Why the wool, slowly over our eyes? Part II

Room 641a at AT&T's San Francisco switching center, perhaps the epicenter for domestic spying

Following up on yesterday’s post, which went over my misgivings with the Obama administration on things such as letting people who tortured in our name walk away with no punishment, there still is something else that wasn’t addressed – something deeper, something uglier, and something that – for the moment – looks like it won’t be changing at all, and that would be the warrentless wiretapping of the Bush era.

Unfortunately Friday News Dumps are not the practice of only one party, and to that end on Friday April 3rd, a doozy was dropped on the legal system – the Obama Administration was moving to protect the illegal spying operation carried out by the National Security Agency against the citizens of the United States, inturperting the law in new & creative ways that would have impressed even the Bush Administration’s Department of Justice:

First, they (the Obama Administration) 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.

…

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.

While the lawsuit has not been formally dismissed, the opinion of the Obama Administration – stunning as it is – is out there on the record now, and we know what they are moving toward.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation pulled no punches when it came to summing up exactly how disappointing this is:

“President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration’s cover-up of the National Security Agency’s dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans, and insisting that the much-publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a ‘secret’ that cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like deja vu all over again.”

…and it really does, with this being one of the more notable hopes that have seemingly been dashed – for the time being if not forever.  Of course brand new leaks about this all is really not helping the Administration’s efforts to move on…

The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews.

Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional.

The legal and operational problems surrounding the N.S.A.’s surveillance activities have come under scrutiny from the Obama administration, Congressional intelligence committees and a secret national security court, said the intelligence officials, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because N.S.A. activities are classified. Classified government briefings have been held in recent weeks in response to a brewing controversy that some officials worry could damage the credibility of legitimate intelligence-gathering efforts.

The Justice Department, in response to inquiries from The New York Times, acknowledged Wednesday night that there had been problems with the N.S.A. surveillance operation, but said they had been resolved.

For the record, I just want to say I absolutely adore the terminology given to describe portions of this – turning the seemingly limitless peering into the lives of citizens of the United States, probably a great deal of them innocent of any related wrongdoing, into such a harmless term as “overcollection”: as in “whoops, we over-collected some data” – like a stack of papers got too large for a binder.  At the end there is the assurance that everything is going to be okay, encapsulated in the comments from the Justice Department that the issues have been “resolved”.  The group of people who are making it possible to “overcollect” data on the private lives of private citizens and had been getting away with it would like to inform you that the issue has been resolved and everything is 100% okay, you can stop worrying now.

The NSA Octopus: Is this how it all works? Source: http://www.eff.org/cases/att

As I’ve said before, pardon me for being a skeptic.  Tag what I am going through as some sort of mental sickness characterized by a general feeling of distrust of government left over by the previous administration.  Hope winds up being a treatment, but facts are what really wind up being the cure.

The question in all of this is what could possibly be the reason to out-Bush the previous administration when it comes to the coverup.  What possibly can be the motive behind it?  What is in those intelligence briefs that can scare the President this badly?  Is it that or is it just a good old fashioned reluctance to get rid of new-found power?  Greed has no party lines, though this administration so far has found itself at least a bit more measured when it comes to the acquisition of it, and even admitting that some things done under the office of the President were in fact wrong.

If not power or fear, then what?  There are theories out there that these moves, along with the moves to not prosecute any CIA agents taking part in torture on America’s behalf, were designed to placate the intelligence community.  If there is even a shred of truth in that then the question quickly becomes – who exactly is running this country?  Who is the voice of America in matters domestic and international, really?  Is the President and is Congress allowed to pull strings that they’d like, but intelligence agencies can step in whenever they want should they deem that the strings being pulled might annoy them in some way, and do they tell the President to stop going in the direction he may be going in or else risk the loss of a full fledged commitment to service of the intelligence community for the country?  What could the possible purpose of that be?

Unfortunately a tremendous amount of questions outweigh the available number of answers at this moment in regards to this, and while the administration is still young and there are still many moons for this to be handled, hopefully this is not the opening signal that all bad deeds done under the Bush Administration will be swept under the rug in the name of moving forward, and the intelligence community will be allowed to act outside of the laws that they are supposed to assist the government in upholding, with no real future fear of repercussions now that the executive branch itself seemingly has given up the fight on our behalf.