Will the National Surveillance State Prevail Again? By Scott Horton

[kpete]

June 24, 6:19 PM, 2008 ·

This is the soft underbelly of the National Surveillance State, the path by which the state will intrude with little resistance into the lives of the great mass of the citizenry.

Will the National Surveillance State Prevail Again?
By Scott Horton

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The debate raises many other issues. One of the most significant of them is the idea of immunity for telecommunications companies. The evidence at hand now shows that telecommunications companies facilitated criminal surveillance of their customers (i.e., surveillance that violated the limitations of FISA, and was therefore felonious) at the request of the Bush Administration’s rogue Justice Department and National Security Administration. The telecoms have spared no expense lobbying in their effort to get out from under the liability that this presents. Their efforts are plainly paying off.

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In a like manner, the Bush Administration’s “war on terror” has provided a pretext to transform the American republic into a new form of state. In place of the Founders’ carefully counterposed checks and balances, the Bush Administration offered a new, unfettered executive capable of unilateral action even when encroaching upon the hitherto guarded rights of the citizens. The Bush Administration’s concept was of a National Surveillance State, in which a supposedly benevolent and protecting executive would move towards omniscience through the marvels of new and intrusive technologies.

But the Bush Administration’s secret constitution has another, potentially more worrisome aspect. It presented the president as ultimate interpreter—not guarantor—of the law. As the Stuart monarch who spawned the English Civil War, Charles I, said “rex est lex” (the king and the law are one), so President Bush and his followers enact Richard Nixon’s famous statement, “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

This principle, that the executive’s views are law, or effectively trump positive law, is poison to America’s constitutional model. So for a Democratic Congress dealing with a Republican president with support dipping to the unheard of depths of 17% in the polls, of course it’s a non-starter, right? Evidently not. Mr. Hoyer and his team really see no problem with the notion of an imperial president. In fact this was the core of their “compromise.” They will give judges discretion to bail the telecoms out of their problems. All the telecoms need to do is demonstrate that the president asked them to do it. Got that? The president’s views trump the law. This “compromise” is insulting and moronic. But that’s not the worst of it. The worst is that it’s a betrayal of the core notions of our democracy.

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more at:
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/06/hbc-90003151

[lordsummerisle]

1. Yes. n/t

[seafan]

2. Will our fourth amendment protections die tomorrow in the Senate?

Scott Horton writes:

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However, there are also several negative aspects of the bill aside from telecom immunity, and two of them stand out to me. First, the old FISA allowed NSA to conduct a wiretap for up to 72 hours while waiting for FISA approval. The new bill extends this to a week, allows the surveillance to continue during appeals, and permits the government to use any of the information it collects even if the FISA court eventually rules that the tap is unlawful. This pretty obviously opens the door to some fairly serious abuse in the future.

Second, and more fundamentally, the bill gives wholesale approval for NSA to conduct bulk monitoring of electronic communications (primarily email and phone calls). This is the issue that catapulted FISA into prominence in the first place, and it’s getting surprisingly little attention this time around.

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Watching Congress debate these issues inspires no confidence in its discharge of its oversight function. At this point, it is unsurprising that the public is so distraught over Congressional action and that Republicans are largely more fond of the Congress than are Democrats. Congress has a Constitutional duty that focuses on attentive oversight, the preservation of its own prerogatives and of the citizens’ rights against the encroachments of executive power. Congress has miserably failed in this process, and the FISA “compromise” furnishes only more evidence of that failure. More troubling, the Democratic leadership shows us that it has neither a sense of democracy nor of the duty of civic courage in its defense.

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Thanks, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi, for handing Mr. 23% approval rating our gutted fourth amendment.


History will not remember you well.

[madfloridian]

3. Look what Hoyer did. Wexler is right. Hoyer was dishonest.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6408189

[bleever]

4. "A betrayal of of the core notions of our democracy."

:thumbsup:

[Solly Mack]

5. Yep

Can't rightly claim it's all Bush's fault when you're the one legalizing (through immunity) crimes he (and others) commit.

[windoe]

6. What a colossal waste of money

our infrastructure is failing before our eyes, which will eventually affect everyone, except the uber rich at some point in time. They are shooting themselves in the foot.

I can save them the effort and cost: You will find out that Americans are busy trying to survive.