Bloomberg's editors look at a new bill that was just introduced that seeks to enhance FISA oversight:
[T]he most compelling of the downed FISA amendments [that were rejected in December] was introduced as a new bill yesterday by its original sponsor, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and a handful of co-sponsors, including Republican Mike Lee of Utah. The bill would require the U.S. attorney general to declassify some opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which considers government requests for surveillance authorization in the U.S. and abroad. All such opinions are now secret, as are the court’s interpretations of the law that guides its decisions.
Those interpretations offer a starting point for a national debate on secrecy, a way for the public to see for itself the legal framework governing surveillance in the U.S.
The bill takes care not to sacrifice national security. In cases in which the attorney general concluded that declassifying an opinion would undermine security, the court would instead issue a summary of its decision. If even that proved too sensitive, the bill would give the attorney general a mechanism to explain as much to Congress.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at
The Washington Post also sees promise in Merkley's bill:
The response to Edward Snowden’s leaks about what our government has been up to should thus be a quest for a new and more sustainable balance among security, privacy and liberty. And the fact that some people in each of our political parties have switched sides on these questions is actually an opportunity. We can have a debate on the merits, liberated from the worst aspects of partisanship. [...] To have a thoughtful discussion, we need to know what authority our government has, and claims to have, under the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Merkley notes that his bill was carefully drawn to protect intelligence “sources and methods.” It focuses on the release of the court’s substantive legal interpretations. Among the bill’s seven other sponsors are two Republicans. One of the pair, Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, said in a statement that “ensuring Americans’ safety is one of our government’s most important responsibilities.” The bill is “a measured approach” toward more transparency. [...]
We cannot give up on vigilance, but now is the time to lean more toward liberty. We also need to recognize that while trade-offs rarely inspire soaring rhetoric, they just happen to be necessary.
The Des Moines Register points out flaws in the NSA's arguments against Edward Snowden:
If the stories that have emerged about the self-confessed leaker, Edward Snowden, are to be believed, the true scandal is inside the NSA and the CIA: Based on Snowden’s telling, the United States government entrusted a high school dropout who began his career at the National Security Agency as a security guard with some of the most sensitive national security secrets with potentially explosive international repercussions.
In an interview with NBC News on Saturday night, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, condemned the actions of the then-unidentified leaker as well as the journalists who exposed the spying programs. “For me, it is literally — not figuratively — literally gut-wrenching to see this happen because of the huge, grave damage it does to our intelligence capabilities,” Clapper said.
It’s hard to see how U.S. intelligence capacities are damaged by information that everyone from President Barack Obama to Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, now say is no big deal. After all, they say, the government is simply aggregating raw data to piece together communications patterns, not listening in on actual phone conversations.
More analysis on the day's top stories below the fold.
Elspeth Reeve at The Atlantic also deconstructs the NSA's PR offensive:
One reason the NSA's PR offensive must be so vigorous is that its old PR strategy sounds a lot like lies. In a March 12 Senate hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper responded, "No, sir... Not wittingly." Since last week, it's become clear that Clapper's statement was not exactly true. Clapper's given a series of interviews to explain the comment, each time getting closer to admitting that what he said was not true. [...]
Clapper wasn't the only official who was cute with facts. In February, NSA general counsel Rajesh De gave a speech to debunk "false myths" about the agency. Those were that the NSA "is a vacuum that indiscriminately sweeps up and stores global communications"; that it "is spying on Americans at home and abroad with questionable or no legal basis"; and that it "operates in the shadows free from external scrutiny or any true accountability." De's debunking has been debunked.
At
The Miami Herald,
Leonard Pitts Jr. laments the fact that so many Americans seem resigned to accepting a new reality of massive government data mining:
If ever tyranny overtakes this land of the sometimes free and home of the intermittently brave, it probably won’t, contrary to the fever dreams of gun rights extremists, involve jack-booted government thugs rappelling down from black helicopters. Rather, it will involve changes to words on paper many have forgotten or never knew, changes that chip away until they strip away, precious American freedoms.
It will involve a trade of sorts, an inducement to give up the reality of freedom for the illusion of security. Indeed, the bargain has already been struck. [...] People think tyranny will be imposed at the point of a gun. Paranoids look up in search of black helicopters. Meanwhile, the architecture of totalitarianism is put into place all around them, surveillance apparatus so intrusive as to stagger the imagination of Orwell himself.
The point is not that one has nothing to hide. The point is that whatever you have is none of the government’s business absent probable cause and a warrant. The point is that one should never repose unfettered power with the state.
We should know this, yet we fall for the same seductive con every time: We are afraid, but the state says it can make us safe. And all it will take is the surrender of a few small freedoms.
Switching topics, over at
Newsday, the editors pen a piece in support of Senator Gillibrand's proposal to curb military sexual assaults:
The U.S. military's effort to prosecute, punish and curtail sexual assaults has failed miserably, despite a chest-thumping zero-tolerance policy and repeated assurances it would get the job done. A dramatically different approach is clearly necessary. [...]
Gillibrand's fix would give military prosecutors the authority to decide which sexual misconduct cases go to trial. And it would end commanders' power to reverse convictions and sentences. That would ensure victims could trust they would no longer face retaliation or career-crippling marginalization for reporting assaults, and that their attackers would be prosecuted and punished. In announcing her intent to take the fight for these reforms to the Senate floor, Gillibrand is showing that the voices of the growing number of women in the chamber cannot be dismissed.
The New York Times agrees:
Cracking down on retaliation, though necessary, does not address the low prosecution rate or the sense among many victims that their claims, especially against someone higher in rank, will not be believed.
It is distressing that two decades of scandals could not persuade Mr. Levin to budge from his decision to support the military brass. Ms. Gillibrand says she will try again to get her measure included when the full Senate takes up the defense spending bill. She has done a diligent job of building a bipartisan coalition pressing for more sweeping change, and further debate about the sexual assault problem and its solutions can help strengthen the result when the Senate negotiates a final bill with the House.
Dana Milbank looks at Republican Trent Franks's idiocy and his comments that few rapes result in pregnancy:
With the grace of Charlie Sheen and the subtlety of a sitcom, the manly men [of the House Judiciary Committee] voted down a Democratic effort to add enhanced protections for the life and health of the mother. They voted down a Democratic amendment that would allow exceptions for women with heart or lung disease or diabetes. They even voted down an amendment that would have made exceptions for victims of rape or incest.
If that weren’t enough, the chief sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), had a Todd Akin moment as he attempted to argue that women aren’t likely to become pregnant from rape. Franks provided his variation of “legitimate rape” theory when he argued against the rape-and-incest exception because the amendment didn’t require women to report the crime.