Obama's NSA Defense: Congress Can Raise Objections It Can't Actually Raise
theatlanticwire.com
theatlanticwire.com
"What law says they don't have to?"
"Catch-22."
Was a point I raised here just yesterday - glad to see I was on the mark.
This is why we are now in an Orwellian state, rather that one with necessary secrecy but checks and balances.
When Congress can say, "We are reviewing National Security measures to be sure they comply with the law & Constitution, but we can't go into details" - that's the latter.
When Congress is under threat of penalty for even saying that we HAVE National Security measures, that is Orwellian.
How that plays out in this situation, I'm not sure, since I'm not a Constitutional Scholar, nor a lawyer.
That's why you don't see guys like Bernie Sanders on those committees :-)
Congressmen telling the public about this would have been a felony which they are not protected from. That's part of the reason Obama's comments are completely disingenuous.
But why aren't Americans in the street already? Europeans would be already in the street by now for a lot less than this. Remember the ACTA protests?
Some Europeans. Former East Germans, Greeks, most of those in the eastern European countries, Spain, Portugal. People of a certain age in those countries can remember what living under a dictatorship was like.
Now, the members of congress fighting the Obama administration have a crisis to run their next election on. And, in their quest to "take Obama to task", they might solve some of the existing issues around the Patriot Act, which they voted for multiple times.
Because authoritarians secretly like it, and others are terrified that they will be put on a list (or many lists) and their lives will be ruined.
Same reasons people aren't constantly in the streets within every authoritarian country.
Because they don't care too much ? Honestly there should have been multiple occasions for the American people to go and protest in the recent past but they did not. That's very easy for the government to continue and see how far they can go. The answer is : very far.
I wager that, for the average American, this news made them feel safer, and the only thing they're upset about is that the "bad guys" now know something they shouldn't.
I'm convinced most of us Americans just don't care, and that bothers me more than what the government is doing.
If it's government running amok, that leaves open the possibility that they can be reigned in. All you need to do is get the people sufficiently aware and sufficiently angry and the problem is solved!
But if it's simply the government obeying the will of the people, then we're screwed much harder. Convincing people who are deeply afraid of terror attacks and who find comfort in massive government programs meant to protect them that they should invert their priorities is massively difficult, perhaps impossible.
Handling intel to "the enemy"...
What I am curious about is the next presidential race and what the candidates are going to promise, because Obama basically played a huge word game.
He said he was against illegal spying on the country, so what he did was just make it legal to spy on the country instead of stopping spying on the country! I mean come on, that's bullsh*t.
But Obama is crossing a line here. Yes, Congress in the aggregate could do a hell of a lot of things, but not in some generic sense. It's not like one of them could go out and start making press releases.
Intelligence committee members and their staff are the only folks that are supposed to know about intelligence matters. Not "every member of Congress". And they are thoroughly briefed NOT to disclose any information that comes their way. In fact, there are clear penalties for doing so. Releasing unauthorized data is a felony, and felons go to jail, Congressman or not. (And no, Article 1, Section 6 specifically does not cover felonies)
Even then, the intelligence community doesn't brief the intelligence committees on everything -- they've found out from painful experience that somehow or another anything really juicy they tell them always gets out. So with some of this stuff, the only people that were briefed were the majority/minority leaders and the chairmen of the committees. Not "every member of Congress" Not even the people supposedly overseeing intelligence matters.
I think it's one thing to go about bullshitting when it comes to public policy, or any other thing the nation does. But when the government purposely keeps secrets from us, they take on the responsibility to at least honestly explain to us how the system works so that we can address the problem. Not continue to spin us as if this were just some proposed employment law or something. You can't keep it secret and then also lie to us about what we need to do to fix it. For Congress to again be a player here, it would need to pass some major legislation -- and the president would need to sign it. Let's with what that legislation would look like, which the president would be the best person to say (since the executive branch knows all the secrets anyway), and go from there. I'm happy to call up my Congressguy and give him hell -- but not in order to be some kind of pawn in a PR war about whom to blame.
Infants in Congress.
Finally have legit gripes