USAToday reveals more details about the phone companies giving all of our phone records to spy agencies in today's issue. These were not, it seems, international calls between terrorists. They were all within the borders, and records are being kept of your call to the gun store, the pharmacy, your grandmother, the rehab clinic, your accountant, and more, all stored in a secret database. Just in case you did something.
Back in DC, The Bush administration has thwarted the investigation into illegal spying on Americans by denying security clearance for investigators.
MSNBC reports that "The inquiry headed by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers’ role in the program.“We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey."
(Was it a totalitarian dictatorship or a democracy that we had going here in the U.S.? I forget. )
Also today, Senator Leahy had a few words at the opening of an Executive Business meeting of the Juciciary Committee on this subject:
.......
"Oversight – Domestic Spying – The USA Today Report
We did not accomplish much in the way of oversight this week.
Despite the Attorney General’s continuing refusal to answer my questions and others about the Government’s collective massive databases on ordinary Americans, we now are beginning to learn the truth. USA TODAY’s front page headline reads: “NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls.” This secret collection of phone call records of tens of millions of Americans includes ordinary Americans not suspected of any crime or any contact with al Qaeda. The President concealed the NSA eavesdropping program when he reassured all Americans that when this Administration talks about a wiretap that requires a court-ordered search warrant. We now know that he had been having the NSA engage in warrantless wiretaps Americans since October 2001. So while the Administration has tried to reassure us about the NSA domestic spying activities by characterizing them in the most narrow and self-serving terms, as if they were merely listening to Osama bin Laden calling into the United States, I have had my doubts. We need truthful answers to the questions we asked of the Attorney General back in February. We need him to explain his subsequent letter recasting his testimony. We need to know what our Government is doing in its activities that spy upon Americans. The Republican-controlled Congress has failed in its oversight responsibilities to the American people.
Also today we learn that the Administration has shut down the Department of Justice investigation into the NSA wiretapping program that was to be conducted by the Office of Professional Responsibility. Reports are that the White House will not allow Justice Department investigators the security clearances they need to do their job. This is an internal government investigation that is being stymied by the White House. This further complicates the nomination of Steven G. Bradbury, the acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, and the person currently responsible for legal opinions of the Attorney General and giving advice to the White House Counsel and other Government agencies.
What little we were able to accomplish this week came when Mr. Kavanaugh finally admitted that Karl Rove played a role in the selection of judicial nominees.
We need to do more in the way of oversight and to begin to hold the Bush-Cheney Administration accountable. I hope that with these developments this Committee will finally have had enough stonewalling and be ready to consider more effective action to obtain the information we need. I will support it and I think the Democratic Members of the Committee will support getting answers to our questions. Joining together, Republican and Democratic Members could insist upon responsive answers and needed information to fulfill our constitutional responsibilities to the American people. I hope that we will follow through on these important matters and thoroughly investigate what powers the President has secretly claimed and how he has secretly used them to spy on Americans."
.......
Recall the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution (it was a good one...):
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
There are some important things there. No unreasonable searches and seizures without probable cause and a warrant describing specifically what is being searched.
This administration is, in effect, arguing that there is probable cause that all Americans are terrorists, and no warrant is required.
The Constitution doesn't allow that, and it is worrisome that those sworn to uphold the law are so eager to violate it.