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NSA Surveillance Bill Defeated In Senate

NSA Surveillance Bill Defeated In Senate

By Timothy M. Phelps, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Legislation to keep most Americans’ phone records out of government hands was defeated in the Senate on Tuesday, dooming at least for now prospects of national security reforms that supporters said would protect the privacy of law-abiding citizens.

A motion failed to get the necessary 60 votes needed to cut off debate on the bill sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., with most Republicans voting against. The final vote was 58 in favor to 42 against.

One of its most outspoken foes was incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who said stopping the National Security Agency from collecting telephone dialing records “would end one of our nation’s critical capabilities to gather significant intelligence on terrorist threats.”

Citing the recent beheadings of U.S. citizens in Syria, McConnell said, “This is the worst possible time to be tying our hands behind our backs.”

Born of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations that the NSA was secretly archiving data from virtually every telephone call made in the United States, the Leahy bill, dubbed the USA Freedom Act, would have required the NSA to request such records from telephone companies rather than collect and store the information itself.

Except in emergencies, U.S. intelligence agencies and the FBI would have had to seek approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to access and use the data, and only in cases involving suspected terrorism or espionage. A similar procedure is used now to access the NSA database, but critics say that current system is open to abuse.

“The bill contains key reforms to safeguard Americans’ privacy by prohibiting the indiscriminate collection of their data,” Leahy argued. “It also provides for greater accountability and transparency of the government’s surveillance programs.”

At issue are telephone company records of customers and the phone numbers they have dialed, including date, time and duration of calls, but not the conversations themselves.

Privacy advocates vowed to keep fighting to limit government access to telephone records. Some key provisions of the USA Patriot Act _ the post 9-11 law that authorized collection of the phone records — expire in June, when the congressional fight over privacy is likely to resume.

After Republicans take control of the Senate in January, it will be difficult to make changes as broad as those proposed by Leahy. But House Republicans have been more favorable to privacy concerns, and advocates hope they will continue to push.

Republican opposition came from both sides of the debate. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who is expected to seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, voted against the bill because he said it did not do enough to protect individuals’ privacy.

But former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, who both served under President George W. Bush, wrote in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal that Leahy’s bill was “exquisitely crafted to hobble the gathering of electronic intelligence.”

After the House passed a weaker version in May, Leahy organized negotiations that brought together the intelligence agencies and civil liberties groups. They produced a compromise bill in July that had the support of the Obama administration and technology companies.

After the defeat, Leahy vowed to try again. “This lifelong Vermonter will not give up the fight,” he said. He went on to castigate opponents who he said “went at this issue by fomenting fear and doing it at the last minute.”

With his voice rising in emotion, Leahy recalled that someone had died from touching mail addressed to him in the anthrax-laced letter attacks of 2001. But the constitution is worth more than the life of one person or one senator, he said.

“This is more than one senator, more than one person. This is the Constitution of the U.S. and if we do not protect our Constitution we do not protect our country,” Leahy said.

Photo via Talk Radio News Service/Flickr

In Small Town America, Voters Want Change

In Small Town America, Voters Want Change

Berryville (United States) (AFP) — Deep in the postcard-perfect Shenandoah Valley, just over an hour’s drive from Washington, the autumn leaves are ablaze with color, and Virginia voters are hankering for change.

“We’ve given the other side six years to have their way,” said general contractor Charles Kaster after casting his ballot in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

“And it doesn’t seem to be working out too good,” added the 49-year-old former Marine and lifelong Republican.

“Maybe it’s time to switch back to something else.”

Across the United States, Republicans looked poised to profit from President Barack Obama’s troubles as the nation elects a new crop of senators and representatives.

Virginia’s 10th Congressional District — which includes Berryville, a bucolic town of clapboard Victorian houses and quaint shops — traditionally leans conservative.

Chatting with voters outside the polling station at the Berryville Primary School — each of them sporting “I voted” lapel stickers — provided a sense of many Americans’ frustration with the Obama administration.

“I don’t always vote Republican. I’m just not liking what the Democrats say,” said Lorie McKay, who owns a local landscaping service.

“I’ve had enough of the Democrats, actually. They’re doing a lousy job,” she told AFP after giving her vote to the Republican slate.

“I don’t know if that’s the answer, what I just did, but I’m hoping it’ll change things.”

– ‘We’re not happy’ –

Building inspector Tommy Parker, who arrived early to vote with his wife Joyce, expected Tuesday’s election to signal “dissatisfaction with the federal government.”

