http://arstechnica.com/…

Federal district judge Vaughn Walker has rejected lawsuits that aimed to hold telecommunications companies accountable for their role in a controversial warrantless surveillance program that was orchestrated in secret by the federal government. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union are preparing to appeal the dismissal.

The warrantless surveillance program is one the more contentious controversies that still lingers from Bush’s tenure in office. The Bush administration attempted to leverage the State Secrets privilege to block litigation that aimed to hold participants in the surveillance program accountable for violating privacy laws. When it became clear that the courts were going to allow the lawsuits to move forward, Congress intervened and passed a FISA amendment to grant the telecom companies explicit immunity. President Obama voted in favor of immunity, despite consistently promising to oppose it.

EFF and ACLU’s lawsuits against the telecoms are among the most significant pending lawsuits targeting the warrantless surveillance program, and they are viewed by privacy advocates as a means of bringing accountability and more robust judicial oversight to the surveillance mess. Judge Walker has thrown out the suits, citing the FISA telecom immunity amendment as the basis for dismissal. He affirmed that the evidence provided under seal by the government demonstrated that the conduct of the telecoms meets the criteria for immunity grants.

“While plaintiffs have made a valiant effort to challenge the sufficiency of certifications they are barred by statute from reviewing, their contentions under section 802 are not sufficiently substantial to persuade the court that the intent of Congress in enacting the statute should be frustrated in this proceeding in which the court is required to apply the statute,” Walker wrote in his decision. “The court has examined the Attorney General’s submissions and has determined that he has met his burden under section 802(a). The court is prohibited by section 802(c)(2) from opining further.”

The EFF and the ACLU are planning to launch an appeal, asserting that the FISA amendments which granted telecom immunity are unconstitutional.

“We’re deeply disappointed in Judge Walker’s ruling today,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn in a statement. “The retroactive immunity law unconstitutionally takes away Americans’ claims arising out of the First and Fourth Amendments, violates the federal government’s separation of powers as established in the Constitution, and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law.”

I suppose the next step is the United States court of appeals. I don’t have much faith in them ruling in the pro-freedom direction. Nor the Supreme Court should it make it there.

http://www.eff.org/…

Friday evening, in a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, EFF’s litigation against the National Security Agency for the warrantless wiretapping of countless Americans, the Obama Administration’s made two deeply troubling arguments.

First, they argued, exactly as the Bush Administration did on countless occasions, that the state secrets privilege requires the court to dismiss the issue out of hand. They argue that simply allowing the case to continue “would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security.” As in the past, this is a blatant ploy to dismiss the litigation without allowing the courts to consider the evidence.

It’s an especially disappointing argument to hear from the Obama Administration. As a candidate, Senator Obama lamented that the Bush Administration “invoked a legal tool known as the ’state secrets’ privilege more than any other previous administration to get cases thrown out of civil court.” He was right then, and we’re dismayed that he and his team seem to have forgotten.

Sad as that is, it’s the Department Of Justice’s second argument that is the most pernicious. The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying — that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes.

This is a radical assertion that is utterly unprecedented. No one — not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration — has ever interpreted the law this way.

Previously, the Bush Administration has argued that the U.S. possesses “sovereign immunity” from suit for conducting electronic surveillance that violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, FISA is only one of several laws that restrict the government’s ability to wiretap. The Obama Administration goes two steps further than Bush did, and claims that the US PATRIOT Act also renders the U.S. immune from suit under the two remaining key federal surveillance laws: the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act. Essentially, the Obama Adminstration has claimed that the government cannot be held accountable for illegal surveillance under any federal statutes.

Again, the gulf between Candidate Obama and President Obama is striking. As a candidate, Obama ran promising a new era of government transparency and accountability, an end to the Bush DOJ’s radical theories of executive power, and reform of the PATRIOT Act. But, this week, Obama’s own Department Of Justice has argued that, under the PATRIOT Act, the government shall be entirely unaccountable for surveilling Americans in violation of its own laws.

This isn’t change we can believe in. This is change for the worse.

Do I need to repeat myself about how I don’t think this is the change people were expecting?

I caught this comment on Slashdot about this story that I really liked.

It is my position that Bush was a horrible president because he weakened our constitution, was an ugly warmonger, and spent money like it was water.

It is my position that Obama is about the same with the only difference being who gets some of the wastefully spent money.

Both “sides” treat the populace like we’re their own public goatse waiting patiently to get stretched just a bit wider by some Republican prick or a Democratic cock.

If only that could be the image people imagined when someone said “Republican” or “Democrat.” Third parties would have no problem getting into office. Perhaps that could be the attack plan for 2012. Splice in a single frame of goatse.cx once in a while during R and D presidential debate feeds.

http://arstechnica.com/…

The executive branch may conduct warrantless surveillance in the name of national security, according to a decision by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Court of Review published Thursday. The decision, handed down in August, but published in redacted form this week, blessed surveillance under the stopgap Protect America Act, which was superseded last year by the FISA Amendments Act.

