NewsTrust - Domestic Spying - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

What the CIA hid from Congress

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Jane Harman - Jul. 26 (Opinion) - Were members of congressional intelligence committees told everything about the Bush administration's surveillance programs? Not even close, reveals Jane Harman, the former top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

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A New Rush to Spy

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By NY Times Editorial - Aug. 22 (Opinion) - There is apparently no limit to the Bush administration's desire to invade Americans' privacy in the name of national security. According to members of Congress, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is preparing to give the F.B.I. broad new authority to investigate Americans -- without any clear basis for suspicion that they are committing a crime.

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Get spied on without doing anything wrong

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By D. Parvaz - Jul. 12 (Editorial) - Those who aren't alarmed by racial profiling ought to consider what makes this country special and think about what will be left to protect in a fascistic society where the individual's basic rights -- and our ideal of equal rights -- are meaningless. Just how much of this nonsense are we supposed to suck up in the name of national security?

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McCain's Ties To Telecoms Questioned After Wiretapping Flip-Flop

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Ryan Singel - Jul. 09 (Opinion) - If you've been wondering where all the telecom lobbyists went to lick their wounds after the House rejected retroactive immunity for wiretapping, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says it's found a bunch of them smack dab in the middle of John McCain's presidential campaign organization.

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Netroots Activists Mad at Obama for Spy Bill Flip-Flop

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Sarah Lai Stirland - Jul. 09 (Opinion) - Netroots activists who helped Barack Obama to become the Democratic party's presumptive presidential nominee are unmoved by the senator's explanation of his change of heart on a pending bill regarding warrantless wiretapping. The Obama campaign posted the senator's thoughts on the legislation on the eve of Independence Day, and members of his policy team answered questions for an hour and a half.

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Barack Obama and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

FindLaw - By John Dean - Jul. 01 (Opinion) - Not everyone is aware of the statement that Obama made to Will Bunch, or the reality that there is no immunity from criminal prosecution under the FISA amendments. In fact, it is not clear if Senator Obama himself is aware of the limits of the immunity in the FISA amendments. However, if Obama is a man of his word, he should explain to his Senate colleagues that when elected President, he will "immediately" request that his attorney general investigate the criminal activity of the Bush Administration in violating the FISA statute, along with the telecommunications firms who aided and abetted these violations.

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Mr. Bush v. the Bill of Rights

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jun. 18 (Editorial) - In the waning months of his tenure, President Bush and his allies are once again trying to scare Congress into expanding the president's powers to spy on Americans without a court order. -- This week, the White House and Democratic and Republican leaders ...

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Wiretapping's true danger

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Julian Sanchez - Mar. 16 (Opinion) - But focusing on the privacy of the average Joe in this way obscures the deeper threat that warrantless wiretaps poses to a democratic society. Without meaningful oversight, presidents and intelligence agencies can -- and repeatedly have -- abused their surveillance authority to spy on political enemies and dissenters. The original FISA law was passed in 1978 after a thorough congressional investigation headed by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) revealed that for decades, intelligence analysts -- and the presidents they served -- had spied on the letters and phone conversations of union chiefs, civil rights leaders, journalists, antiwar activists, lobbyists, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices -- even Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Privacy Or Spying?

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - Mar. 10 (Opinion) - Our privacy rights aren't Bush's to promise away, something the House ought to remember when it resumes looking at the FISA bill.

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Because They Said So

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - Even by the dismal standards of what passes for a national debate on intelligence and civil liberties, last week was a really bad week.

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Special Comment Regarding FISA

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

MSNBC - By Keith Olbermann - - Feb. 02 (Opinion) - President Bush has put protecting the telecom giants from the laws... ahead of protecting you from the terrorists. He has demanded an extension of the FISA law - the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - but only an extension that includes retroactive immunity for the telecoms who helped him spy on you.

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BBC NEWS - Science/Nature - FBI campaign against Einstein revealed

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - By Dr David Whitehouse - Dec. 23 (Review) - A new book reveals the 22-year effort by FBI director J Edgar Hoover to get Albert Einstein arrested as a political subversive or even a Soviet spy.

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The Wiretap This Time

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:42:24 -0700

New York Times - By Studs Terkel - Oct. 29 (Opinion) - During my lifetime, there has been a sea change in the way that politically active Americans view their relationship with government.