He expected voters to “send a message that we’re not happy with the way things are going at a national level or an international level.”

Ironically, the woman favored to keep the 10th Congressional District in Republican hands, Barbara Comstock, 55, is something of a Washington insider.

A political consultant to, among others, the 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, Comstock once interned for Frank Wolf, who has represented the district since the 1980 election that put Ronald Reagan in the White House, and is retiring after this term.

Her Democratic rival John Foust, 63, got headlines when he questioned whether she had ever “had a real job”, given her political operative background.

Comstock, for her part, once suggested that if Federal Express could track packages with precision, the federal government ought to be able to track immigrants as well.

In this town of 3,000, Democrats are not entirely unknown. Alexis Stickovitch, 20, is a forensic chemistry student with dreams of achieving a doctorate degree.

“I voted all Democrat. I guess it’s because I’m young,” Stickovitch said — adding she was unhappy with those in the Republican camp trying to roll back abortion.

“Some of the conservatives (on the ballot) are against abortion and birth control, and those are pretty important to me. I feel I have a right to what happens to my body, not someone else.”

Larry Bowie, an African-American native of Maryland who retired to Berryville after 20 years in the U.S. army, was a rare voice defending Obama.

“It goes with the territory. Bush had his time,” he said, recalling how George W. Bush exited the presidency under a cloud amid the worst economic downturn since the 1930s and unfinished war business in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“He’s hanging in there. He’s doing the right thing,” Bowie said of Obama.

AFP Photo/Paul J. Richards

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Foreigners ‘Face Tougher Sentences’ In U.S. Courts

Foreigners ‘Face Tougher Sentences’ In U.S. Courts

Washington (AFP) — Foreigners in federal courts in the United States face harsher penalties and are more likely to be convicted than U.S. citizens, a study released Wednesday found.

According to the study in the American Sociological Review, 96 percent of convicted non-U.S. citizens received a prison sentence in 2008, compared to 85 percent of U.S. citizens.

“This is a major issue given that the number of non-U.S. citizens sentenced in U.S. federal courts increased nearly five-fold over the past two decades,” said Michael Light, an assistant sociology professor at Purdue University and the study’s lead author.

Researchers analyzed U.S. federal district court data from 1992-2008 for the study.

In a statement, Light said a sentencing penalty exists for non-U.S. citizens and found that in 2008, they received between two and four months additional prison time compared to U.S. citizens. Researchers accounted for factors such as criminal history or the seriousness of the offense.

The issue is a growing concern as the number of non-U.S. citizens in America — estimated at more than 22 million — continues to expand, Light said.

“These results suggest that despite having equal rights, non-citizens do not receive equal treatment in the U.S. federal courts,” Light added.

Most at risk of harsher penalties are undocumented immigrants, the study found.

“The undocumented are seven times more likely to be incarcerated, whereas legal immigrants are twice as likely to be imprisoned,” the study said.

AFP Photo/Joe Raedle

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Syrian Government Declares War On Its Own Civilians

The now months-old domestic protest movement against the hardline — and less-than-democratic — rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad faced its most brutal crackdown yet this weekend, with some 75 confirmed dead:

The simultaneous raids on several cities came a day before the holy month of Ramadan, during which activists had vowed to escalate their uprising with nightly protests. The scale of the assault and the mounting death toll underlined the government’s intention to crush the uprising by force, despite international condemnations and its own tentative and mostly illusory reforms ostensibly aimed at placating protesters’ demands.

“Today we are witnessing a major assault,” said Omar Idlibi, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committee, an opposition group that helps organize and document protests. “It is a last-minute attempt by the regime to reclaim cities that it lost control of.”

“It appears on the ground that the Syrian government has chosen to engage in full-scale warfare against its own people,” said J.J. Harder, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Damascus. “This is a regime that continues to surprise us by how horrific it can be.”

In an interview, he added that Syrian officials were “delusional.”

The Obama administration predictably lambasted the “violence and brutality,” in a Sunday statement, and assailed Assad as a regular practitioner of “torture, corruption, and terror” who has precious little time left before the forces of democracy overtake him.

There’s no sign yet that the Syrian military will hold fire and refuse Assad’s orders at some point, and, just like in Libya, no one’s exactly sure what factions — Islamists? Secular liberals? Disgruntled military officials? — will steer the nascent rebel movement.