FISA: There's NO place for secret laws or courts in a democracy, and FISA is just that!

"FISA" is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a U.S. federal law prescribing procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance SECRETLY enacted in 1978.

Its original purpose was to regulate -- NOT abolish -- illegal and unconstitutional wiretappping activities conducted by the Nixon administration, basically by creating a secret court to issue warrants, AFTER the fact, for phone taps placed by federal government, supposedly to spy on foreign agents making calls to US phones or through US phone systems. From Wiki:

The act created a court which meets in secret, and approves or denies requests for search warrants. Only the number of warrants applied for, issued and denied, is reported. In 1980 (the first full year after its inception), it approved 322 warrants.

This number has steadily grown to 2224 warrants in 2006. In the period 1979-2006 a total of 22,990 applications for warrants were made to the Court of which 22,985 were approved (sometimes with modifications; or with the splitting up, or combining together, of warrants for legal purposes), and only 5 were definitively rejected.

The Act was amended by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, primarily to include terrorism on behalf of groups that are not specifically backed by a foreign government. An overhaul of the bill, the Protect America Act of 2007 was signed into law on August 5, 2007.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act

Even though FISA's warrant-granting powers have expanded with each renewal, Bush-Cheney couldn't even be bothered to obtain warrants for the illegal wiretapping they started BEFORE 911, which is why they want to give Telco companies immunity from the illegal phone taps they placed on their customers.

The point here is that FISA is an unconstitutional violation of the fourth amendment, and should be abolished, or simply allowed to expire, which will happen in August if Congress doesn't renew it. Here's what the fourth amendment says:

Amendment IV

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.

FISA is unconstitutional and there is NO "good" way to renew it much less expand its powers, and the "compromise" is nothing but a get-out-of-jail-free card for Bush and Cheney making it much more difficult to hold their administration accountable for their crimes.

Executive Summary: FISA is an unconstitutional piece of shit and has to go! :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

have enough real information to understand what is going on. My intuition, for what that might be worth, tells me that the FISA bill has NOTHING to do with the prevention of terrorism. If my theory is correct, then what is the FISA bill about? Who needs it? Who profits from it?

It's true there's a lot we don't know, but what we DO know rather conclusively suggests the following:

1) domestic "terrorism" as its promoted by Bush-Cheney is a totally bogus scare tactic. There hasn't been serious domestic terrorism since the airlines figured out how to prevent hijacking some years ago. New planes have been equipped with ground override devices for at least the last decade. They don't tell us that because it would make the pointlessness of airport "security" obvious. And of course, it would raise questions about you-know-what.

2) The purpose of FISA surveillance has nothing, but NOTHING, to do with "terrorism." Apart from a pathological desire to know what everyone is thinking, it's a convenient way to control political opposition (organizing, in other words) and maintain advantages over commercial competitors.

FISA is a 100% bogus and unconstitutional piece of shit, and there's a purpose for the fourth amendment: to prevent governments from doing exactly what ours is doing.

:mad:

business espionage going on thru the FISA spying. Beyond that, for every person who is actively spied upon, there will be 10,000 who fear that they are. This amounts to a huge intimidation factor, another means of controlling people.

:banghead: :banghead:

This is seriously dark-side stuff and if Obama thinks he needs to play ball with these clowns to win or even worse, to govern, he's going to get rolled, either before the election like Kerry did or afterward, like JFK did with the Bay of Pigs. He really needs to draw a line in the sand or he's going to wind up out-bombing Junior. :scared:

supported the complete abolition of the FISA courts which you accurately show has been working under Democrtatic and Republican Presidents since 1978?

Two follow up questions where would you have federal agents applying for a search warrant that contains top secret national security information go for their search warrants that can only be viewed by people with top secret clearences? The local federal judge?

Since you are also advocating no secrecy would you also then be advocating that the top secret information in these applications for search warrants also be made open to the press?

edited for syntax

2) If there's probable cause, they can get warrant, just like the 4th amendment SPECIFICALLY REQUIRES them to, and

3) I would be thrilled to pieces if all and any "top secret information" was made open to the press! What are you worried we'll find out about, somebody's illegal perception management operation?

