advantages over those people.
Has there been surveillence of "innocent people"? That's a question a lawsuit might determine. That leads to a host of other issues, such as revealing actual terrorists who are being surveilled and how.
Questions like these can be avoided by simply following the rules in the first place as set out in FISA.
This is all a matter of abiding by and preserving the Fouth Amendment of the Constitution, as shown below.
Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
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