Left News and Views

In yesterday’s New York Times, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, wrote an Op Ed column titled “Help Me Spy on Al Qaeda.” If I hadn’t know better, I would have thought I was reading a spoof.

The premise of the column is to put pressure on Congress to re-enact the Protect America Act, which expires in less than two months, on Feb. 1

“Before the Protect America Act was enacted, to monitor the communications of foreign intelligence targets outside the United States, in some cases we had to operate under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, a law that had not kept pace with changes in technology,” McConnell wrote. “In a significant number of these cases, FISA required us to obtain a court order.”

My goodness, obtain a court order to ensure the CIA isn’t snooping where they shouldn’t – such as in my e-mail messages for example. Why protect basic American rights when there are boogey men out there to go after.

This contention that FISA hasn’t kept pace with changes in technology was a smoke screen from the beginning. First, FISA has rarely turned down requests and, secondly, there is a provision in FISA to allow the agency to monitor communications on an emergency basis without obtaining prior approval and then submitting the paperwork later.

Don’t you love the title of this act: the Protect America Act. Machiavelli couldn’t have come up with a better moniker. Who could be against an act to “protect America?”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really protect America, but it runs roughshod over the rights of Americans.

The American Civil Liberties Union calls the law the “Police America Act,” because it allows for massive, untargeted collection of international communications without court order or meaningful oversight by either Congress or the courts.

“It contains virtually no protections for the U.S. end of the phone call or e-mail, leaving decisions about the collection, mining and use of Americans’ private communications up to this administration,” according to the ACLU.

I think the real reason McConnell and others wanted the new act from the beginning is contained in this chilling claim in his column: “[I]t is critical for the intelligence community to have liability protection for private parties that are sued only because they are believed to have assisted us after Sept. 11, 2001. Although the Protect America Act provided such necessary protection for those complying with requests made after its enactment, it did not include protection for those that reportedly complied earlier.”

The Protect America Act allows big communications companies like AT&T, Comcast and the like to turn over all kinds of confidential information on customers without fear of being sued. Unfortunately, according to McConnell’s view, this protection only started with the new law was enacted. He wants the re-enactment to include protection of these companies all the way back to September 11, 2001.

If we didn’t have confidence in the CIA to play by the rules before, we sure don’t have reason to now after learning that the agency destroyed hundreds of hours of video tape taken during the torture of prisoners. This was done in spite of being warned not to by White House counsel Harriet Meiers. and members of Congress. CIA officials lied when they testified before the Iraq Study Group, saying no tapes existed, and then they gave two laughable excuses for destroying the tapes after the destruction was revealed.

Sure, these are the guys we should expect to respect the rights of Americans to privacy without any oversight.

Give me a break.