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Keeping an eye on my Representative to Congress.

By The Armorer on August 5, 2007 | | Comments (5)

Representative Boyda (D-KS 2) voted *against* the FISA bill.

BOYDA STATEMENT ON PASSAGE OF FISA AMENDMENT

The House of Representatives today passed S. 1927, the Protect America Act, which authorizes the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to acquire foreign intelligence of individuals "reasonably believed" to be outside the United States without a court order. Representative Nancy Boyda voted against the amendment to FISA and released the following statement:

"Tonight I voted to uphold something near and dear to America - the U.S Constitution. When the President signs this bill, anyone out of the country, including Americans, can have their communications monitored with virtually no oversight. Sadly, the slippery slope of our civil liberties has given way to a mudslide.

"It's never been easy to balance our security and our liberties. Our nation has struggled with this for over 230 years. As Benjamin Franklin said, 'They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.' Tonight our freedoms took a serious blow.

"For the past several weeks, Congress and the Administration worked closely to achieve a bipartisan agreement on foreign surveillance. An agreement was reached that would have provided our nation's intelligence community with the powers it needed while safeguarding the Constitution. But Friday night, at the 11th hour, the Administration effectively eliminated oversight.

"Over the next six months, we may hear reports of information gathered under this bill. Let me be clear - that same information could have been collected without giving up Constitutional oversight.

There was way too much "We don't like Gonzales" in the debate, methinks - just as Republicans would had a "We don't like Reno" tizzy back during the Clinton administration. No one got everything that wanted - and perhaps more importantly, the bill has a sunset provision in it.

I happen to like sunset provisions, even when they put something I like at risk (such as the Bush tax cuts) - why? Two reasons - it forces/allows a relook at legislation, rather than just stuffing the Title books with more and more pages, leaving criminalized ever-greater swaths of behavior/activity (until such time as enough people have been ground up by it that there is a forcing function on removing the law) *and* it has the side benny of keeping Congress busy relooking old law - which means they can engage in less mischief in the enactment of new law.

Just sayin'. Now if we could only force the Federal bureaucracy to periodically have to relook their regulatory fiats...

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5 Comments

By BillT on August 5, 2007 9:57 AM
Dollars to doughnut holes Ms. Boyda hasn't read either the the original FISA (1978) or the 2007 Bill, or she wouldn't have been so self-righteous about protecting us ornery cit'zens. . The standard for determining whether the surveillance will be authorized is probable cause to believe that the target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. 50 U.S.C. ยง 1804(a) The Federation of American Scientists (the guys with the neat Nuke Tracker) have a pretty balanced rundown on FISA's history -- warning: heavy emphasis on legal briefs both pro and con.
 
By wolfwalker on August 5, 2007 1:14 PM
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it sounds as if this bill substantially expanded the government's wiretapping powers, and I'm certainly not in any way happy about the potential for abuse in that. On the other hand, as I understand it an exceptionally stupid judge recently crippled the NSA by demanding a warrant for tapping a phone conversation between two individuals overseas just because the conversation happened to go through an American node. On the gripping hand, I've heard rumors to the effect that the cellphone network was built so that every conversation has to go through at least one node within the US, specifically to make avoiding NSA taps more difficult. So, I dunno. Did Boyda go moonbat and vote against this new FISA bill because it was something Bush wanted, regardless of its actual merits? Or did she look at the actual merits and decide that on the whole it was a Bad Thing?
 
By Heartless Libertarian on August 5, 2007 7:13 PM
You know, I'm a pretty libertarian guy, but I have no issues whatsoever with Uncle Sam listening in on whatever they want outside our borders. And to me, that means any communications with at least one terminus outside the US. If Uncle Sam wants to put a tap on every single phone line, cell node, microwave relay, or whatever, in any country but ours, go right ahead. I wasn't aware that citizens of other countries, outside our borders, had any rights guaranteed by our Constitution.
 
By wolfwalker on August 5, 2007 10:24 PM
I wasn't aware that citizens of other countries, outside our borders, had any rights guaranteed by our Constitution. They don't. Or at least, they shouldn't. My problem is that the Fed has a disturbing habit of taking powers meant for certain, specific, limited uses, and then using those powers in entirely different ways -- for example, using anti-terrorist provisions of the Patriot Act against drug runners.
 
By John of Argghhh! on August 6, 2007 5:47 AM
In support of Wolfwalker - can anyone spell RICO?