Is the lame duck daffy?

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2917.shtml

Is the lame duck daffy?
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor
Feb 5, 2008

Of all the Looney Tunes we’ve lived through in two terms of Bush, the lame duck’s daffiness has reached a new level of strange. Now we have Bush Order Expands Network Monitoring. According to the lame duck directive, in addition to spying on other countries, the NSA (National Security, read Spy, Agency) will now focus on US government agencies. As cartoonist Signe Wilkinson wrote and drew, now we are One Nation, Under Surveillance.

The run-amok duck carried off this spy hunt, quacking at an increase in cyber attacks directed against the US, possibly from foreign countries. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI, if not Odious) will lead the hunt to get at the source of these attacks. Our trusty Department of Homeland Insecurity and Pentagon will be looking at retaliation. Would that sort of be like Cheney mistakenly shotgunning his friend at a duck hunt?

The above Washington Post story broke the news of the Bush-led joint directive, which is, of course, classified. And, of course, it will cost billions of dollars. As if our cup isn’t empty enough, Daffy is now slurping at the 2009 budget when he will be gone but certainly not forgotten.

As it is, US citizens are presently under a historically potent spying machine. It raised its sights not just on suspected criminals, but allowed for wiretapping the phone calls of Mr., Mrs., Miss, and Junior’s America, and warrant-free. The government is also pouring more money into specialized computers from the likes of Cray, The Supercomputer Company. They can search through enormous databases at lightening speed. Welcome to the future!

Of course, our not-so-lame, daffy duck-in-chief cites cyber attacks against the various departments of State, Commerce, Defense and Homeland Security as the rationale to expand NSA’S spyware even more. The Post reports that “US officials and cyber-security experts have said Chinese Web sites were involved in several of the biggest attacks back in 2005, including some of the country’s nuclear-energy labs and large defense contractors.” Naturally, our protectors at the Pentagon and Home Security will be operating with the power to counter-strike attackers.

But whether the actual culprits are rogue attackers or real nations would be very difficult to prove. And the possibility for a disastrous mistake is reasonably high. Also, the rest of the world hasn’t formed any agreed upon rules of cyber war, though that hasn’t stopped Ducks Are Us from throwing away the Geneva Conventions at Guantanamo or the Constitution for the USAPATRIOT Act. But that’s not all, folks!

Daffy asked Congress to help Verizon and AT&T better spy on us

In his last (thank god) State of the Union Address (a sure cure for insomnia), Daffy asked for broader protection for telecom carriers to dig into our phone calls and emails, expanding warrantless surveillance programs to communications beyond our borders with the help of AT&T and Verizon. This is part of the Protect America Act and bears the same relation to protecting us as the Clean Air Act did to keeping our air clean or the No Child Left Behind Act did in leaving most kids behind for lack of adequate funding.

The name of a Bush act always has an opposite purpose. In this case, the Protect America Act gives the NSA more clout to violate our privacy for the purported cause of nailing suspected “terrorists” without getting a court warrant first. And who knows who could be suspected and/or for what reason. Hey, it’s secret stuff and secret is secret.

But rest assured. Our lame duck said, “To protect America, we need to know who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning.” And “last year, Congress passed legislation [Protect America Act] to help us do that. Unfortunately, Congress set the legislation to expire on Feb 1. This means that if you do not act by Friday, our ability to track terrorists’ threats would be weakened and our citizens will be in greater danger. Congress must ensure the flow of vital intelligence is not disrupted.” Well, those “terrists” sure seem to have us by the short hairs.

In fact, Congress had three ways to go after its first try that failed to reach a 60-vote majority to stop debate and force a vote on two wiretapping-related proposals, one Republican-favored the other Democrat-desired, the last the right way to go.

Congress’ three ways to go

One: Renew last August’s law, the Protect America Act, for 30 days. This would seemingly have given both sides more wiggle room, though sooner or later they’d have to live with some version of it. Dems favored this, but Daffy threatened a veto on a temporary extension. Yet, on Jan. 31, he signed a 15-day extension passed by Congress.

Two: Renew a reworked version of the PAA for good and protect telecom companies from legal consequences of any illegal acts they committed. Daffy loved this, and he had a minority of Dems ready to bow to him. If Decider Duck had his wish, the retroactive protection would have a bunch of pending lawsuits against telecom companies, i.e. Verizon and AT&T, especially the latter’s case before the 9th circuit court of appeals, thrown out.

Three: Let the PAA, known too as the pro-privacy option (backed by the ACLU and others), expire. This group reasons: “The Patriot Act dramatically expanded police eavesdropping powers in 2001, and there’s no pressing need to go further. The Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) has worked for decades, and has long included emergency no-court-order-required wiretaps as long as proper procedures are followed.” Three cheers for that!

Senate Majority Leader Henry Reid and most Dems favored option one, figures. The Repugs wanted two, and put the heat on to get it through, especially Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. He wanted the Intelligence Committee version that went beyond immunizing telecom companies. It would have also retroactively protected (if you can believe it) email providers, search engines, Internet service providers and instant-messaging service.

Meanwhile, the house changed the bill to make it a 15-day extension instead of 30-day one, and the bill passed by voice vote. It moved quickly and was flipped to the Senate.

Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) took to the floor last Tuesday and urged others to vote against any extension to the Protect America Act. His reasoning: 1) the administration’s bill was bad law in the first place and brought home the lesson to never pass legislation under ‘duress brought on by propaganda, misinformation, and fear mongering,’ 2) surveillance authorized under the PAA would continue even if the law lapsed, and 3) it wouldn’t improve the Dems’ negotiating position.” Now there’s a smart guy for you!

Nevertheless, the Protect America act may not be a dead duck yet. Of course, Bush insists that he won’t sign new FISA legislation unless it grants the telecom companies immunity for aiding and abetting his illegal spying ops and turning over millions of people’s individual records to the government.

Yet the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has relentlessly battled Bush and his various duck spying blinds, advises “fix the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) not make it worse. We must preserve the protections and the checks and balances in the Constitution against government abuses of power that violate our rights and values.”

The ACLU 2008 Yearly Plan also includes stopping USAPATRIOT Act abuses, protecting the freedom of expression and the right to protest, resisting the use of torture and rendition, restoring the right of habeas corpus, preserving religious liberty, reproductive freedom and LGBT rights, maintaining free elections, and fighting for racial justice and opposing discrimination. If you can, after you write a check to Online Journal, send one to the ACLU via http://www.aclu.org/. Both groups are in your corner every day. “That’s All Folks” for now.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.