Internet operator Nicholas Merrill received a National Security letter in 2004. He describes his experience.

The fact that this lawsuit seems to involve CREDO makes me wonder if the feds aren't simply going after left-wing political activists, and not terrorists. I am deeply disappointed over the Obama administration's willingness to expand the warrantless surveillance state, but not surprised. It would be the same no matter who won the election -- once this kind of power is legitimized, it is certain that it will be used. From the Wall Street Journal:

Early last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a secret letter to a phone company demanding that it turn over customer records for an investigation. The phone company then did something almost unheard of: It fought the letter in court.

The U.S. Department of Justice fired back with a serious accusation. It filed a civil complaint claiming that the company, by not handing over its files, was interfering "with the United States' sovereign interests" in national security.

The legal clash represents a rare and significant test of an investigative tool strengthened by the USA Patriot Act, the counterterrorism law enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The case is shrouded in secrecy. The person at the company who received the government's request—known as a "national security letter," or NSL—is legally barred from acknowledging the case, or even the letter's existence, to almost anyone but company lawyers.

"This is the most important national-security-letter case" in years, said Stephen Vladeck, a professor and expert on terrorism law at the American University Washington College of Law. "It raises a question Congress has been trying to answer: How do you protect the First Amendment rights of an NSL recipient at the same time as you protect the government's interest in secrecy?"

Although they can't legally confirm it, they go on to say that the process of elimination appears to point to Working Assets, which owns CREDO.

In the challenge playing out in California, the company is fighting the letters on constitutional grounds. It is arguing, among other things, that the gag orders associated with most of these letters improperly restrain speech without a judge's authorization.

The FBI says it must maintain the secrecy of national security letters to avoid tipping off potential terrorists. The letters are "critical to our ability to keep the country safe," then-Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security Todd Hinnen told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security last year.

National security letters were originally for FBI investigations where there were "specific and articulable facts" indicating the information was related to a foreign agent. The Patriot Act eliminated the requirements for specific facts and a link to a foreign agent.

Since then, use of the letters has increased. In 2000, there were about 8,500 such requests; last year, the FBI made 16,511, according to the Justice Department. That number includes letters asking for things such as records of the numbers called by a phone, or the "to" and "from" lines of emails, but it doesn't count requests that ask only what subscriber is associated with an account. Including those, more than 49,000 requests were sent in 2006, according to a report from the Justice Department's inspector general.

Looks like Bin Laden won. Wherever he is, I'm sure he's watching and laughing:

Two Senators have been warning for months that the government has a secret legal interpretation of the Patriot Act so broad that it amounts to an entirely different law — one that gives the feds massive domestic surveillance powers, and keeps the rest of us in the dark about the snooping.

“There is a significant discrepancy between what most Americans – including many members of Congress – think the Patriot Act allows the government to do and how government officials interpret that same law,” wrote the Senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. “We believe that most members of the American public would be very surprised to learn how federal surveillance law is being interpreted in secret. ”

The Senators tried to get the government to reveal some of the law’s contents, by forcing the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to produce a report outlining when this secret surveillance has gone overboard. Yesterday, the effort failed. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said no to the report by rejecting Wyden and Udall’s amendment to the FY2012 Intelligence Authorization Act.

Continue reading »

Via Raw Story, this unappetizing news that the Patriot Act is likely to be renewed for yet another year:

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) has introduced a little-noticed bill that intends to once again renew controversial provisions of the Bush administration's USA Patriot Act that are due to expire this year.

When the act was first signed into law, Congress put in some "sunset" provisions to quiet the concerns of civil libertarians, but they were ignored by successive extensions. Unfortunately, those concerns proved to be well founded, and a 2008 Justice Department report confirmed that the FBI regularly abused their ability to obtain personal records of Americans without a warrant.

The only real sign of strong opposition to the act was in 2005, when a Democratic threat to filibuster its first renewal was overcome by Senate Republicans.

Since the bill introduced by Rogers on Jan. 5 was virtually identical to the extension passed last year, its passage was seen as likely.

"Given the very limited number of days Congress has in session before the current deadline, and the fact that the bill’s Republican sponsor is only seeking another year, I think it’s safe to read this as signaling an agreement across the aisle to put the issue off yet again," the conservative-leaning Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez wrote.

"In the absence of a major scandal, though, it’s hard to see why we should expect the incentives facing legislators to be vastly different a year from now," he added. "I’d love to be proven wrong, but I suspect this is how reining in the growth of the surveillance state becomes an item perpetually on next year’s agenda."

As senator, Obama promised to support reforming the Patriot Act, but voted in favor of extending it in 2005 and 2008. Similarly, he signed last year's extension into law with little fanfare. FBI and Department of Justice officials had consistently argued that restricting their blanket authority to conduct warrantless searches would harm national security.

Candidate Obama said in 2007 that if he were elected president there would be "no more National Security Letters [NSL's] to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime" because "that is not who we are, and it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists."

