A few days ago I wrote about my interaction with the American Legion. I wrote at first to complain about the organizational support of FISA revision to include telecom amnesty. The ongoing correspondence between myself and Mr. Steve Robertson of the AL continued into today. While the correspondence has been amicable, we reached a cavernous divide in our thinking. As of this moment much of my original and continuing concerns is not addressed. The entire discussion is too lengthy for a diary, but I will try not to slant my coverage. Representative parts are being chosen to the best of my ability.
My first comments to the AL were brief and spoke to the erosion of Constitutional rights if we allow retroactive amnesty for illegal acts in addition to the continued erosion of our right to privacy included in the bill. The initial reply was soon revealed to be a form letter sent to all of us veterans who sent a reply in accordance with McJoan's first posting.
Mr. Robertson responded to my concern about the failure to address a single one of my expressed concerns.
We only received 20 emails opposing S. 2248, so the same response to assure consistency in our official reply. You must have been involved in some kind of an organized grassroots campaign to defeat S. 2248 in order to know that the same response was sent to others.
What a fine observation he makes. I admit to being a political activist concerned with our Constitutional rights and wary of governmental invasion of our rights to privacy on all levels.
Then he continued saying
However, when I received another email in response, each was answered independently in an attempt to address specific concerns.
From here we continued a discussion today.
The first reply included
These measures are remedial at best however, do not provide the tools our intelligence professionals need to protect the Nation or the certainty needed by the intelligence professionals and their private partners.
To which I replied
What tools are missing?
In the same reply I asked again for factual support to the initial claim of terrorist acts prevented in past with information gained by surveillance. My questions continued
Given the fact the government has a window of 72 hours before a warrant is required how does the current FISA act limt surveillance in any serious way?
The reply came quickly
Besides, it makes no sense to impose FISA requirements in the context of surveillance of targets located overseas. Meeting the current emergency authorization and going through the FISA Court within 72 hours for every overseas foreign intelligence target, would quite simply overwhelm current resources and manpower, especially those linguists and analysts dedicated to covering al-Qa'ida and other foreign threat.
Maybe I am wrong but it seems to me if the Attorney General has enough information to justify surveillance that should satisfy the FISA Court without further ado. Mr. Robertson chose to ignore that suggestion.
No real answer to most of my questions was provided. My final piece of the conversation included my thoughts about telecom amnesty
Such amnesty is not acceptable under any circumstance if we are to hold to our democracy for the future.
I went further to worry about the Fourth Amendment and Constitutional protection against the provision of laws with retroactive clauses.
The end result was an amicable parting. No definitive or qualitative addressing of any of my real concerns was forthcoming. Maybe some such will be part of the future, but is not part of today.
Peace.
Reminder for one and all. I am running for Congress, DE-AL. Please check out the website or the ActBlue page and support the effort. Your help is needed for the effort to succeed. Contributions of all sorts, both moral and monetary are most appreciated.
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