In regards to the Amash amendment which would have de-funded the portion of the NSA earmarked to spying on American citizens (which was narrowly voted down last night), the office of the President’s Press Secretary :
In light of the recent unauthorized disclosures, the President has said that he welcomes a debate about how best to simultaneously safeguard both our national security and the privacy of our citizens…we oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our Intelligence Community’s counterterrorism tools. This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process.
My irony alarm was so overloaded by this statement that I had to turn it off because all the neighbors were complaining.
To show just how much the President values an informed, open, process, he sent the head of the NSA to brief members of Congress:
NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander scheduled a last-minute, members-only briefing in response to the amendment, according to an invitation distributed to members of Congress this morning ...The invitation warned members that they could not share what they learned with their constituents or others. “The briefing will be held at the Top Secret/SCI level and will be strictly Members-Only,” reads the invite.
Ha! How’s that for open and informed?
I wonder why the administration which claims to want a debate is pursuing Edward Snowden with such vigor? It seems to me that he’s given a real shot in the arm to those of us who really would like an “open, informed and deliberative” discussion about the clearly unconstitutional surveillance programs that have been adopted in the wake of 9/11.
It’s absurd for the administration to claim they want an open debate, while they’ve been insisting for years that the programs were so secret that even courts cannot adjudicate the issue. The Electronic Frontier Foundation quotes the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals:
At base, the government argues here that state secrets form the subject matter of a lawsuit, and therefore require dismissal, any time a complaint contains allegations, the truth or falsity of which has been classified as secret by a government official…According to the government’s theory, the Judiciary should effectively cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its partners from the demands and limits of the law.”
Lastly, please remember this little gem when the administration laughingly says they want a debate on the issue:
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the chairman of the [House Judiciary] committee, said he was surprised that the programs had been kept secret for so long.
“Do you think a program of this magnitude gathering information involving a large number of people involved with telephone companies could be indefinitely kept secret from the American people?” Goodlatte asked.
“Well,” ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] general counsel Robert S. Litt said with a slight smile, “we tried.”
You can almost imagine him following up with, “And we would have gotten away with too, if it hadn’t been for that meddling Snowden kid!”
Brynn: I can just imagine that briefing with Alexander. Probably went something like this:
“There are hordes of terrorists out there trying to hurt the U.S. because they hate our freedom. It is only because of out wholesale gathering of information on everyone in the world–ehem–including all Americans–that we were able to stop 2,967 terrorist attempt to hurt America. Unfortunately, I can’t give you any details on these attempted attacks, because you might try to corroborate this claim and that could be an embarrassment. And anyone who embarrasses the U.S. is akin to a terrorist. And you are commanded to not repeat a word of this statement to anyone because I said so, and I am a general and that’s a direct order. Tell your constituents that they will simply need to trust those of us at the NSA, because there are many terrorists out there. Comparable to those terrorists still in Guantanamo, and we need to endlessly pursue and confine them, or send them to some god-forsaken hell-hole so that they can be dealt with swiftly, without interference of the courts, except that the Court dealing with Bradly Manning is doing OK. But, hell, we’re almost beyond courts, now that there are SO many terrorists out there. We need secrecy and muscle. Just like when we forced down the airplane of Evo Morales. Secrecy and muscle. Tough times require tough medicine. Again, don’t destroy American by keeping us from collecting all data generated by all Americans. We promise: We won’t look at your passwords, you bank account numbers or your letters to loved ones. And we promise that none of us have ever been involved with any sort of identity theft of any American, or stealing of credit card numbers, or gumming up your computers because we intervene in the data stream. We try to stay away from your personal information. Trust us, or else. We’ll be watching.”
And btw, how’s THIS for open government:
”
In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama said again and again that the U.S. is at war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.”
So who exactly are those associated forces? It’s a secret.
At a hearing in May, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked the Defense Department to provide him with a current list of Al Qaeda affiliates.
The Pentagon responded – but Levin’s office told ProPublica they aren’t allowed to share it. Kathleen Long, a spokeswoman for Levin, would say only that the department’s “answer included the information requested.”
A Pentagon spokesman told ProPublica that revealing such a list could cause “serious damage to national security.””
http://www.propublica.org/article/who-are-we-at-war-with-thats-classified
One more thing . . . This is why I admire Alan Grayson and Glenn Greenwald. Let’s have a real discussion unlike the fake discussions that Obama is urging (discussions in which the People of the United States are kept in ignorance.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/glenn-greenwald-congress-nsa-surveillance-programs_n_3660352.html
“Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the story on top-secret NSA surveillance programs earlier this summer, will testify before a congressional committee. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who is leading the Wednesday congressional hearing that has invited critics of the NSA programs to testify . . . “
Obama strikes again,
The White House is “concerned and disappointed” over the news that Yemeni Journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye, who was kept in a Yemeni jail for three years per the request of the Obama administration after he exposed a deadly U.S. drone strike, was released Tuesday.
Following news of Shaye’s release, journalist Jeremy Scahill, who has written extensively about Shaye’s story, contacted the White House for a comment.
The White House’s response was brief and alarming:
We are concerned and disappointed by the early release of Abd-Ilah al-Shai, who was sentenced by a Yemeni court to five years in prison for his involvement with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
According to Scahill and numerous other journalists who have followed the story, Shaye’s only involvement with Al Qaeda was conducting interviews with their members for major news outlets that included the Washington Post, ABC News and the New York Times.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/07/25-8