Mere weeks after the Bush Administration pushed hard for and signed into law the Protect America Act (just in time for Congress’ summer recess) the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is capitulating to ACLU pressure and ordering the government to give up the ghost on their warrantless wire-tapping program by August 31st. The ACLU made the request after taking time out from their busy schedule of applying Vaseline to their still-chapped a%$#@ from Don Imus’ getting the best of them over the Rutgers girls’ basketball comments earlier this year. Truth be known, Congress sanctioned spying on foreigners and Americans acting as foreign agents under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, requiring a warrant from a secret FISA court in the United States.
But new times and the Administration’s citing of a “surveillance gap” call for new measures and with the new Act, it seems to be open season on surveillance of anyone overseas with or without a warrant. According to deputy solicitor general Gregory Garre in a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals proceeding last week, this includes foreigners conducting electronic communications on U.S. soil.

As far back as 2004, groups like the ACLU were watching the daytime George Orwell-esque drama unfold between players such as the NSA and the FBI over the “Intensive Care Showdown” involving secret wire-tapping and data mining operations on U.S. soil. At the outset, those involved were able to secure the blessing of the Justice Department before that department had an about-face over concerns of privacy violations. Add to that the ingredient of an on-going investigation of the Communication Exploitation Section, Counterterrorism Division and allegations that they generated misleading “emergency letters” to telecom companies in order to garner thousands of Americans’ phone records, an abuse of the National Security Letter component of the Patriot Act, and you have quite a combustible story.

With our long history of schizophrenic paranoia in the media, it comes as no surprise that before the ink was dry on the newly endorsed Protect America Act and its buffed-up electronic eavesdropping privileges, complaints from the Center for Constitutional Rights (a.k.a. Lawyers for Suicide Bombers) were pouring in to a federal judge decrying that the statute be repealed. They claim that the alleged electronic monitoring is hurting the confidentiality of their attorney-client relationships with the prisoners they represent at Guantanamo Bay and it is having a chilling effect on their first amendment rights. A little laughable considering a) they are terrorist prisoners, and b) a fear of what the government might do to them was of little concern when many of them were planning out their crimes against humanity. Center attorney Shayana Kadidal lamented, “Congress has ceded further power to an administration that has done nothing but abuse its power and betray the trust of the American people”. (A fact bemoaned by millions of American people still alive to complain about how their trust has been betrayed by government agencies that have kept them alive).

The real prime time draw, however, is going on in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals where the ACLU has requested the release of government documents regarding an operation where government agencies were allegedly siphoning off millions of phone records and e-mails from AT&T’s customer network. The government is currently citing the “state secrets privilege” where the courts may not force government disclosure when it might compromise national security interests. Seriously, aside from Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s affinity for American Idol, do you really think the government is intrinsically interested in your personal life if it doesn’t involve national security? And with the restraints of manpower, can they even afford to be combing through millions of records rather than relying on impersonal key word search systems to locate real threats? The cold hard truth is, your marital problems are not a threat to national security. Nevertheless, the documents retrieved by former AT&T technician Mark Klein and provided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to be used in the case against the new Protect America Act are generating a lot of heat, many of which were published in Wired News last year. And that, is perhaps, exhibit A as to why the government is hesitant to produce these types of documents. Journalists aren’t paid to protect national security interests, they get bonuses for breaking big stories. And they will publish them as a public service. So let me get this straight. The government collects data on private citizens in the U.S. and it is wrong because they are violating individual privacy rights? And for the sake of hallowed privacy the ACLU is asking the courts to release this private surveillance for review and a possible leak to the media so we can together review in one accord and determine whether or not it’s a privacy violation. Hello pot, this is kettle. And don’t tell him he’s black.