Congress authorizes vast expansion of domestic spying

[IndianaGreen]

The Democratic Congress is beginning to look like a battered wife that is unable to break free from an abusive relationship and is constantly caving in to the abuser.

Thank you Democrats for giving Attorney General Gonzales powers enjoyed by Lavrenti Beria, who headed KGB under Stalin.

Congress authorizes vast expansion of domestic spying

By Kate Randall
6 August 2007

The Democrats’ surrender to White House demands to pass the legislation was extraordinary even by their standard of repeated capitulation. Despite popular feeling that the Bush administration has engineered a war based on lies, and despite countless exposures of lawless and criminal government behavior—torture, CIA “renditions” and secret prisons, illegal spying, the concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay—the Democrats provided the votes required to pass legislation that tramples on Fourth Amendment constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

For months, the Bush administration has been lobbying for proposed changes to essentially gut Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court oversight of its domestic spying operations. The new legislation grants the government the authority to intercept, without a court order, international phone calls or emails between a surveillance target outside the United States and any person in the US.

Under the Bush plan, the attorney general—and not the FISA court—would have the authority to order the interception of communications for up to a year, as long as he determines that there is a “reasonable belief” that surveillance is directed at someone outside the US.

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The Democrats’ capitulation was the latest in its actions supporting the Bush administration’s “war on terror” throughout its two terms in office. They have provided the key votes to authorize the USA Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and enthusiastically supported the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security.

Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee gave their support in May 2006 to the nomination of General Michael Hayden, the principal architect of the NSA spying program, to head the Central Intelligence Agency, paving the way for his confirmation by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/aug2007/spy-a06.shtml