NSA Senate oversight bill may handcuff U.S. companies (from challenging legality of NSL)

[kpete]

Source: CNET

NSA Senate oversight bill may handcuff U.S. companies
Proposal that supposedly increases oversight of the National Security Agency instead could hinder companies trying to challenge warrantless demands for their confidential customer data



A proposal in Congress touted as increasing oversight of the National Security Agency could instead derail legal challenges to the U.S. government's warrantless demands for confidential customer data.

Legislation introduced last month by Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, alters the ground rules that currently permit U.S. companies to object to a secretive intelligence-gathering technique, called a national security letter, used by the federal government to obtain both individual and bulk customer records.

Part of Leahy's proposal prevents companies from directly challenging the legality of NSL (National Security Letter) requests in their local courts, meaning they need to rely on the Justice Department to initiate litigation in a jurisdiction of its own choosing -- a dramatic change that raises the cost of a legal challenge and reduces the odds of it succeeding.

"Leahy's bill seems to remove the ability of recipients to initiate their own challenges to an NSL gag order," said Matt Zimmerman, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is litigating an NSL case in San Francisco. If the measure becomes law, Zimmerman said, EFF might not have been able to file its lawsuit in the northern district of California, and the Justice Department "most certainly would not have either."

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57592778-38/nsa-senate-oversight-bill-may-handcuff-u.s-companies/

[AnotherMcIntosh]

1. Oh good.

/sarcasm off

[questionseverything]

2. yes beware of "good intentions"

small win yesterday

A federal judge today rejected the assertion from President Barack Obama’s administration that the state secrets defense barred a lawsuit alleging the government is illegally siphoning Americans’ communications to the National Security Agency.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/state-secrets-defense/

[AnotherMcIntosh]

5. Interesting.

I agree that it is a small win.

[questionseverything]

3. here is a different bill

http://firedoglake.com/2013/07/06/come-saturday-morning-reclaiming-our-libert-e/

sponsored by conyers

[JDPriestly]

4. The First Amendment gives citizens the right to petition the government.

This bill would prohibit that right. How can it be constitutional?

The right to petition the government harks back to the Magna Carta.

This is so fundamental that our country cannot exist if it is limited -- and it is already too limited.

Wikipedia explains in language we can all understand:

n the United States the right to petition is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the federal constitution, which specifically prohibits Congress from abridging "the right of the people...to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Although often overlooked in favor of other more famous freedoms, and sometimes taken for granted,[1] many other civil liberties are enforceable against the government only by exercising this basic right.[2] The right to petition is fundamental in a Constitutional Republic, such as the United States, as a means of protecting public participation in government.[1]

. . . .

Historically, the right can be traced back[2] to English documents such as Magna Carta, which, by its acceptance by the monarchy, implicitly affirmed the right, and the later Bill of Rights 1689, which explicitly declared the "right of the subjects to petition the king."[5]

. . . .

The first[6] significant exercise and defense of the right to petition within the U.S. was to advocate the end of slavery by petitioning Congress in the mid-1830s, including 130,000 such requests in 1837 and 1838.[7] In 1836, the House of Representatives adopted a gag rule that would table all such anti-slavery petitions.[7] John Quincy Adams and other Representatives eventually achieved the repeal of this rule in 1844 on the basis that it was contrary to the right to petition the government.[7]

. . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_petition_in_the_United_States

Imagine what our country would be like had our Congress prohibited African-Americans from petitioning the government about school segregation, separate restaurants and hotels, separation of the races in public transportation and in housing.

They could have, but we would still be fighting for the rights of African-Americans.

We have the right to petition the government about our grievances. The courts have limited this right perhaps to insure their efficiency. But now Congress wants to limit that right in order to protect itself and all administrations from having to answer to us about excessive surveillance.

If you read the Wikipedia article, you learn that the failure of the British government to respond favorably to the petitions of early Americans was one of the reasons given for our American Revolution in 1776.

And now -- we are forsaking our Revolution, rendering the guarantees to us in our own Constitution meaningless.

This is a very, very bad development, and from Patrick Leahy no less. He should know better.

[RiverNoord]

7. Posted my reply seconds after you posted yours -

Exactly the same concern. First Amendment right to petition violation in extremis.

[TheMadMonk]

15. Doesn't prohibit, just limits to effectively inaccessible venues.

May come down to a judge's interpretation of the word "abridged".

[JDPriestly]

16. As a rule, limitations on our fundamental rights guaranteed in the Constitution must be reasonable.

The PRISM system and the laws protecting it from judicial review do not permit us to know information about how the system works or what it is doing, thus, I do not see how in the world anyone can claim that those laws are reasonable.

They are not limitations. They are bars to judicial review and to our communicating our discontent, our grievances about the law, to the government.

The question will be whether these extreme bars are justified.

I don't see how they can be, but I figure it will take a number of decisions and many, perhaps many, many, many years to change the acquiescence of our judiciary to this clear violation of our rights.

The easiest thing to do to change the law is to complain loudly, often and very clearly to members of Congress.

[RiverNoord]

6. OK... This would seriously abridge the First Amendment

right to petition for grievances. If you must rely on one branch of government, the very same branch that purportedly conducted the offending act, to initiate the actual petition for grievances in a forum of another branch of government, then there is no genuine means to petition for grievances resulting from the receipt of a National Security Letter.

That a bill such as this is even under consideration is a deeply disturbing sign of the immense power of the U.S. Surveillance State.

[Maedhros]

8. If the bill reaches Obama's desk

a veto would earn my respect. Past performance suggests this will not happen, however.

[RiverNoord]

9. If it actually passed both houses and reached his desk

then it would probably not be vetoed - I can't imagine it getting that far, unless the NSA is genuinely blackmailing legislators...

[Maedhros]

10. How many bills has Obama vetoed?

Two:

December 30, 2009: Vetoed H.J.Res. 64, Making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2010, and for other purposes. Override attempt failed in House.

October 7, 2010: Vetoed H.R. 3808, the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010. Override attempt in the House failed.

[RiverNoord]

12. So much for checks and balances...

[christx30]

14. He didn't even veto

NDAA, which put habeas corpus on life support. So another unconstitutional law that violates the bill of rights wouldn't surprise me at all.

[bemildred]

11. Next up, mandatory arbitration with secret anonymous arbitrators. nt

[msongs]

13. of course our freedom loving president will veto this bill. nt