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Obama's NSA Defense: Congress Can Raise Objections It Can't Actually Raise

173 points by known_unknowns 13y ago

jmadsen 13y ago
This. Was a point I raised here just yesterday - glad to see I was on the mark. This is why we are now in an Orwellian state, rather that one with necessary secrecy but checks and balances. When Congress can say, "We are reviewing National Security measures to be sure they comply with the law & Constitution, but we can't go into details" - that's the latter. When Congress is under threat of penalty for even saying that we HAVE National Security measures, that is Orwellian.
- known_unknowns 13y ago
  What I don't understand is how this squares with the Speech or Debate clause. Aren't members of Congress protected by the same sort of legislative immunity as they have in the UK, Canada, and Australia (where they call it "parliamentary privilege")?
  - spc476 13y ago
    Somewhat. Article I, section 6 of the United States Constitution: "They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and return from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place." How that plays out in this situation, I'm not sure, since I'm not a Constitutional Scholar, nor a lawyer.
    - Natsu 13y ago
      They would simply charge them with a felony--revealing classified information.
    - coolj 13y ago
      INAL but I believe they could be charged under the Espionage Act (18 USC sec. 793) for leaking national security secrets, which is a felony, and they would lose privilege.
    - Andrew_Quentin 13y ago
      That seems to be no different than the law applied to any citizen.
  - jmadsen 13y ago
    I think it's more a case of, "oh, I see you don't want to be re-elected. We can arrange that" rather than direct prosecution. That's why you don't see guys like Bernie Sanders on those committees :-)
ccarter84 13y ago
POTUS v leakers & press. Infants in Congress. Finally have legit gripes
bo1024 13y ago
"They don't have to show us Catch-22," the old woman answered. "The law says they don't have to." "What law says they don't have to?" "Catch-22."
wycats 13y ago
Article 1, Section 6: "They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place"
- mtgx 13y ago
  I don't understand why some of them aren't becoming whistleblowers, either. Maybe because Obama has already shown he is willing to use the Espionage Act against whistleblowers, because his logic is that "any revelation of our wrongdoings helps the enemy". That seems like a very weak argument to me either way. But why aren't Americans in the street already? Europeans would be already in the street by now for a lot less than this. Remember the ACTA protests?
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    > But why aren't Americans in the street already? Because they don't care too much ? Honestly there should have been multiple occasions for the American people to go and protest in the recent past but they did not. That's very easy for the government to continue and see how far they can go. The answer is : very far.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      When the system has cracked you down so far that poverty is a bigger threat than surveillance, yeah. It's hard to care.
  - jared314 13y ago
    I am not in the streets over it, because I already assumed they were doing it, or were going to, since the Patriot Act was first signed. Most large policy issues don't get fixed until there is both a crisis and interests align. Now, the members of congress fighting the Obama administration have a crisis to run their next election on. And, in their quest to "take Obama to task", they might solve some of the existing issues around the Patriot Act, which they voted for multiple times.
pfortuny 13y ago
Remember: the great excuse is that the US is at war (albeit not against a country, but "terrorism".) Hence, treason comes very much into place here. Handling intel to "the enemy"...
- ekianjo 13y ago
  That's a direct application of 1984 : make the state of war permanent so you can crush all political opposition as treason. Impressive how the US has gone from the most principled, Freedom-loving Democracy to a totalitarian state that does not say its real name in the course of 200 years.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    It wasn't anything new when Orwell wrote it, either. It's a failure mode of democracy.
venomsnake 13y ago
Maybe lawmakes should have immunity about the things they say while in office. This way the executive branch will have to ask for silence instead of demanding it. And they will be free to leak something that is outrageous.
ck2 13y ago
Congress would have rubberstamped "defense paranoia" anyway, doesn't matter. What I am curious about is the next presidential race and what the candidates are going to promise, because Obama basically played a huge word game. He said he was against illegal spying on the country, so what he did was just make it legal to spy on the country instead of stopping spying on the country! I mean come on, that's bullsh*t.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
I have no problem with politicians, well, being politicians. Spin me, bullshit me, tell me the sky is green and the grass is blue. This is all in a day's work for those guys. But Obama is crossing a line here. Yes, Congress in the aggregate could do a hell of a lot of things, but not in some generic sense. It's not like one of them could go out and start making press releases. Intelligence committee members and their staff are the only folks that are supposed to know about intelligence matters. Not "every member of Congress". And they are thoroughly briefed NOT to disclose any information that comes their way. In fact, there are clear penalties for doing so. Releasing unauthorized data is a felony, and felons go to jail, Congressman or not. (And no, Article 1, Section 6 specifically does not cover felonies) Even then, the intelligence community doesn't brief the intelligence committees on everything -- they've found out from painful experience that somehow or another anything really juicy they tell them always gets out. So with some of this stuff, the only people that were briefed were the majority/minority leaders and the chairmen of the committees. Not "every member of Congress" Not even the people supposedly overseeing intelligence matters. I think it's one thing to go about bullshitting when it comes to public policy, or any other thing the nation does. But when the government purposely keeps secrets from us, they take on the responsibility to at least honestly explain to us how the system works so that we can address the problem. Not continue to spin us as if this were just some proposed employment law or something. You can't keep it secret and then also lie to us about what we need to do to fix it. For Congress to again be a player here, it would need to pass some major legislation -- and the president would need to sign it. Let's with what that legislation would look like, which the president would be the best person to say (since the executive branch knows all the secrets anyway), and go from there. I'm happy to call up my Congressguy and give him hell -- but not in order to be some kind of pawn in a PR war about whom to blame.
- Shivetya 13y ago
  It is common for Administrations to make declarations implying something can be, could have, or should have, knowing full well it cannot, could not, or would not, ever been able to be done. They simply rely on the general ignorance of the public. The public is inclined to believe the simplest of explanations, they don't want to really know how the sausage is made.

