In the midst of revelations that the government has conducted extensive top-secret surveillance operations to collect domestic phone records and internet communications, the Justice Department was due to file a court motion Friday in its effort to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.
This important case—all the more relevant in the wake of this week’s disclosures—was triggered after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate intelligence committee, started crying foul in 2011 about US government snooping. As a member of the intelligence committee, he had learned about domestic surveillance activity affecting American citizens that he believed was improper. He and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), another intelligence committee member, raised only vague warnings about this data collection, because they could not reveal the details of the classified program that concerned them. But in July 2012, Wyden was able to get the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify two statements that he wanted to issue publicly. They were:
* On at least one occasion the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held that some collection carried out pursuant to the Section 702 minimization procedures used by the government was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
* I believe that the government’s implementation of Section 702 of FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] has sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law, and on at least one occasion the FISA Court has reached this same conclusion.
For those who follow the secret and often complex world of high-tech government spying, this was an aha moment. The FISA court Wyden referred to oversees the surveillance programs run by the government, authorizing requests for various surveillance activities related to national security, and it does this behind a thick cloak of secrecy. Wyden’s statements led to an obvious conclusion: He had seen a secret FISA court opinion that ruled that one surveillance program was unconstitutional and violated the spirit of the law. But, yet again, Wyden could not publicly identify this program...
As Zip observes, "They knew it was illegal and they did it anyhow."
Lawless. Absolutely lawless.
Hey, could one of you guys find John Boehner, drag him out of whatever bar he fell asleep in, feed him some Monster energy drinks, and get him to draft some Articles of Impeachment?
And hand him this list of particulars to begin with.
5 comments:
Whoa! I thought if we elected the colored dude and NOT Romney we wouldn't have this problem...
BTW since that bit of drivel in Mother Jones was penned by that congenital moron David Corn I'd think seriously before I took any of it at face value - even the date of the drivel...
Given that Obama has utterly destroyed all basis for trust in government, I find myself wondering why he's bothered. We're already at a terminal state; he's going down, he knows it, and nothing he does over the next three years can change that.
Maybe he's angling for a life sentence at a maximum security facility, rather than what he really deserves.
This extensive surveillance and spying has nothing to do with national security since the enemy is working within the administration - they agree with our enemies too often.
However, this is all about opponents of Obama, holder, Jarrett et al - the evil conservative movement.
What a thin skinned and criminal government!
Waking up/sobering up John Boehner won't make any difference. All that data-mining produced something on the Speaker he doesn't want revealed. Ditto that with Chief Justice John Roberts, Petraeus, and, I'm sure, many others.
Please don't waste the Congresses time with a doomed effort to impeach Barry.
Now, impeach Holder if he won't resign, that's doable. But will it help?
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