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Democratic Lawmaker Pushing Immunity Is Newly Flush With Telco Cash

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 08:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Ryan Singel - Oct. 19 (Opinion) - Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) is reportedly steering the secretive Senate Intelligence Committee to give retroactive immunity to telecoms that helped the government secretly spy on Americans. He has also recently benefited from some interesting political contributions.

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To invoke Vietnam was a blunder too far for Bush

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 22:35:05 -0700

The Guardian - By Christopher Hitchens - Aug. 26 (Opinion) - How do I dislike President George Bush? Let me count the ways. Most of them have to do with his contented assumption that 'faith' is, in and of itself, a virtue. This self-satisfied mentality helps explain almost everything, from the smug expression on his face to the way in which, as governor of Texas, he signed all those death warrants without losing a second's composure. It explains the way in which he embraced ex-KGB goon Vladimir Putin, citing as the basis of a beautiful relationship the fact that Putin was wearing a crucifix. (Has Putin been seen wearing that crucifix before or since? Did his advisers tell him that the President of the United States was that easy a pushover?)

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Why the Democrats Caved

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 10:47:52 -0700

Washington Post - By E. J. Dionne - Aug. 10 (Opinion) - But the moment passed. Even some very liberal Democrats worried about the political costs of blocking action before the summer recess. That Saturday night, the House sent the president a bill that, as a disgusted Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) put it, with just a touch of exaggeration, "makes Alberto Gonzalez the sheriff, the judge and the jury." Most Democrats opposed the bill, but 41 (including Shuler) voted yes, allowing it to pass. (Murphy remained passionately opposed.) The one Democratic victory: The legislation expires in six months, meaning the debate will resume this fall. But Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.) warned his colleagues that "when you give up your rights under the Constitution, it is not likely you are going to regain them."

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The president is threatening me

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:35:12 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Marie Marchand - Jul. 30 (Opinion) - I perceive Bush's July 17 executive order as a personal threat. When someone makes a threat, their intention is often to scare, isolate and subdue the other person into silence through fear. I will not be silent.

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Spying in the Death Star: The AT&T Whistle-Blower Tells His Story

Thu, 10 May 2007 21:43:33 -0700

Wired - By Ryan Singel - May. 10 (Interview) - Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, sits quietly at the center of a high-profile legal storm hitting the nation's largest telecommunications companies for allegedly helping the government spy on American citizens' phone and internet communications without court approval. In 2006, Klein stepped forward and handed sensitive AT&T documents to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that was preparing a class-action lawsuit against the telecommunications giant. That case and more than 50 similar suits have been consolidated into five master complaints that are now proceeding in a federal court in San Francisco. This summer, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear AT&T's appeal of a key ruling that rejected the government's national security concerns and allowed the suit to continue.

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No court order needed

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 08:08:24 -0800

USA Today - Jan. 17 (Opinion) - The fact that the CIA and the Pentagon are conducting their own domestic investigations does not bode well for this cause. It suggests that turf wars and empire building remain more important than collaboration. For the military, this behavior fits all too well into the campaign of mission creep advanced by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. For him it wasn't enough to have a military that fights the nation's wars. He wanted one that did diplomacy, intelligence gathering and, apparently, domestic law enforcement. For the CIA, it suggests that the longtime divide between it and FBI has not been fully bridged.

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The Bush Era Draws to a Close

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 11:59:02 -0800

Wired - By Jennifer Granick - Dec. 20 (Opinion) - In this column, I look back on three civil liberties crises that reached a critical point in 2006. In my next column, my first for 2007, I'll take a more proactive view of what the new year could mean for civil liberty.

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'Beginning of the end of America'

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 02:50:23 -0700

MSNBC - By Keith Olbermann - Oct. 19 (Opinion) - We have lived as if in a trance. We have lived as people in fear. And now—our rights and our freedoms in peril—we slowly awaken to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing. Therefore, tonight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy. For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering: A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

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Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 13:15:39 -0800

New York Times - Jan. 01 (Opinion) - The New York Times's explanation of its decision to report, after what it said was a one-year delay, that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping domestically without court-approved warrants was woefully inadequate. And I have had unusual difficulty getting a better explanation for readers, despite the paper's repeated pledges of...

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Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 13:15:39 -0800

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