Disclaimer: this diary represents my own views and not those of the Ron Shepston for Congress campaign.
The wonderful reporting team of James Risen and Eric Lichtblau has a new article in in the NY Times called "Concern Over Wider Spying Under New Law," which I hope people will take the time to read. A three paragraph helping worth of quotation from the article -- following general fair use guidelines -- is below the jump.
Note: Some people argue that the blame for this rests with Pelosi and Reid; I have disagreed (I think what it shows is the relative weakness of their positions vis a vis the right wings of their respective caucuses, and that anyone in their positions couldn't really have stopped this.) Rehashing that discussion here may be inevitable, but I hope we don't dwell on it today. What we can agree on is how bad this law is, and how Democrats -- whether the leadership or the caucus members who pressure them -- cannot allow themselves to be stampeded into passing laws they don't understand.
Some civil rights advocates said they suspected that the administration made the language of the bill intentionally vague to allow it even broader discretion over wiretapping decisions. Whether intentional or not, the end result — according to top Democratic aides and other experts on national security law — is that the legislation may grant the government the right to collect a vast array of information on American citizens inside the United States without warrants, as long as the administration asserts that the spying concerns the monitoring of a person believed to be overseas.
...
"This may give the administration even more authority than people thought," said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush administration and a co-author of "National Security Investigation and Prosecutions," a new book on surveillance law.
Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of "electronic surveillance," the new law undercuts the legal underpinnings several provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States. These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches, and so-called "trap and trace" operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.
The Times article talks about ambiguities in the law. It may not be apparent to people how deadly the presence of ambiguities is. You might think that, if it's ambiguous, the Court resolves the ambiguities. It doesn't. The legislative agency responsible for administering the law -- in this case, Gonzales's Department of Justice -- resolves the ambiguities, and the courts defer to those determinations (while reserving the ability to hear constitutional challenges, if there is standing and the ability to get past the "state secrets" privilege and its cousins.) The court will only reject the administration's interpretation of a provision if it is unambiguous that Congress meant to foreclose that interpretation. That doesn't look likely here.
The first step to solving a problem is recognizing its actual size. This article will help us do that.