173 points by known_unknowns 13y ago

This. Was a point I raised here just yesterday - glad to see I was on the mark. This is why we are now in an Orwellian state, rather that one with necessary secrecy but checks and balances. When Congress can say, "We are reviewing National Security measures to be sure they comply with the law & Constitution, but we can't go into details" - that's the latter. When Congress is under threat of penalty for even saying that we HAVE National Security measures, that is Orwellian.

known_unknowns 13y ago
What I don't understand is how this squares with the Speech or Debate clause. Aren't members of Congress protected by the same sort of legislative immunity as they have in the UK, Canada, and Australia (where they call it "parliamentary privilege")?
- spc476 13y ago
  Somewhat. Article I, section 6 of the United States Constitution: "They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and return from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place." How that plays out in this situation, I'm not sure, since I'm not a Constitutional Scholar, nor a lawyer.
  - Natsu 13y ago
    They would simply charge them with a felony--revealing classified information.
  - coolj 13y ago
    INAL but I believe they could be charged under the Espionage Act (18 USC sec. 793) for leaking national security secrets, which is a felony, and they would lose privilege.
  - Andrew_Quentin 13y ago
    That seems to be no different than the law applied to any citizen.
- jmadsen 13y ago
  I think it's more a case of, "oh, I see you don't want to be re-elected. We can arrange that" rather than direct prosecution. That's why you don't see guys like Bernie Sanders on those committees :-)

ccarter84 13y ago

POTUS v leakers & press. Infants in Congress. Finally have legit gripes

bo1024 13y ago

"They don't have to show us Catch-22," the old woman answered. "The law says they don't have to." "What law says they don't have to?" "Catch-22."

