Jonathan Turley — The Steele Dossier and the perils of political insurance policies

This is legal in the US? If not, where was the line crossed? Even if legal, it appears that a line was crossed when participants lied to investigators and the press about it. There are also questions raised about politicization of the US intelligence services, perhaps assisted by British intelligence.

Even if is legal, it proves that HRC was preparing to do exactly what she was accusing DJT of planning to do–contest the result if he lost.

There is a very bad smell about this. In fact, it is beginning to stink.

The Democrats had better get out in front on this or the party apparatus will be even further discredited.

The Hill
The Steele Dossier and the perils of political insurance policies

Jonathan Turley | Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University

Caitlin Johnstone — Biggest Nunes Memo Revelations Have Little To Do With Its Content

In addition to Assange’s assertion that government secrecy has far less to do with national security than political security (a claim he has made before which seems to be proving correct time and time again), there’s the jarring question posed by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie: “who made the decision to withhold evidence of FISA abuse until after Congress voted to renew FISA program?”

Whoa, Nelly. Hang on. What is he talking about?

It would be understandable if you were unaware of the debate over the reauthorization of FISA surveillance which resulted in unconditional bipartisan approval last month – the mainstream media barely touched it. In point of fact, though, the very surveillance practices alleged to have been abused in this hotly controversial memo are the same which was waved through by both the House and the Senate, and by the very same people promoting the memo in many cases.

The McCabe testimony was in December. FISA was renewed in January. Why is all this just coming out now? If the Republicans truly believed that McCabe said what the memo claims he said, why wasn’t the public informed before their elected representatives renewed the intelligence community’s dangerously intrusive surveillance approval? Was this information simply forgotten about until after those Orwellian powers had been secured?

Of course not. Don’t be an idiot....

Consortium News
Biggest Nunes Memo Revelations Have Little To Do With Its Content

Caitlin Johnstone

AFP — New documents show NSA routinely spied on phone records unrelated to terrorism cases

US intelligence officials declassified documents Tuesday revealing the National Security Agency violated privacy rules for three years when it sifted phone records of Americans with no suspected links to terrorists.

The revelations raised fresh questions about the NSA’s ability to manage the massive amount of data it collects and whether the US government is able to safeguard the privacy of its citizens.

The government was forced to disclose the documents by a judge’s order after a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group promoting digital privacy rights and free speech.

The Raw Story
New documents show NSA routinely spied on phone records unrelated to terrorism cases
Agence Presse-France

Tech Dirt — Feds Abused Anti-Terrorism Database To Track Chelsea Manning Supporter, Seize His Computer

Feds Abused Anti-Terrorism Database To Track Chelsea Manning Supporter, Seize His Computer (via Techdirt)

We've written a number of times about the so-called Constitution-free zone that extends 100 miles inward from the borders of the United States, a place where the Border Patrol, along with the DHS and ICE, exercise the "right" to search electronic devices…

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Ali Watkins — Sen. Wyden says he tried to warn of massive surveillance program

“If we do not seize this unique moment in our constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we will live to regret it,” [Sen Wyden] said.

“Sen. Mark Udall and I tried again and again to get the executive branch to be straight with the American public, but under the classification rules observed by the Senate, we are not even allowed to tap out the truth in Morse code,” he said. “And we tried just about everything else we could think of to warn the American people.”

Wyden blasted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the body that must approve surveillance requests, saying that the veil of secrecy behind which it functions negates the concept of balanced oversight. The court’s secret interpretations of the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act are too broad, he said, and render the legislation unrecognizable.

“I tell Oregonians that there are effectively two Patriot Acts,” he said. “The first is the one they can read on their laptop in Medford or Portland, analyze and understand,” Wyden said. “Then there’s the real Patriot Act – the secret interpretation of the law that the government is actually relying on.”

McClatchy News
Sen. Wyden says he tried to warn of massive surveillance program
Ali Watkins | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Glenn Greenwald — Growing Backlash Against NSA Spying Shows Why U.S. Wants to Silence Edward Snowden

GG: I’ve been writing for years about the fact that civil liberties abuses and excessive government invasions are really the issue that can bridge the ideological gap and create these transpartisan, transideological coalitions more than probably any other. And then you’ve seen this over the past 10 years. The ACLU has long partnered with right-wing groups like the Christian Coalition to challenge the PATRIOT Act. And I think what you’re seeing is lots of support for Mr. Snowden and for our NSA reporting on the left, groups like Amnesty International and the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, lots of liberals and progressives who have been outspoken in their support of these disclosures, but you also see a lot of support for it on the right, as well, from people who take seriously their rhetoric about limited government and the rights of individuals and the need for safeguarding individual privacy.

Democracy Now
Glenn Greenwald: Growing Backlash Against NSA Spying Shows Why U.S. Wants to Silence Edward Snowden
Interview with Juan González

Gaius Publius — Rep. Holt to introduce bill to repeal Patriot Act & 2008 FISA Act

While the rest of the country was celebrating our independence, House Dem. Rush Holt (NJ-12) was doing something about it — drafting legislation to repeal both thePatriot Act of 2001 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

America Blog
Rep. Holt to introduce bill to repeal Patriot Act & 2008 FISA Act
Gaius Publius

(h/t Kevin Fathi)

William Pfaff — Secret Intelligence Court a Precursor to Tyranny

The justification for this secret court—as is usual in the development of 20th century secret police states—is national security. The American case differs from the prominent earlier examples of such states in Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany, in that this American secret court operates behind a screen of what seem to be guilty obfuscations, which their authors know will not stand up to serious examination. Such obfuscations simply provide the rationales for concealment of this legal mechanism from public, press, and all but a certain number of congressmen and senators, all willing to provide the simulacrum of oversight because of their personal commitment to the belief that the United States makes itself secure by walking on what former Vice President Richard Cheney melodramatically described as “the dark side.”

It is the public who gets left in the dark about this, so as to protect the system.

The “dark side” of international combat or security operations, such as political assassinations, kidnappings, use of torture, or secret and illegal sequestrations or imprisonments, has on the whole seemed to have produced more American national humiliation, disrepute,and political blowback than advantage. It also is not entirely new; it is a characteristic of bureaucracies.

Truthdig
Secret Intelligence Court a Precursor to Tyranny
William Pfaff

E.J. Dionne, Jr. — A New Balance Toward Liberty

The hardest thing in an argument is to acknowledge competing truths. We know that our government will continue with large-scale surveillance programs to prevent future terrorist attacks. We also know that such programs have operated up to now with too little public scrutiny and insufficient concern over their long-term implications for our rights and our privacy.

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.

truthdig

A New Balance Toward Liberty

E.J. Dionne, Jr.