Connecting Dots

I listened to Nina Totenberg's story about the FISA court this morning with some mixed feelings.  There was some good information in there, but there were some very important things missed entirely.

There were two critical items missed.  The first is that the FISA court approves almost all requests (99.97%, over the past five years.  100% over the past three.  This is several thousand requests, including, apparently, at least one request to monitor everyone).  So even if their purview has been limited, they haven't been fulfilling their duty within their sphere of operations.

The second point missed (repeatedly, actually) is that Congress doesn't have effective oversight.  They should, but there is substantial evidence that the intelligence services have directly lied to Congress about what they are, or are not, doing.

For evidence of this, look at what Senators Wyden and Udall were saying during debate, the last time the Patriot Act came up for renewal.  They knew (due to their positions on the Intelligence Committee) at least some of what was going on, and tried to tell others in Congress about it.

You could also listen to what a number of others (who were not on either of the Intelligence Committees) said during that debate, as it has been concretely contradicted by what has come out recently.

You could also check the testimony that the DNI recently gave, which he later admitted was "the least untrue" summary he could give.  Yeah, we don't want "least untrue".  We want the facts.

And one simple fact is that Congress has not been able to give effective oversight of these programs.  (There is, of course, the follow on question of whether Congress would, if given the opportunity, and that would be a fair question.  Color me skeptical, personally.  But that's neither here nor there, at the moment.)

If a tree falls in the forest, it is still heard

Well, it finally came out. No, I didn't know this was going on, but, given the hints I'd read (mostly via Greenwald), it doesn't surprise me a bit.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

I really don't understand how the FISA court approved this. I really don't. Maybe the judges just don't appreciate how much you can make out of knowing everyone that people talk to. Think of the kind of "friend"ing graph you can build off of facebook data. Well, this allows you to do the same thing, except with a great deal more accuracy (since being "friend"ed on facebook might or might not mean anything, while talking to someone tells a lot more. Especially when there's more than one communication).

I wonder if this carpet-sweeping surveillance might have helped lead to the case against the Fox reporter (although, about that, I see almost no one noting how the warrants in that case seem pretty appropriately narrow).

Maybe now, Congress can debate whether to allow this kind of omnipresent information gathering. Maybe we can finally get rid of the AUMF and (supremely cynically-named) PATRIOT Act?

Oh, and maybe now the more mainstream media will pay a bit more attention to Greenwald?  Ok, funny joke, but we can hope.