How much personal freedom are we willing to give up in the
name of homeland security? That’s the political question that erupted last
week. The underlying legal question is whether interpretation and application of the 2002 Patriot Act passed to protect us from terrorist
attacks is constitutional. In the
long run, the Supreme Court may make the decision for us.
At issue is the
potential violation of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution which requires warrants for search and seizure that are based on probable cause and have specifics that some violation of law
is suspected. The 2002 Patriot Act
authorizes some types of warrantless searches.
Details of the workings of the Patriot Act had been kept hush hush until a British publication, the Guardian, opened the
worm can. It published leaks from a
former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor that warrantless gathering of
information was conducted on all of
Verizon’s telephone calls (Sprint and AT&T, too, revealed later) and that
there was surveillance contents of internet communications of suspected terrorists
and their connections abroad.
Colorado has become a high profile focus of the debate. Colorado Democratic Senator Mark Udall, member
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has consistently voted and spoken out against the
Patriot Act, because he objected that warrantless telephone call metadata mining was
kept secret from the public and was conducted on telephone customers whether
they had terrorist connections or not . On CNN Sunday Udall told Candy Crowley “that it was not
clear the program gave information that could not be found elsewhere” in
thwarting attacks .
Others including the
President believe the telephone metadata program is
helpful . CBS News Saturday reported that the telephone metadata collection
enabled the apprehension of Denver resident Najibullah Zazi before he could carry out a plot to bomb the New York City subways in
2009.
It seems creepy to know even
limited phone data is being collected and it leaves many, including me,
with a gnawing fear that someone in the future could get their hands on the
data base to use it for witch hunting.
Another surveillance
program exposed by the Guardian is called
PRISM. It allows the NSA to tap into the
content of internet communications of suspected terrorists abroad, including
the content of those communications of non US citizens in the US communicating with
them. Warrants are issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court
good for a year. While acknowledging PRISM’S effectiveness in
thwarting terrorist attacks, Sen. Udall
objected anyway since “some Americans have been swept up in it”. The administration expressed outrage that
exposing PRISM damaged American’s security interests.
Trusting the user is not enough; are the controls enough to
protect us from abuse?.
What is this FISA court, anyway? Eleven judges are appointed by the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court for seven
year terms. It works in secret and deals
with classified information related to terrorism, in order not to blow the cover off covert operations and tip
off suspects. The Court informs the Senate and House intelligence committees of
their rulings. The telephone metadata mining is reauthorized every three
months.
Wide spread collection of telephone metadata is limited
to numbers, length, date, and location, though customers’ names are not
collected. To access content or conduct
wiretaps, warrants still must be sought from the FISA court.
This is still a dangerous time . The Boston Marathon Bombing, the Ft Hood
shooting, and the nearly successful Times Square and New York subway bombers involved
difficult to detect lone wolves living
in the US. We would not like to handicap
our government agents executing their mission.
Civil libertarians, left and right, are not waiting for
Congressional action. They are threatening to take the issue to court which
will ultimately decide the constitutionality issues.
For more, visit www.mufticforumespanol.blogspot.com
This is a version of my column which will appear in the www.skyhidailynews.com this week
No comments:
Post a Comment