That this would happen:
The FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday.
A report will show subpoenas were improperly used to get personal data, FBI chief Robert Mueller says.
Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the privacy breach by FBI agents and lawyers occurred a year before the bureau enacted sweeping new reforms to prevent future lapses.
Details on the abuses will be outlined in the coming days in a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
The report is a follow-up to an audit by the inspector general a year ago that found the FBI demanded personal data on people from banks, telephone and Internet providers and credit bureaus without official authorization and in non-emergency circumstances between 2003 and 2005.
Mueller, noting senators’ concerns about Americans’ civil and privacy rights, said the new report “will identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March.” The similarities, he said, are because the time period of the two studies “predates the reforms we now have in place.”
But don’t you worry- everything is fixed good now with our reforms, yesirree bob!
You know, if there was any evidence that she would begin criminal investigations the moment she became President, I would vote for Hillary in a second. My big fear, after watching the folks in her campaign, is that they will embrace their newfound authoritah.
Napoleon
I have a gut feeling that the administration got this story out into the public because there is a much larger and serious story about all of the illegal wiretaps that could break, but by doing this if and when that story breaks they can say “old news, that story has already been covered”.
Faux News
“Freedom is not free. That it comes with the highest of sacrifices”
Queen Gorgo, to the
U.S. SenateSparta Senate in the movie “300”I think Queen Gorgo was clearly referencing the national security letters in her speech to the Senate.
srv
“Reforms” = Statutes that previously made these actitities illegal have been reimagined by legal counsel.
SpotWeld
But don’t you worry- everything is fixed good now with our reforms, yesirree bob!
…pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Billy K
My God, can you imagine McAuliffe with this kind of authority?
Ninerdave
Yes, which is why I shudder at the thought of President Clinton.
jcricket
Is anyone promising indictments and investigations? I thought there was this crappy unwritten rule that once the previous tyrants, er, President’s reign was over you promptly forget about all his/her crimes. Kind of the “long national nightmare is over” type model.
It saddens me that only historians (if anyone) will bother to do any kind of reckoning as to what really went on the last 8 years or so. And periodically I read about another signing statement, executive order or whatever from Bush denying access to documents useful for that purpose even many years after the fact.
Zifnab
I have no doubt that Republicans will take an all-too-keen interest in protecting us from Big Government Eavesdropping after Nov 2009. Expect a great deal of scretching and poo-throwing about how President Hillary/Obama has used the authority invested in George Bush in an entirely irresponsible manner.
If the new President tries to divest him/herself of the powers, Republicans will scream that they aren’t protecting us from Terrorists. If the new President keeps and utilizes the powers, we’ll be right back to black helicopters and oppressive Stalinistic Nanny States and the death of Democracy.
We’ll hear a great deal of “serious” talk about how only a Republican can make use of this power responsibly.
Cybershaman
Many years ago RCA was bought by a French corporation called Thompson. Around this neck of the woods it was with a sigh of relief since that meant RCA was not going to go bellyup. People were going to keep their jobs. Next thing we know Thompson is pulling out and all those jobs evaporate.
Years later I find out that the CIA was eavsdropping on Thompson phone calls and, during a military bidding process for a lucrative contract, leaked their bid offer to a competing company (either Lockheed Martin, Lear, or Boeing) who underbid them. So because of illegal activities by our government tens of thousands of American workers lost their jobs. The Thompson shutdown devastated this area. Just so you know.
po
once taken, authority is rarely returned voluntarily. none of the current contenders for CiC will put any of the genies back in the bottle – either out of fear or because they will grow to appreciate how much simpler governing is when one is the dictator. enjoy. for this reason also Clinton should win the nomination — the right will die with her having such powers. Investigations will be needed. How could this have happened. Why, impeachment might even be called for.
Sasha
Part of the reason I support Obama is, that of all the candidates (barring Kucinich and maybe Paul), he is the most likely to actually hold legitamate (vs. show) investigations on the potentially criminal activities of the Bush Administration.
Face
Nappy nails this one. Absolutely no reason to openly admit this in a public forum unless the actual report is 100x worse. How many divorce proceedings/personal lawsuits/professional blackmailings do you think were altered by agents obtaining illegal wiretaps, bank statements, and credit info for “terrorism-related activities”?
I’m guessing thousands.
John Cole
Or Sidney Blumenthal, or Mark Penn, or Wolfson, or Ickes? It is a terrifying prospect.
Christ.
Keith
Since the right gets to use “24” to justify anything under the sun in the name of stopping terrorists, can the left start using “The Wire” and McNulty/Templeton to justify taking away the blank check our leaders have handed off to the authorities in the interests of protecting us?
