OK,
We are not Known for our Hell-Bent Rants about Politics or the Government.
Actually, We prefer to put up Information and let the Reader decide.
Voting is a Privilege and a Right. Here, It is Respected as Such.
Now,
Let's see what our Elected Representatives have on their Plate:
- A huge, under the rug swept, delayed, horribly negotiated Budget Bill that may/may not push our Nation over a Fiscal Curb, Cliff, Speed Bump, etc. That of which is not Acted on could cause Very Serious Repercussions in our financial Future
- Funding for Hurricane Sandy Recovery (also Overdue and Important)
- Decide whether to renew the NSA Warrant-less Wiretap Surveillance Program
The first, and undoubtedly the most important is yet again moved down the road to Monday.
The Second was Passed with some Modifications.
The Third, Well... Let's Backtrack a piece....
This Act Established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The FISC oversees requests for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign intelligence agents inside the United States by federal law enforcement agencies (primarily the F.B.I.).
These are called FISA Warrants.
FISA warrant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court
Each application for one of these surveillance warrants (called a
FISA warrant) is made before an individual judge of the court. Like a
grand jury, FISC is not an
adversarial court: the federal government is the only party to its proceedings. However, the court may allow third parties to submit briefs as
amici curiae.
When the Attorney General determines that an emergency exists he may
authorize the emergency employment of electronic surveillance before
obtaining the necessary authorization from the FISA court, after which
the Attorney General or his designee must notify a judge of the court
not more than 72 hours after the Attorney General authorizes such
surveillance.
[2]
If an application is denied by one judge of the FISC, the federal
government is not allowed to make the same application to a different
judge of the court, but must appeal to the
United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.
Such appeals are rare: the first appeal from the FISC to the Court of
Review was made in 2002, 24 years after the founding of the FISC.
It is also rare for FISA warrant requests to be turned down by the
court. Through the end of 2004, 18,761 warrants were granted, while just
five were rejected (many sources say four)
[citation needed]
. Fewer than 200 requests had to be modified before being accepted,
almost all of them in 2003 and 2004. The four known rejected requests
were all from 2003, and all four were partially granted after being
resubmitted for reconsideration by the government. Of the requests that
had to be modified, few if any were before the year 2000. In subsequent
years, according to journalist
Joshua Micah Marshall, the breakdown was as follows:
[3]
| Year |
Modified requests |
|---|
| 2000 |
1 request modified |
| 2001 |
2 requests modified |
| 2002 |
2 requests modified (both modifications later reversed) |
| 2003 |
79 requests modified (out of 1724 granted) |
| 2004 |
94 requests modified (out of 1758) | |
On May 17, 2002, the court rebuffed then-
Attorney General John Ashcroft, releasing an opinion that alleged that
FBI and
Justice Department
officials had "supplied erroneous information to the court in more than
75 applications for search warrants and wiretaps, including one signed
by then-FBI Director
Louis J. Freeh".
[4] Whether this rebuke is related to the court starting to require modification of drastically more requests in 2003 is unknown.
On December 16, 2005, the
New York Times reported that the
Bush administration had been conducting surveillance against U.S. citizens without the knowledge of the FISC since 2002.
[5] On December 20, 2005, Judge
James Robertson resigned his position with the FISC, apparently in protest of the secret surveillance.
[6]
The government's apparent circumvention of the FISC started prior to
the increase in court-ordered modifications to warrant requests.
Closed hearings and classified proceedings
Because of the sensitive nature of its business, the FISC is a
"secret court": its hearings are closed to the public, and, while
records of the proceedings are kept, those records are also not
available to the public. (Copies of those records with
classified information
redacted can and have been made public.) Due to the classified nature
of its proceedings, only government attorneys are usually permitted to
appear before the FISC. Due to the nature of the matters heard before
it, FISC hearings may need to take place at any time of day or night,
weekdays or weekends; thus, at least one judge must be "on call" at all
times to hear evidence and decide whether or not to issue a warrant.
Composition
When the court was founded, it was composed of seven
federal district judges appointed by the
Chief Justice of the United States, each serving a seven year term, with one judge being appointed each year. In 2001, the
USA PATRIOT Act
expanded the court from seven to eleven judges, and required that at
least three of the judges of the court be from within twenty miles
(32 km) of the
District of Columbia.
No judge may be appointed to this court more than once, and no judge
may be appointed to both the Court of Review and the FISC.
United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or
FISC) is a
U.S. federal court authorized under
50 U.S.C. § 1803,
Pub.L. 95-511, 92
Stat. 1788, enacted October 25, 1978. It was established by the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). The FISC oversees requests for surveillance
warrants against suspected foreign
intelligence agents inside the United States by federal law enforcement agencies (primarily the
F.B.I.). The FISA and FISC were inspired by the recommendations of the
Church Committee.
[1]
>>Fast Forward to Today:
The Senate Passed the Bill 73-23, quickly. VERY Quickly.
The House also passed the Bill with Equal Expediency.
Paul (KY) - posed adding an Amendment to require the Government to Provide a Warrant when Spying on e-mails and electronic media.
Wyden (OR) - posed adding an Amendment to require the Courts to notify the Citizen(s) if and when they have been Spied Upon by Mistake.
BOTH of these and Many other of these Amendments were Struck and the Bill was passed for the next 5 Years.
This is the Time to notify your Elected Officials your Opinion on this action.
Seems, when these folks want things to get done, they get done.
Now we see what gets Priority
Stay Informed.
-MP
FISA Warrantless Wiretapping Program Renewed By Senate
 |
| Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who led attempts to add oversight safeguards to
FISA. The Senate voted Friday to renew the FISA warrantless wiretapping
program. (Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images)
|
The U.S. Senate renewed the warrantless wiretapping program
begun during the George W. Bush administration by a 73 to 23 vote on
Friday, sending the FISA Amendments Act to President Barack Obama's desk
for his signature.
The vote marked a symbolic next step for
the wiretapping program,
which collects Americans' communications with foreign intelligence
targets abroad. Four years ago, in the midst of the 2008 Democratic
presidential primary, an identical version of the bill was the subject
of a highly contentious debate in the Senate. Obama and others argued
then that Bush's program went too far in violating Americans' privacy.
This year, with a supportive Obama in the Oval Office and the media
focus on the fiscal cliff, the bill was renewed with much less
attention.
Gas Leak
RESOLUTION #1 Cut the power bill in half.
RESOLUTION #2
RESOLUTION #3 Feeding the Gas-starved Beast
RESOLUTION #4 Plan for no plan.
