Tag Archives: PATRIOT Act
NSA Reform: When 293 Votes Is Not A Majority
Late this afternoon, I was informed that the only NSA reform measure to pass either chamber of Congress this year–the Lofgren/Massie amendment to the FY15 DoD approps bill–is being stripped out of that bill as part of the House-Senate deal … Continue reading
Udall, The Torture Report and The Pentagon Papers Option
Shortly after Colorado Senator Mark Udall lost his reelection bid to Rep. Cory Gardner, it began–first as conversations among civil liberties activists, then in media outlets, and finally Udall himself raised the possibility: on his way out of the Senate, … Continue reading
Surveillance Reform: House Mid-term Election Impact Update
While seven House races remain undecided, what we do know is that seven House members who voted for the Massie/Lofgren/Holt NSA surveillance reform amendment to the FY15 DoD appropriations bill were defeated on election night. They are Shea-Porter (NH-1), Garcia … Continue reading
A Change of Seasons and Careers
October 24th marks my final day as senior policy advisor to Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District. When I joined his staff during the first week of August 2004, my first crisis as his communications director was … Continue reading
NSA Reform Legislation Update
I’ll withhold final judgement on the pending Conyers-Sensenbrenner bill until I see the bill text, but here’s a reality check based on the summary provided thus far by the bill’s authors and some accounts online: Conyers-Sensenbrenner would leave the Surveillance … Continue reading
Richard Cohen’s Edward Snowden Assessment, Revised
You can read his column here. Being both a former CIA analyst-turned-whistleblower-turned-Hill staffer, my background–and my sense of the history of these things–lead me to offer the following: The only traitors in this episode are executive branch officials who knowingly … Continue reading
HPSCI’s “Statue of Liberty” Play On PATRIOT Act Reauthorization
Did the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) engage in the document-based form of the old football deception play? That’s the allegation coming from Michigan Rep. Justin Amash: Justin Amash, the Michigan Republican whose effort to defund theNSA‘s mass phone-records collection … Continue reading
“The Transcript Is Classified”
Glenn Greenwald reports today on how Rep.’s Morgan Griffith (R) and Alan Grayson (D) have been shafted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) regarding their NSA scandal-related inquiries. Here’s the key passage: On June 19, Grayson wrote … Continue reading
David Bromwich On “Liberty, Security, and Fear”
Yale literature professor David Bromwich has a superb piece on HuffPo today that articulates so well the fraud that is the American Surveillance State: And what of liberty? A view taken by many apologists for massive surveillance holds that liberty is … Continue reading
X-Keyscore, Or “How NSA Knows All About Your Blog Visitors, Your Emails, And Your Life”
From today’s edition of The Guardian: A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided … Continue reading
Long Strange Journey 