NSA, Patriot Act, and FISA, gifts that keep on giving

I had an earlier post on this where I said that the severity of the charges against Edward Snowden are motivated by embarrassment of the Congress and the Administration over the amount of approved spying on our citizens more than because of any actual espionage.  Wile James Woolsley, CIA director under Clinton, wants him hanged, I still think the government's main issue is embarrassment, not espionage.  Even George Bush and Dick Cheney say that they never envisioned something as vast as gathering metadata on every single American with a phone.

The latest revelations are that programs called DROPOUTJEEP, GOPHERSET, and TOTECHASER have been implanted into Apple, Android, and Windows CE phones. The implanted software had to come from the manufacturers or by the NSA. If the latter, perhaps these are programs that are used to hack phones for surveillance as opposed to programs that exist in everyone's phones. Here is the thing, smart consumers have believed the government capable of these shenanigans for some time. Thanks to Snowden's disclosures, we now know the extent of the spying and it is phenomenal. Neither the Obama Administration, the Senate, nor the House of Representatives show any inclination to do more than a token cutback in the spying. We need to pressure the legislative branch to restrict the government. 

I would object less to mass metadata retrieval if there was a codified way to surveil the NSA probes into the metadata. Now they must get an approval to access the metadata but the approval is either by intyernal NSA authorities or a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court that is secret.  There is oversight of FISA by Congress and the Senate but well after the fact and there is no other accountability or FOI (Freedom of Information) access.  If this is purely for espionage, it is less important than if it is actionable by the CIA.  For example, was the drone strike on American Citizens in Yemen tied to NSA surveillance?  If yes, the surveillance there led to a direct assassination of American Citizens.  

While Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Colorado-born militant was on the Obama-approved hit list, his 16 year old son, also an American citizen was not.  While few of us mourn the loss of the father and can we justify the loss of his son considering that there was no due process?  The legality of this action is still being debated but likely Mr. Obama will get a pass on this as well.  Still, we have to consider that NSA spying can lead to critical consequences.

Also, there is the whole concept of the FISA court.  Supposedly, they must approve actual message surveillance.  There is not supposed to be any pass-through to the FBI except for domestic espionage and terrorist cases.  That means that your calls to Whitey Bulger were safe without a physical court order but your calls to the driver for Osama Bin Laden's nephew's mother-in-law are not.  Those latter calls will get you pulled up in the sweep and on someone's list somewhere.

Both New Mexico Senators sponsored the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act which is now tabled.  Since it was tabled, I have not looked at the legislation to see if it is sufficiently broad.  We need to raise our voices to the point that Senator Dianne Feinstein, the gun control Diva, and Representative Mike Rogers, House Intelligence Chairman, are impacted.  Bet on Rogers taking action before Feinstein.  Also, we need to get to the Republican leadership in the house which is buying the National Security argument hook, line, and sinker.

I am not suggesting that all surveillance be curtailed, just an end to the Star Chamber that is the FISA court system.  We need direct accountability for surveilling Americans!