:shrug:

There is in fact a need for classification of some government activities. No doubt, this mis-administration went completely over the top with this. However, their abuse should not be taken as cause to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is a reason for intelligence, and unlike Bush, a reason to pay attention to it. We did know in advance that Bin Laden intended to strike us, Bush was simply asleep at the switch. No news here, the Bush administration knew, because the models had been run, that the levees would fail in NOLA if a cat 5 hurricane made landfall there, they also knew that people would be unable to get out of the city in time on their own, due to a lack of organized transportation. He was asleep at the switch again.

There is a reason to collect intelligence, and then act intelligently. The former was done, on the latter, Bush was not capable.

In rational hands, FISA could be a useful tool, and perhaps would have been even now, if Bush had complied with it. FISA is a means of expedited judicial review, by judges with necessary security clearances, that results in warrants being issued in accordance with the probable cause provision of the constitution.

On the larger notion, I hate to break it to you, but Bush and Cheney are not going to prison. There is no jail in their future, not that I would not love to see it happen, but it most assuredly will not. The notion that telecom immunity is some sort of "get out of jail free" card, is premised on the notion that there will be some accounting. It is not going to happen.

If you want to hold them accountable, vote a democratic straight ticket every time and encourage anyone you can to do the same. There simply is no elective office so insignificant that the public would not be harmed by a republican in it. Any victory anywhere simply encourages them, we must say no. Make Bush and Cheney the men who more or less on their own destroyed the entire conservative political movement.

Maybe FISA is a useful intelligence-gathering tool, maybe it isn't. Clearly, it didn't stop 911, even though Bush-Cheney were already illegally eavesdropping, so more warrantless wiretaps don't necessarily mean better intelligence or more security.

Personally, I don't think FISA is remotely related to "terrorism," so I don't think it's useful in preventing it, but let's say it might be.

The problem is that it's unconstitutional. So even if Bush and Cheney think they really, really need warrantless wiretaps to prevent terrorism -- even though it didn't help them prevent 911 -- they don't have a constitutional right to collect information that way. Neither do the Telcos.

When they did, they violated the Constitution, and in this case also broke the existing FISA law, so they need to be brought to justice.

It's pretty simple. :shrug:

FISA produces "warranted" wiretaps. This is the entire purpose of having it. It requires and then provides a mechanism for producing such warrants.

Unwarranted wiretaps are a violation of FISA and the Constitution.

This being said, there is and has been a provision for after-the-fact warrants which in compliance with FISA must be obtained in 72 hours of the wiretap. I am not entirely comfortable with this, but can understand that there could be extraordinary circumstances under which a sane and competent administration might need this tool.

You are however correct, Bush and Cheney were illegally wiretapping and in violation of FISA. However, if you will recall at the time, they were not convinced that any law applied to them in any manner. It would not have mattered how the law, or for that matter any law was written. Given you put a Bush and Cheney in office, something I now doubt I will ever see again, you can pretty much flush the laws and Constitution. Write them any way you want or don't write them at all, they will still do whatever they care to.

This law does not provide power to them, as they assumed omnipotence above and beyond all laws and used the Constitution as a substitute for the WH Charmin, the law provides limits to the absolute power they believe they have, just as it did before they violated it.

The only real solution is impeachment, and this will not happen. It is the only tool provided to address a sitting executive who willfully and knowingly violates the law.

In regard to accountability, consider this for a moment. Bush has the power today to issue a blanket pardon the Cheney. On the morning of January 20, 2009, Bush could resign (sometime well before noon), under the Constitution, Cheney is then sworn in as #44 and takes his only action in office, issuing a blanket pardon of Bush. At noon, Barack Obama becomes 45, Bush and Cheney walk.

Impeachment was the only answer, and it is not going to happen. The only path by which the Democrats could lose this election, is impeachment. It would be seen as a pointless waste of time by a public that has already convicted and dismissed these folks in their minds. Did you see the video? People won't even wave to him anymore.