Chris Johnson
I support Obama for president and Clinton for senate majority leader. Let her use her rabid-wolverine fighting for personal power to put more power behind Congress, against an executive branch that is more likely to negotiate than fight. Let him make loads of concessions to Congress that are over stuff he’s not supposed to have anyway.
We have, or had, a system of government- not a monarchy. We had this for a reason. With the right balance of idealism vs. ambition we can have it back. It’ll look like Congress flipping out and doing all the things to Obama that they wouldn’t do to Bush, but again I think there’s a reason for that- I think threats are keeping them in line and they’re trying to ease our criminal leaders out without provoking them into nuking, say, New York.
in b4 ‘again’.
Pixie
On the upside John, even if a democratic president does embrace the lawlessness of the Bush administration, you can bet that the congress (with a re-energized Republican Minority leading the way) will rediscover its purpose and put the brakes on any type of power grab by the executive branch.
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
Stop hating Hillary! She’ll fix everything single-handedly like she said she would!
You’re also saying a woman can’t be in power. That’s sexist!
[/hillbot]
demimondian
Christ I can imagine with that kind of authority. Anybody else? No.
Dennis - SGMM
Don’t worry, everything’s just fine, little incidents like this: FBI Receives Unauthorized Access to Entire Domain from NYT don’t mean that the tools of surveillance will ever be misused. That’s not all, from the article:
But, nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong…
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
Fixed for HRC personality.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
You don’t have to suspect or accuse the HRC campaign of being crypto-authoritarians in order to see problems here. I’ll rehash something I already said in the Groundhog Days post (lost somewhere down around comment #300 something).
Policy is grounded in political culture. Political culture is a function of the psychology of the voters. If you want to make lasting changes in policy, it isn’t enough to just put your person in power and have them change the policy. Any positive changes you do make will get swept away the next time the wind blows against you (see Clinton, Bill, 1993-2000, administration of)
The big problem I have with the HRC campaign is that I don’t see them investing any political capital in trying to educate voters or move our political culture to a place where creeping authoritarianism like this is toxic. They want to win the game, but they aren’t doing anything to change the rules.
That isn’t good enough any more. The political culture that allowed these powers to be accumulated needs to be changed, not just in DC, but in the electorate. HRC may not turn into another GWB, but I don’t see her closing the door on any future GWB’s. At some point we will get another one if we don’t take preventative measures.
canuckistani
Come on. All those right wing guys knew when they asked for a Unified Executive that they were giving powers to President Clinton. It’s time for them to enjoy what they asked for.
Jake
Don’t worry John, if a Democrat takes the oath of office the Republicans will be up bright n’ early on 21 11 09 chirping about our Constitution.
OT: I’m going to leave this here for Tim F and listen for the derisive laughter.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Sure, John, you’re worried about the FBI prowling around your bank accounts and your emails. But what about all the lives that were saved when they did so? What about the terrorist incidents that the FBI was able to prevent by information extrapolated by your seemingly-innocuous telephone records?
Once the government attains Total Information Awareness, it shall have Power Overwhelming. Not a leaf shall fall from a tree without 5 Secret Service Agents ready with leaf-blowers. A terrorist won’t be able to so much as purchase a box cutter from Walmart before he finds himself half-way to Guantanamo with a cattle prod up his tush. Your private affairs may not contain anything criminal, in and of themselves; but they contain information vital to Total Information Awareness. Without their data, vital clues may be missed, and an evildoer could slip through our web of defenses and destroy, I don’t know, Pittsburgh or something.
We are more than citizens. We are the eyes, ears, and noses of our government. If we combine our forces under the aegis of TIA, we are Legion.
Embrace the hivemind, liberals. Your personal privacy and liberty interests stand in direct opposition to the needs of the many. If you fail to cooperate, you are creating serious gaps in our grid of defensive knowledge. You become cancerous cells in need of extrication from the body politic. In short, you become the enemy within. Embrace the hivemind, I implore you. If you’ve committed no crime, you have nothing to fear from its warm, big-brotherly embrace.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This makes perfect sense – how can they pick out the guilty if they don’t know what the behavior patterns of the innocent look like. We’re not being spied upon, we’re just the control group. Baselines, it’s all about baselines!
Zifnab
Hey, even Christ I’d have to think about.
caustics
I’m not sure it all counts as drinking from the same well, but her core people seem to be fairly quick studies on the use of dog whistles and such.
Something along the lines of “With us or against us” feels like the next logical step.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Precisely. For example, the statistical probability of a normal person buying a box-cutter shortly after purchasing airline tickets online is probably far, far lower than the statistical probability of a terrorist hijacker doing the same. But unless we know the statistics, we’ll never be able to feed the information into our computer databases and piece these clues together in time. The same thing applies to books. In and of itself, your purchase of the Koran is possibly innocuous. But I think we can all agree that your purchase of the Koran, combined with your library reading of a book about Al Qaeda, combined with your phone call to a friend in Brooklyn who lives a block away from a mosque known to have terror links, combined with your Walmart purchase of Golden Grahams cereal (don’t ask), duct tape and a box-cutter, puts you in the category of those significantly more likely to commit a terrorist act than the average flag-saluting American patriot.