Much like Obama's vow to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, the use of NSL's has also continued. Most recently, Obama's Department of Justice sent an NSL to micro-blogging site Twitter, seeking information on all 635,561 users who followed secrets outlet WikiLeaks -- a list that included Raw Story.

Obama's campaign website insisted that he has consistently said he would support a Patriot Act extension that strengthens civil liberties.

Action on his campaign pledge had yet to emerge by the start of 2011, and no significant reforms were reflected in the newly Rep. Rogers' extension.

Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), perhaps the Senate's strongest opponent of the Patriot Act, was defeated by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in the 2010 mid-term elections.

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Megyn Kelly wanted to talk about Fox News' latest Opinion Dynamics poll, which asked people about their attitudes on government spending and the reach and power of the federal government, with a set of questions clearly geared toward Tea Party movement sentiments, as well as a recent CNN poll -- similarly trying to gauge the Tea Partiers' reach -- that found 54 percent believe the federal government poses a threat to their rights.

So she brought on Fox's token liberal, Alan Colmes, to discuss these results, and he pointed out that at least some of those who see the federal government as a threat to their rights are people who object to the Republican-backed Patriot Act. Then he asked an interesting question of the Tea Party folks:

Colmes: I'd like to know exactly what freedom -- what freedoms are being taken away from people?

Kelly: People are worried they're going to lose their health-insurance coverage! They're worried the federal government is going to step in, take over, and they're not going to be able to see their coverage.

Colmes: I didn't see any particulars about exactly what freedoms people think are going to be taken away. I would like to know what they are.

Kelly: There is just as much in this survey about health care as there is the Patriot Act!

Colmes: Yeah, but nothing in this survey says particular health care, particular Patriot Act, it's just a general question, "freedoms". I mean, what particular freedoms. People call my radio show all the time, 'My freedoms are being compromised.'

All right, I ask them. What freedom is being compromised? What freedom have you lost under Barack Obama?

Kelly: You tell me, Alan -- do you think the Democrats on Capitol Hill are going into 2010 election thinking, 'The problem with numbers like this is the Patriot Act! It is the Bush administration policies.'

Colmes: They're also not going, 'The problem is health care. If we get health care, my freedoms are being taken away.' How do your freedoms get compromised?

Kelly tried to argue that the people who fear for their freedoms are monolithically anti-Obama Tea Partiers, and reflected somehow in the high numbers of those opposing the Senate health-care reform bill. But Colmes pointed out, accurately, that a large portion of those opposed to the Senate bill are people who want a public option.

Kelly: If you have a majority of Americans saying that the federal government poses a threat to the right[s] of Americans, those are not people who want the public option!

Colmes: Well, what rights are being -- wait a minute, you're suggesting that the public option is more government. No, it gives you greater options. It gives you greater opportunity.

I'd like to know what freedoms people think are being taken away. What particular freedom -- where in the Bill of Rights are you losing something, based on what? What have Obama or Democrats done to take any right away from you? I'd like to know what that is.

Kelly: OK, and on that note, e-mail me at Kelly@FoxNews.com and you can answer that question.

In other words: No answer from Megyn. Because she didn't have any after Colmes shot down her health-care trial balloon.

Right-wing fearmongering pundits like Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, and the rest of the long list have made it conventional wisdom among the right-wing Kool-Aid drinkers that Obama somehow mysteriously are "taking away our freeeeeedoms!"

But they never can tell you exactly what freedoms are being taken away without calling out the Oath Keepers and their black helicopters, can they? Which is why the Megyn Kellys out there just say nothing.

at-Largely: No-fly list fail, Wingnuttia wets pants ignore home-grown threats. Wonder what kind of dumbassery awaits me when I attempt to board an international flight next Monday?

PERRspectives: Lumps of coal for pathological press corpse

Welcome Back to Pottersville: Assclowns of the Year

Talk To Action: Religious Right tells America to celebrate Christmas its way or get out

Where’s the Outrage?: Grab Bag...

Kiko's House: Gone in 2009, but not forgotten

Really, it gets harder all the time to tell the Democrats from the Republicans, doesn't it?

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill Thursday that would renew portions of the USA Patriot Act in an effort to address administration concerns about protecting terrorism investigations.

But several Democrats and civil liberties advocates said the legislation would do little to strengthen privacy protections. And some Republicans said the bill, despite amendments worked out with the administration, would still unduly burden investigators.

By a vote of 11 to 8, the committee sent to the Senate floor a measure that would extend until 2013 three surveillance provisions set to expire Dec. 31. They would allow investigators to use roving wiretaps to monitor suspects who may switch cellphone numbers, to obtain business records of national security targets, and to track "lone wolves" who may be acting alone on behalf of foreign powers or terrorist groups.

The bill would also slightly tighten the legal standard for the FBI's issuing of administration subpoenas known as national security letters (NSLs), which allow the bureau to obtain phone, credit and other personal records, and which the Justice Department inspector general has said are subject to "serious misuse."