He has been reduced to a space holder, people will barely even show up to protest him anymore. Bush and his allies would enjoy the fight of impeachment because it would restore some of the political relevance he has lost. He is currently more reviled than Nixon, why do anything that could change that? A principal rule in politics is when the opposition has or is in the process of destroying itself, do not get in the way. We are far better off treating him like the irrelevant space holder he has become.

or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" is what the 4th amendment calls for, not a wink from the AG or the CIA. The point is to prevent exactly the types of warrantless searches, surveillance and dragnets that the feds now routinely engage in.

Yes, FISA is a workaround for lawbreaking federal agents, but it clearly violates both the letter and the spirit of the 4th amendment, and the "compromise" that Mr Obama has pledged to support, with or without the immmunity, is even more flagrantly abusive and unconstitutional.

As for Bush and Cheney, if they broke the law in collusion with corporate partners, the problem is the lawbreakers, not the law. We don't need to change FISA, we need to abolish it, because (a) it violates the Constitution and (b) its very existence incentivizes federal agents to violate the Constitution in the expectation that their crimes will be exonerated after they commit them.

is a COURT, with three senior judges. under the process, facts to establish probable cause such as set forth in the Constitution are provided under oath or affirmation, they are then reviewed by the panel of judges, and warrants are then issued by the judiciary branch which name the specific things to be searched, again per the Constitution. FISA searches are "warranted" searches.

You are confusing the warrantless (and clearly unconstitutional) searches engaged in by the Bush admin with the FISA COURT process. The violation of the constitution came from not going to the FISA COURT. The problem did not come through the process, the violation was the Bush administration intentionally avoiding the FISA COURT process.

FISA has nothing to do with warrantless searches, it is a process that sets up a COURT, with JUDGES, to issue search warrants.

There's simply no way to deny that as far as I can see. Federal courts could issue warrants before FISA. FISA allows federal agents to obtain warrants AFTER the eavesdropping has occurred. That clearly violates the spirit of the 4th amendment which mandates that warrants be sworn or affirmed in ORDER to conduct (and, self-evidently, prior to conducting) any search.

My understanding is that FISA hasn't been challenged at the level of the Supreme Court, but barring a crooked court like the one that gave us Bush in 2000, I'm pretty confident that it would be struck down.

with real judges who otherwise sit on a Federal district court of appeals. They are appelate judges. If they ever get to prosecuting a case which actually depends on its merits soley on an "after the fact" FISA warranted wiretap or other search, the issue may get squarely placed in front of the Supreme Court. We will see then what we will see. My expectation is that if it happens over the next 20 or so years, it will be found constitutional.

I think we can tell how Scalia and his buddies will vote. Scalia and company are the young and healthy side of the equation there. John Paul Stevens on the other hand is 87, my suggestion would be that we elect the Democratic candidate.

Another thing to note in all of this. FISA exists. If the bill is not passed, it will continue to exist, exactly as it has since just after the Nixon Administration. Repealing FISA is not on the table. It has no sunset provision, so unless someone proposes to repeal it, it will continue to exist.

The court itself is called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Anyway, my understanding is that FISA has a provision for periodic renewal, but whether it does or not, it's clearly plenty robust and there's no need to make it even easier for federal agents to eavesdrop without warrants. So I can't think of a reason Obama would get behind such legislation other than that he wants the same illicit power Bush and Cheney want. :shrug:

FISA is an act that creates a court. A real court with real judges that produces real search warrants.

Remember that most of the power that, more accurately stated, Bush and Cheney actually took, was outside this process. There has been little or no complaint about the searches that were warranted by action of the FISC. Of course, some of the lack of compliant could well be due to the lack of actual information about these searches. It would be interesting to lift the lid on that can.

The infiltration of Quaker peace groups by the DOD where I live, was not a FISC warranted search, as FISC would have no jurisdiction and there is no evidence of a warrant being issued for it.

Also recall that FISA was created prior to the widespread advent of cell phones or public use of the internet. Perhaps some updating is in order.

Finally, until proven otherwise, warranted searches are licit. Unwarranted searches are illicit. FISC produces warrants and therefore, until proven otherwise, searches in compliance with these procedures are legal. Once looked at, you and I may well agree that reasonable boundaries of probable cause have been breached. But before this conclusion can be reached, we need to exclude the clearly unwarranted activities, like the telecom spying bit, and the DOD infiltrations from the list, as they were not a product of the FISC.