Senate Set to OK Data Mining, Telecom Immunity

[This is a repost and it is long, but it is important, thank you for understanding.]

The Senate will vote this afternoon on S.2248, an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which has become anything but foreign. It has morphed into a decree on domestic spying, particularly giving telecom companies immunity for taking part in illegal warrant-less wiretapping.

It’s not exactly clear which telecoms have cooperated with the warrant-less wiretapping program. We do know that a former technician for AT&T has explicitly identified his former employer as being complicit with the National Security Agency’s warrant-less wiretapping program though:

To quote Mark Klein, “The splitter copied the entire data-stream of those internet cables into the secret room…everything that goes across the internet, and that device, the splitters [sic], is a dumb device, it doesn’t do any selection at all.”

He’s saying that all the data on the internet was collected by the NSA. That means this blog post, your emails, Amazon purchases, instant messages, and everything else you do online. Again, that is your data that is being copied–not the data of a shadowy Al Qaeda cell–your data. Sen. Russ Feingold sums that up in 30 seconds:

Yet last Thursday on Rush Limbaugh, Vice President Dick Cheney argued for passage of FISA, saying that it has not infringed on anyone’s ‘civil liberties.’

CHENEY: People who don’t want to — I guess want to leave open the possibility that the trial lawyers can go after a big company that may have helped. Those companies helped specifically at our request, and they’ve done yeoman duty for the country, and this is the so-called terrorist surveillance program, one of the things it was called earlier. It’s just absolutely essential to know who in the United States is talking to Al-Qaeda. It’s a program that’s been very well managed. We haven’t violated anybody’s civil liberties. It’s in fact a good piece of legislation.

Cheney acknowledges that the telecoms have taken part in warrant-less wiretapping. To put that aside for a moment, he goes on to tie their illegal activity in with waging the War on Terror, noting that it is ‘essential’ that we know ‘who is talking to Al Qaeda.’ In order to figure out who’s talking to Al Qaeda, we would have to, I don’t know, monitor the whole data-stream–which Mark Klein has already told us they are doing.

Warrant-less wiretapping unequivocally infringes on my civil liberties. I direct you to the Fourth Amendment which protects me against unreasonable searches and seizures.

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.

Data mining is unconstitutional. The NSA doesn’t have probable cause to sift through millions of American’s data. Nor do they have warrants. The telecoms are complicit in an illegal violation of the Fourth Amendment.

In fact, they are also in violation of FISA itself. FISA was first passed in 1978 to protect American citizens against domestic surveillance while sanctioning it if focused on foreign powers. Here’s the section on authorization of electronic surveillance without a court order:

(1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that—

(A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at—

(i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or

(ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title;

(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party; and

(C) the proposed minimization procedures with respect to such surveillance meet the definition of minimization procedures under section 1801 (h) of this title;

Section (B) states that the Executive Branch may not order warrant-less electronic surveillance if it likely it will ‘acquire’ data transmitted by US citizens. As such, copying the entire data-stream in San Francisco is illegal since it definitely ‘acquires’ data transmitted by US citizens.

The problem here is that our politicians know data mining is illegal. Yet somehow many of them have been bamboozled into seeing warrant-less wiretapping as an indispensable asset to beat back terror and that its illegality should take a place behind security. In order to parry that messy arrangement, they’ve chosen to change the law to legalize data mining for the future and immunize those who have done it in the past.

Advantage: Orwell

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