Legion of Angels News Archive

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Sen. Barack Obama’s vote for a federal surveillance law that he had previously opposed has sparked a backlash from his online advocates, who had energized his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In October, Obama had vowed to help filibuster an update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that gave telecommunication companies that had cooperated with President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program immunity from lawsuits.

After 9/11, Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop, without the mandated warrant from a federal court, on electronic communication involving terrorist suspects.

Critics said Bush’s Terrorist Surveillance Program was a violation of civil liberties.

The Senate voted Wednesday on the bill updating FISA — which had a provision to shield telecommunications companies that had cooperated in the surveillance. Obama joined the 68 other senators who voted to send the bill to the president’s desk.

Obama did vote for an amendment offered before the final vote by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut, that would have stripped the immunity provisions from the bill, but the amendment failed.

Bush signed the bill into law on Thursday, saying the bill “will help us meet our most solemn responsibility: to stop another attack.”

The bill does not grant the telecommunication companies direct immunity, but it does contain a provision that allows a federal judge to dismiss the suits if the companies can present a letter from the government stating that the program was legal.

Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, testified before Congress that all the companies received such letters.

The bill also allows any warrantless wiretapping program to be reviewed by a secret federal intelligence court; requires a spy agency to purge any intelligence involving an American unless it gets a court warrant; and, for the first time, requires intelligence officials to get a court warrant if they wish to target an American living abroad. Read what’s in the FISA bill

When pressed to explain his change in position by an angry questioner Thursday, Obama defended his vote, saying he opposed the immunity for the companies but ultimately voted for the bill because he felt that the revisions to the intelligence law were necessary to protect the nation’s security.

“The surveillance program is actually one that I believe is necessary for our national security,” Obama told the questioner. “So I had to balance or weigh voting against a program that I think that we need — and that had been created so that your privacies were protected — or create a situation in which we didn’t have the program in place.”

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former Democratic presidential candidate and an Obama supporter, said Friday that the improvements to the bill allowed Obama to change his position.

“What changed is that the bill got better and more acceptable to Sen. Obama — the judicial oversight, the fact that the president can’t unilaterally say he’s going to eavesdrop on citizens,” Richardson said. “There are a lot of safeguards in the bill that weren’t there before.

“Now, again, the telecoms — I personally think they shouldn’t have immunity. But, you know, Sen. Obama had to make that decision,” Richardson said. “We do have to protect ourselves against terrorists, but I understand there’s some in the base that are concerned.”

Many of the liberal blogs who touted the Illinois Democrat early on have blasted Obama for changing his position.

One post on the blog DailyKos.com called Obama’s decision to vote for the bill a “sellout” and a “tactical blunder.” iReport.com: Was Obama’s vote a “sellout”?

And on “getfisaright.com,” a self-described group of 23,000 Obama supporters has posted an open letter to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, saying,”It is disheartening that you decided to support this bill, which does immense damage to the rule of law and our most fundamental democratic institutions.

“Even though we are disappointed, most of us continue to support you as a candidate,” the group wrote. “But as a candidate you have work to do repairing our trust in you and in government.”

But Richardson said the choice Obama made is just one of difficult decisions a senator — and a president — must make.

“There are enough safeguards in the bill and Sen. Obama said he’ll review the bill again, see how it’s working when he’s president,” Richardson said.

“So these are some of the political realities you face when you’re running for president, when you’re also in the Senate and you have to make a judgment on a bill.”

Source — CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The FBI continued in 2006 to badly mishandle letters that it uses to obtain personal records without a court order, according to a Justice Department report released Thursday.

The new report cites “issuance of NSLs [national security letters] without proper authorization, improper requests and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records due to FBI errors or mistakes made by NSL recipients.”

But a top department official said significant progress has been made in the past year toward correcting those errors.

Inspector General Glenn Fine said it’s too soon to tell if the problems will be eliminated.

Thursday’s report came a year after Fine’s first report on national security letters, which the FBI issues to third parties to get information on individuals — such as telephone, e-mail and financial records — in connection with terrorism or spy investigations.

The original report, which covered 2004 and 2005, found serious systematic failures by the bureau in its use of the letters.

Fine said it is no surprise that the latest report found continued violations in 2006, since that was before he issued last year’s stinging appraisal.

“The FBI and DOJ [Department of Justice] have made significant progress in implementing the recommendations contained in our first report and in adopting additional corrective measures to address the serious problems,” Fine said.

“However, several of the FBI’s and the department’s corrective measures are not yet fully implemented and it is too early to determine whether these measures will eliminate the problems with the use of these authorities,” he said.

 The Justice Department and FBI were quick to latch onto Fine’s comments and praise the FBI for doing a much better job, but Democratic lawmakers were just as fast to pounce on the report as evidence of continued FBI failings.

“We are pleased with the Office of Inspector General’s positive assessment of the many actions taken by the Justice Department and FBI to improve oversight of the use of national security letters,” said spokesman Dean Boyd of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

 ”Despite the low error rate we continue to strive for zero errors and we believe that the measures we have put in place will help ensure that,” an FBI statement said.

But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, promised to hold a hearing on the issue. The report, he said, “outlines more abuses and what appears to be the improper use of national security letters for years in a systemic failure throughout the FBI.”

And House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Michigan, said, “At the same time the administration is trying to intimidate the Congress into giving it additional spying power, we find out yet again that it has abused its authority to pry into the lives of law-abiding Americans.”

The new report shows the FBI continued in 2006 to increase its use of the secret letters. The 49,425 requests represented a 4.7 percent increase over 2005.

In an accompanying report the inspector general said the FBI made 47 requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for warrants to pursue business records. All requests were approved.

The report, however, singled out one classified case in which the FBI was turned down by the FISA court, and pursued the matter anyway. Although the details were blacked out in the report, the inspector general said Congress was provided a classified version of the report, which contains the information.

Source — CNN