Nations rise and fall on flimsier reeds than this. Open a history book. America is defending itself in a war against its very existence. If you’re totally innocent, you wouldn’t be purchasing Golden Grahams and reading about Al Qaeda.
Darkness
So, she either prosecutes, or she abuses her power and heads explode on the Right. That’s what I call a win-win.
I want some pain on the Right, damnit, they cheerleaded for this crap, let ’em suffer.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Amen, brother! Praise the Lord and pass the SQL.
‘Cause we all know that databases never fill up with bad data. Gospel in, gospel out!
mark
OT but related, did y’all see Kevin Drum’s piece:
borehole
This is actually the most compelling argument FOR Hillary. Not that she’d use her extra-constitutional power for good, and frankly, I doubt she’s use it to the right wing’s detriment in any real sense, but just the fact that she’d HAVE that power would be enough to make those assholes miserable for 4 to 8 years.
I gave up long ago on reclaiming my country. Giving Captain Ed a good case of the shit-fits for the better part of a decade wouldn’t be a bad consolation prize.
Svensker
That’s because they hate us for our FREEDOM. We are FREE, see. That’s why We’re better than Them. And that’s why we gotta spy on Them. Otherwise we won’t be free.
Oh, and who let the news out about the Golden Grahams?
Incertus
All of this stuff should be fodder for questions at the first McCain v. Clibama debate–will you pledge to roll back these unconstitutional powers?
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
So that’s that. Register your domain name through a U.S. company and your business goes kaput if the U.S. Treasury Department decides it doesn’t like you. It doesn’t matter if you’re based in Spain, your servers are in the Bahamas, your customers are mostly European, and you’ve broken no laws. No warning. Just kaput.
The guy was supposed to get a domain with the TLD for Spain. All
.comdomains are American property, roughly speaking, and their popularity is the reward for starting the Internet project and seeing it through.So, essentially this travel agent was using American property to do business with Cuba, which can’t be allowed because of the American embargo. If the guy gets a new domain ending in
.co.es, then he’s in the clear (unless Spain picks a fight with him)Fair ball.
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
You haven’t been reading your Scott Horton.
Implying that Dear Leader is wrong or dishonest is Verboten.
I can’t wait until those cowardly anti-patriots are irrelevant. Thank god for the Internet.
Reverend Spooner
They hate us for our freedoms. And our delicious breakfast cereals.
JGabriel
A bit belated, but I needed to react to this from John, in a previous post:
Welcome to party, John! I’ve felt this way for 24 years, since I was first old enoguh to vote in a Presidential election.
Even older Democrats can tell you they’ve been feeling this way every election since 1952. Oh sure, we managed to win a few, but there’s *always* a doddering old warmonger that the Republicans rally around (Eisenhower, Nixon, Goldwater, Nixon (again?), Ford, Reagan, Bush, Dole…), and it always feels like the party is about to tear itself apart before we even get to the nomination.
Now you why we’re often so frustrated.
.
JGabriel
Bleh. That should be: “Now you *know* why we’re often so frustrated.”
.
Reverend Spooner
Perhaps a delicious bowl of sugary cereal would cheer you up! I know it’s almost dinner-time, but you’re an adult. You work hard for a living, and you hate terrorists. Have some cereal.
Just avoid the Golden Grahams. That brand is reserved for evildoers.
Chris Johnson
Then you admit I’m right ;)
That’s the whole POINT. The system USES the personalities of characters like Clinton set against each other to prevent the checks and balances from being thrown away. The intention was that there was always supposed to be a Hillary in each branch, throwing a fit if their powers were neutered.
Thanks to Bush, Congress got neutered, so it needs to be, um, rejuvenated. The presidency does NOT need to be neutered, on the contrary, so a compromiser like Obama is ideal for that slot.
Darkness
Scruffy, I’m going to pretend you aren’t a troll and point out that if the Bush administration wanted to save American lives they have a strange way of going about it. They passed up every opportunity to save lives in the last seven years.. (Including ignoring a certain memo warning of attack, but that’s a paltry 3,000 lives. Let’s talk about real carnage.
