VIDEO: Sen. Rockefeller Lets Slip the Spying Truth

[Echo In Light]

VIDEO: Sen. Rockefeller Lets Slip the Spying Truth

In a Senate floor speech, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) inadvertently made plain that the proposed changes to the nation's spying laws radically expand how the government wiretaps inside the United States. Rockefeller was decrying an amendment that would require the government to discard non-emergency evidence if a court later finds that the spying methods violate the law.
Rockefeller makes clear that the impending changes to the law aren't about making it easier for the National Security Agency to listen in on a particular terrorism suspect's phone calls. Instead, the changes are about letting the nation's spooks secretly and unilaterally install filters inside America's phone and internet infrastructure.

Rockefeller, the chief Democratic architect of the changes, explains:

Unlike traditional application orders which involve collection on one individual target, the new FISA provisions create a system of collection. The courts role in this system of collection is not to consider probable cause on individual targets but to ensure that procedures used to collect intelligence are adequate. The courts' determination of the adequacy of procedures therefore impacts all electronic communications gathered under the new mechanisms, even if it involves thousands of targets.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/sen-rockefeller.html

[ThomWV]

1. That wasn't a slip - it is consistant with his efforts to kill the Intelligence version

Since he introduced the bill he has been trying to kill it. In fact in his first speech when it was brought to the floor he said that the first thing that was going to happen to it was that it would be disguarded in favor of the Judiciary version - and that he supported the substitution.

Rockefeller has been against his own bill since its beginning.

[TwilightGardener]

2. Interesting--I saw part of his speech. So now the focus is legality

of the collection procedures, rather than the individual targets, because there's just going to be too much info being collected from too many targets at once between phone and internet. The legality of the upgraded widespread collection system, as a whole, is what they're shooting for under the FISA courts. They're rewriting the FISA law to simultaneously expand the program AND protect our government and our eavesdroppers and telecoms. Our civil liberties totally hinge on whether the "system" is deemed legal in retrospect, should anyone decide to sue for a violation--and since they're trying to grant immunity to telecoms retroactively (and no one could sue for past violations), we can assume that the FISA law will be written with as much legal protection for the telecoms and internet providers as possible. Do I have this right?

[L. Coyote]

3. IN other words, they are collecting everything still