wycats 13y ago

Article 1, Section 6: "They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place"

mtgx 13y ago
I don't understand why some of them aren't becoming whistleblowers, either. Maybe because Obama has already shown he is willing to use the Espionage Act against whistleblowers, because his logic is that "any revelation of our wrongdoings helps the enemy". That seems like a very weak argument to me either way. But why aren't Americans in the street already? Europeans would be already in the street by now for a lot less than this. Remember the ACTA protests?
- ekianjo 13y ago
  > But why aren't Americans in the street already? Because they don't care too much ? Honestly there should have been multiple occasions for the American people to go and protest in the recent past but they did not. That's very easy for the government to continue and see how far they can go. The answer is : very far.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    When the system has cracked you down so far that poverty is a bigger threat than surveillance, yeah. It's hard to care.
- jared314 13y ago
  I am not in the streets over it, because I already assumed they were doing it, or were going to, since the Patriot Act was first signed. Most large policy issues don't get fixed until there is both a crisis and interests align. Now, the members of congress fighting the Obama administration have a crisis to run their next election on. And, in their quest to "take Obama to task", they might solve some of the existing issues around the Patriot Act, which they voted for multiple times.

pfortuny 13y ago

Remember: the great excuse is that the US is at war (albeit not against a country, but "terrorism".) Hence, treason comes very much into place here. Handling intel to "the enemy"...

ekianjo 13y ago
That's a direct application of 1984 : make the state of war permanent so you can crush all political opposition as treason. Impressive how the US has gone from the most principled, Freedom-loving Democracy to a totalitarian state that does not say its real name in the course of 200 years.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  It wasn't anything new when Orwell wrote it, either. It's a failure mode of democracy.

venomsnake 13y ago

Maybe lawmakes should have immunity about the things they say while in office. This way the executive branch will have to ask for silence instead of demanding it. And they will be free to leak something that is outrageous.

ck2 13y ago

Congress would have rubberstamped "defense paranoia" anyway, doesn't matter. What I am curious about is the next presidential race and what the candidates are going to promise, because Obama basically played a huge word game. He said he was against illegal spying on the country, so what he did was just make it legal to spy on the country instead of stopping spying on the country! I mean come on, that's bullsh*t.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

I have no problem with politicians, well, being politicians. Spin me, bullshit me, tell me the sky is green and the grass is blue. This is all in a day's work for those guys. But Obama is crossing a line here. Yes, Congress in the aggregate could do a hell of a lot of things, but not in some generic sense. It's not like one of them could go out and start making press releases. Intelligence committee members and their staff are the only folks that are supposed to know about intelligence matters. Not "every member of Congress". And they are thoroughly briefed NOT to disclose any information that comes their way. In fact, there are clear penalties for doing so. Releasing unauthorized data is a felony, and felons go to jail, Congressman or not. (And no, Article 1, Section 6 specifically does not cover felonies) Even then, the intelligence community doesn't brief the intelligence committees on everything -- they've found out from painful experience that somehow or another anything really juicy they tell them always gets out. So with some of this stuff, the only people that were briefed were the majority/minority leaders and the chairmen of the committees. Not "every member of Congress" Not even the people supposedly overseeing intelligence matters. I think it's one thing to go about bullshitting when it comes to public policy, or any other thing the nation does. But when the government purposely keeps secrets from us, they take on the responsibility to at least honestly explain to us how the system works so that we can address the problem. Not continue to spin us as if this were just some proposed employment law or something. You can't keep it secret and then also lie to us about what we need to do to fix it. For Congress to again be a player here, it would need to pass some major legislation -- and the president would need to sign it. Let's with what that legislation would look like, which the president would be the best person to say (since the executive branch knows all the secrets anyway), and go from there. I'm happy to call up my Congressguy and give him hell -- but not in order to be some kind of pawn in a PR war about whom to blame.

Shivetya 13y ago
It is common for Administrations to make declarations implying something can be, could have, or should have, knowing full well it cannot, could not, or would not, ever been able to be done. They simply rely on the general ignorance of the public. The public is inclined to believe the simplest of explanations, they don't want to really know how the sausage is made.