Oh, I feel much better now, knowing it will be "slightly" more difficult for the feds to abuse constitutional rights.

The Obama administration has been sticking to many of the tactics Bush used in his efforts in dealing with terrorism. The FISA fiasco was telling and now we have The Patriot Act. It's not surprising that any president would like to keep the status quo when they take office if they've been handed an office that has more power over our civil liberties than ever before. Sure, Obama is not Bush or Cheney, and I doubt he'd ever act like them, but that is no justification for not reining in the Patriot Act.

Glenn Greenwald

Reining in the excesses of the Patriot Act (and, relatedly, of ever-expanding eavesdropping powers) has long been a top agenda item for civil liberties groups -- and, at least so they claimed, for Democrats generally. In fact, when Obama voted for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 last year in the middle of the campaign, he emphatically vowed that he would "fix" the problems with the FISA framework. But right as these reforms are finally being considered, the administration seizes on the Zazi case to insist that no such changes should be made:

At the same time, the Obama administration is pressing Congress to move swiftly to reauthorize three provisions of the USA Patriot Act set to expire in late December. They include the use of "roving wiretaps" to track movement, e-mail and phone communications, a tool that federal officials used in the weeks leading up to Zazi's arrest. . . .

"The Zazi case was the first test of this administration being able to successfully uncover and deal with this type of threat in the United States," a senior administration official said. "It demonstrated that we were able to successfully neutralize this threat, and to have insight into it, with existing statutory authorities, with the system as it currently operates."

So the Obama administration has its first allegedly big Terrorism case, and they can hardly contain themselves as they exploit it to justify a continuation of the very Patriot Act and FISA powers which Democrats (and, in the case of FISA, Obama himself) long claimed to oppose. Indeed, key Obama ally Dianne Feinstein has worked diligently in the Senate not just to block Patriot Act reforms, but to make the law even worse, and has repeatedly cited the Zazi case to justify that.

Glenn posted the above video from Julian Sanchez, who destroys the FOX Noise fearmongering arguments of why we just have to have FISA and TPA.

Cato's Julian Sanchez examines -- and absolutely destroys -- the fear-mongering claims from Fox News about efforts to reform the Patriot Act and FISA, with a particular focus on Fox's efforts to use the Zazi plot to justify the need for these powers

.

The Brad Blog: Open season on liberals continues. It was always more important to link the attacks to Islamic terrorists than look for the truth. Consider: Anthrax attacks = Patriot Act. There are still a lot of questions and too many easy answers around this matter.

Happy Valley News Hour: Monica Goodling's Super-Secret Guide to interviewing potential job applicants.

Truthdig: BUSHCO stonewalling congress on sexual assault in the military

Vox Verax: The conservative juggernaut is cracking up

Economist's View: It was the Republicans who called for a "change" in the face on our currency, and they aren't kidding.

No, not Michael Weiner Savage's lesser known brother. Charlie Savage is the Boston Globe journalist that broke the story on presidential signing statements.

Glenn Greenwald has a nice write up of the significance of Savage's reporting: (watch a short ad for site pass)

...as I've noted many times, Savage was one of the very few journalists in the country who understood, investigated and reported on the radical theories of executive power embraced by this President. And once he began reporting on those abuses, he was relentless in his efforts to draw public attention to the administration's conduct.

On March 24, 2006, Savage published an article -- entitled "Bush Shuns Patriot Act Requirement" -- which was the first article to report on Bush's issuance of a signing statement in connection with Congress' renewal of the Patriot Act. It was in that signing statement where the President expressly proclaimed the power to ignore legal requirements imposed by Congress requiring the FBI to report on its use of National Security Letters -- the very provisions which, it was revealed just last month, the FBI has been systematically ignoring as it spies on American citizens. As Savage wrote in that article: "The statement represented the latest in a string of high-profile instances in which Bush has cited his constitutional authority to bypass a law."

The Galloping Beaver: Is there enough blame to go around for the Bushistas catastrophic misadventure in Iraq? The "liberal press",godless lefties, most recently, the entire American public, and now, Europe!

Britannica Blog: A short history lesson on the thinking that informed the Founders. Reading this, it's hard to imagine something as antithetical as the Patriot Act being acceptable to any real patriot

Vagabond Scholar: John Amato has always said that the liberal blogosphere is concerned with accuracy in the media, not in receiving praise. But the pattern of undue disparagement of bloggers indicates it is more often the traditional media types who are unduly thin-skinned.

BAGnewsNotes: How Hezbollah re-envisioned the democracy movement ...and the West hardly noticed

The Old Hippie's Groovy Blog: The wealth gap, the risk gap...what it's all about for BUSHCO

HOLY CRAP: Four major cases involving faith-based rehabilitation programs are pending in the federal courts...10,000 US researchers--including 52 Nobel Laureates--have signed a statement protesting the political interference in the scientific process...Ten Bible verses never preached on