Left Side of the Aisle #89 - Part 7

FISA renewed as the Senate refuses oversight

FISA - the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - has been reauthorized after the Senate rejected three attempts to add oversight and privacy safeguards to the law. The spying program, created unilaterally by the Shrub gang in the wake of 9/11, was approved retroactively by Congress in 2008.

Critics, including NSA whistle-blowers, have shown that Americans' personal communications are getting swept up in a vast, electronic dragnet of phone calls and emails. Meanwhile, civil liberties advocates have argued that Congress should curb the scope of the spying program or at the very least disclose more information about how and for what it is being used.

Instead, we got a string of lopsided votes from a body that literally - literally - does not want to know what is going on as revealed in a debate punctuated with long-stale fear mongering: Dianne Feinsten, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, rattled off a list of supposedly interrupted terrorist plots and prattled on about her fear of attack. Sen. Saxby Chambliss said that declassifying even just summaries of the decisions of the super-secret court that approves wiretap warrants "would give our enemies a roadmap into our collection priorities and capabilities."

None of the three proposals got more than 38 votes as the august Senate took on the look of a stereotyped capo di tutti capi going "Don't tell me. I don't want to know." To a do-nothing Congress we can add a see nothing Congress and hear nothing Congress.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/27/fisa-senate-vote_n_2372720.html
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/12/27/a-few-senators-take-a-stand-for-privacy-ahead-of-surveillance-law-reauthorization/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capo_di_tutti_capi