Bush could have saved tens of thousands of American lives during their tenure, without spying on anyone, amazing! In the last 7 years, 300,000 people died in car crashes… did the Bush administration increase safety standards to prevent any of those? 200,000 Americans died as the result of being shot, any action there? No quite the opposite, working as always to kill more. 40,000 red blooded working Americans were killed on the job. Did Bush take action to prevent that? No, in fact, by weakening osha and mining oversight he helped to kill more on that front too. 3 million Americans died of cigarettes, any federal action there? 1.4 million Americans died accidentally in hospitals in that time, any new rules there?
Bush makes this claim that he’s “protecting” Americans. What a flippin’ joke. This has zero to do with lives. It has only to do with power. Lives are easy to save (and amazingly, it doesn’t involve bombs!) and by ignoring his power to save lives it proves he doesn’t give a crap.
Davebo
Well, I guess so if roughly speaking means bizzaro world!
The guy just needs to sue his ISP. The Treasury department can’t seize property with zero due process.
Jake
Psst, Darkness! You need to recallibrate your snark detector. Frequent forays into Ballon Juice cause them to run down early and often.
Jim
Bingo John, you’ve hit a gusher! A huge problem with Hillary is the greater likelihood that she will gladly use all of the expanded executive powers Bush has stolen from wimps in Congress. Moreover, a huge problem with BushCo is their secretiveness and Hillary isn’t exactly the most forthcoming person we’ve seen in politics lately.
Darkness
Um, we run a pile of the Root Servers here in the U.S. of A. What TLD gets someone out from under Americans mucking with their international business in that case, oh yee of the quick snappy answers? Behaving untrustworthy, especially for no good reason, is just stupid on America’s part.
Not to mention that to do business with China and not Cuba is utterly hypocritical…
Darkness
Thanks, it’s been out of whack…I’ve been on econ blogs lately.
Doubting Thomas
Has Obama said he would roll back Bush’s power or insist Congress hold investigations or make the Bushie’s accountable? I haven’t heard that, but it sure would make me want to support him over Hillary if he did.
cleek
Scruffy’s scary talk makes me go pee in my pants.
am i a Republican yet?
RSA
First you have to say, “But on me it smells good.”
JGabriel
Jen:
You know, if she uses them against the Republicans that gave her those powers, there’s a kind of schadenfreudalicious appeal to that.
Of course that would be a bad thing. Amusing, nay, funny as hell, but still a bad thing.
.
JGabriel
Jen:
You know, if she uses them against the Republicans that gave her those powers, there’s a kind of schadenfreudalicious appeal to that.
Of course that would be a bad thing. Amusing, nay, funny as hell, but still a bad thing.
.
Hubris
Mayberry Machiavellis.
AnneLaurie
How bad IS this mess? Well, they didn’t even wait for Friday afternoon to dump it, so not only is there a lot more shite in the pipeline, it’s got a (predicted) 72-hour delivery window…
Here in America it’ll be a “Truth THEN Reconciliation” committee, ReThuglicanz.
I personally want to see Waxman and Conyers pimp-slap Arlen Spector live on national television. Forgive, yes; forget, never. The forces of Darth Cheney and Don Capo Rumsfeld have sapped too much of our nation’s strength to risk flushing another 30 years of “conservative” treason down the memory hole.
Dennis - SGMM
One of the (Lamentably few) advantages of being an Old Guy is that you’ve seen a lot of this shit before. Take a look at COINTELPRO.
Run by the FBI from 1956 to 1971, COINTELPRO’s rationale was(Quoting from the linked article):
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
For what its worth, from the ObsidianWings archives:
hilzoy on the Democratic candidates and civil liberties
statement by a group named Habeas Lawyers for Obama
The most active blog posters and good chunk of the commentariat at ObsidianWings seem to be pretty solidly pro-Obama at this point, so take that as you will. Personally, if I had to pick one person in the blogosphere to ask for a fair minded testimonial regardless of partisan leanings, it would be hilzoy, so I would not be inclined to regard either of these posts as MUP inspired hackery. If someone else can find a more balanced source, then please do tell.
Temple Stark
>>A huge problem with Hillary is the greater likelihood that she will gladly use all of the expanded executive powers
No, really it’s not. And I can counter an unverified statement with one equally without proof. If it’s a big deal to anyone I will look up what I’ve heard and read that Clinton would do away with most of Bush’s illegal signing statements and exec. orders and that she would prorect the constitution. The latter point she mentioned in her Ohio victory speech just Tuesday.
– Hillary-haters. sheesh, it’s disturbing.
TenguPhule
You know, if she uses them against the Republicans that gave her those powers, there’s a kind of schadenfreudalicious appeal to that.
Heh indeedy.
I look forward to the day Republicans in Congress discover the concept of oversight, then realize to their horror they gave it away and the Flying MUP/Clagina isn’t going to give it back.
Stick the Republicans under the microscope of covert wiretaps and file prying and watch them sizzle and burn.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
P
Thanks for clearing that up for him!