David Peterson: The Warrantless Surveillance and State Secrets Act of 2007
By Ben Vallack at 17th May 2007
Whether you, I, our friends, neighbors, acquaintances,
or complete strangers are ever subjected to surveil-
ance — wiretapping of telephone lines and the inter-
cept of cellular calls, email, and old-fashioned postal
services — by agencies of the U.S. Government, we
may never know. Nor, they instruct us, do we have
the right to know. The reason? It is a state secret. So, too, is any question about whether the Government — our Government, allegedly — acquired a warrant to engage in its surveillance activities; whether it showed probable cause before an impartial judge prior to eavesdropping on us; and whether its invasion of the spaces that our persons inhabit might be unreasonable, in the Fourth Amendment sense of these terms. Nor need the Government confirm or deny these facts — like just about everything else in contemporary America, if the Government says that it’s a “state secret,” it is a state secret. And it never has been otherwise. Until such time as the Government says something different. Divulging more might be damaging to Homeland Security. To the programs that protect us from the terrorists. The Commander-in-Chief’s “most solemn obligation.” And all of that.
Last Friday and Saturday (August 3 – 4), first in the Senate and then in the House, sizeable numbers of the majority party joined with the Republicans to vote by embarrassingly large margins to adopt something called the Protect America Act of 2007 — a remarkably evil piece of legislation the alleged purpose of which is to bring 1978’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act into line with 21st Century technology, but the reality of which is to cede yet more unconstitutional powers to the Executive Branch, and to the viral, lethal, self-replicating institutions of the never-ending war whose heart pumps the blood that keeps the United States of America alive.
What this Act appears to do is decriminalize the unconstitutional, Fourth Amendment-violating practices in which the regime has engaged since (presumably) September 2001 with respect to its unreasonable and warrantless searches of the private spaces of U.S. citizens (i.e., the realm of communications). Though I hasten to add that one really can’t tell. Since the regime claims to act under the exigencies of “national security,” everything remains a state secret — and is therefore fair game under the new Act.
The margins weren’t close: 60 – 28 in the Senate (with 12 no-shows), and 227 – 183 in the House (23 no-shows).
In the Senate, it came as no surprise that not a single Republican voted against this act: The National Political Party has a large, totalitarian wing. But 17 Democrats did cross-over and vote in favor of the act. While of the 12 senators who didn’t cast votes, 6 were Democrats.
The 2007-2008 Senate has 50 Democrats (i.e., counting Joe Lieberman — though the Senate’s nomenclature lists Lieberman as an “Independent Democrat”[*]), 1 Socialist (Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, who is listed as an “Independent”), and 49 Republicans.
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