Like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which issues secret warrants for both physical searches and electronic surveillance under the FISA law, the Foreign Intelligence Court of Review seldom makes its opinions public. In an order dated January 12, however, the Court found the release of an edited, unclassified version of its August opinion to be in the public interest.

The ruling concerns a challenge to surveillance authorized by the attorney general under the PAA. Though the party raising the challenge is not named—the opinion refers only to the “petitioner”—it is likely to be either a telecom or an Internet Service Provider, in principle, however, any entity with information about a target “reasonably believed to be located outside the United States,” such as a university or financial institution. Under the terms of the PAA, the attorney general is empowered to issue “authorizations” for surveillance that has traditionally required a court order issued by an independent magistrate.

For the first time, the Court explicitly asserted an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement for foreign intelligence surveillance meant to serve a national security purpose.

…

Concerns about abuse, the court held, amounted to “little more than a lament about the risk that government officials will not operate in good faith,” a risk present even when a warrant is issued. In effect, the court reasoned that since judges generally presume that law enforcement officials are being diligent and truthful in their applications for a warrant, the same presumption should be granted when intelligence agencies conduct surveillance without a warrant.

The court seemed similarly unconcerned with the danger that innocent persons’ information would be swept up in surveillance, calling such worries “overblown” in the light of “minimization” procedures designed to cull away any such “incidental” collections. “The government assures us that it does not maintain a database of incidentally collected information from non-targeted United States persons,” the Court wrote, “and there is no evidence to the contrary.”

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.

Nope… nothing about exceptions for national security.

Little more than a lament that government bureaucrats will not operate in good faith? Seriously? So the drug war and Guantanamo and the whole torture debate and corruption scandals and the lying by the Bush administration about their wiretapping program and… and… and… are not enough to have serious questions regarding the bureaucrats moral compass?

http://www.change.org/…

The Ideas for Change in America competition was created in response to Barack Obama’s call for increased citizen involvement in government. The final round of voting began on January 5 and is comprised of the top 3 rated ideas from each of the 30 issues in the first round of the competition, which collectively received more than 250,000 votes.

The top 10 rated ideas from the final round will be presented to the Obama administration on January 16th at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, co-hosted by the Case Foundation. At the event we will also announce the launch of a national advocacy campaign behind each idea in collaboration with our nonprofit partners to turn each idea into actual policy.

The current top voted ideas:

1. Legalize the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana : Yes. But lets target all drugs.
2. Free Single Payer Health Care : No. Nothing is free.
3. End the war on drugs : There we go… even better then 1
4. Save Small Business From the CPSIA : How about save all businesses from the CPSIA?
5. Pass Marriage Equality Rights for LGBT Couples Nationwide : How about getting the government out of the business of sanctioning marriage?
6. Make the grid green in 10 years : Make? No.
7. Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties : You can’t get FISA right. Get rid of that too. And… how about restoring all liberties… not just so called civil ones?
8. Health Freedom IS Our First Freedom : Freedom is freedom. Letting people smoke pot or drink raw milk are all the same. For the most part I agree with this.
9. Forgive Student Loans: Stimulate the Middle and Lower Middle Class : See 2
10. Appoint Secretary of Peace in Department of Peace and Non-Violence : I’m all for peace and non-violence but this sounds fruity. If they position actually had some sort of power… maybe.
    
11. Develop & Implement a National Strategy for Sustainability : How about upholding property rights? The thing that if the government has a legitimate role… it’s that? That’ll fix most problems described.
12. Decriminalize Marijuana/Hemp : How typical? The smokers can’t quite focus on one decrim topic and split the vote.
    
13. END CORPORATE “PERSONHOOD” : That’d be a good start. I propose ending corporations.
    

Dear bile,

Barack Obama is now the presumptive Democratic nominee, and hundreds of thousands of new supporters have joined our movement for change in the past few weeks.

This is from an email I just received from Obama for America <info@barackobama.com>

The reason I’m receiving spam from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is that I sent them a message through DownsizeDC.org asking him to fight the FISA telecom immunity.

I wonder how many of those thousands were in fact auto signups from emails from DownsizeDC.org like I did. Sorry Barack but we aren’t supporters and we surely have not joined your movement for “change.”

I received this in my inbox this evening. Since I used DownsizeDC.org’s service to send him a message to not support the FISA bill I’ve been getting Obama spam.

Dear Friend,

Thank you for contacting us and sharing your strong feelings about this important issue.  Please find a statement from Senator Obama below.

We appreciate hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Obama for America,

—
Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders.

That is why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act, which expanded the surveillance powers of the government without sufficient independent oversight to protect the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans. I have also opposed the granting of retroactive immunity to those who were allegedly complicit in acts of illegal spying in the past.

After months of negotiation, the House passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year’s Protect America Act.  Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President’s illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future.

It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I voted in the Senate three times to remove this provision so that we could seek full accountability for past offenses.  Unfortunately, these attempts were unsuccessful.  But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay.  So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives – and the liberty – of the American people.

———————-
Paid for by Obama for America

Compromise? Hardly. Capitulation. Absolutely.
Legitimate threats? Sure from the government. From the gang who goes around the world killing brown people and trying to force “democracy” on the rest of them in our name.