Tag Archive: Ron Wyden


NSA surveillance: anger mounts in Congress at ‘spying on Americans’

Filed under: Freedom, Fundamental Rights, Government Overreach, Hypocrisy, Lack Of Transparency, Politics, Politics, Legislation and Economy News, Power Struggle, Secrecy, Special Interests, Surveillance, Unconstitutional, Whistle Blowers — 2 Comments
June 12, 2013

After a closed-door briefing of the House of Representatives, lawmakers call for a review of the Patriot Act

Xavier Becerra

Xavier Becerra, a senior Democrat, said there hadn’t been enough oversight of government surveillance programmes. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Anger was mounting in Congress on Tuesday night as politicians, briefed for the first time after revelations about the government’s surveillance dragnet, vowed to rein in a system that one said amounted to “spying on Americans”.

Intelligence chiefs and FBI officials had hoped that the closed-door briefing with a full meeting of the House of Representatives would help reassure members about the widespread collection of US phone records revealed by the Guardian.

But senior figures from both parties emerged from the meeting alarmed at the extent of a surveillance program that many claimed never to have heard of until whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked a series of top-secret documents.

The congressional fury came at the end of a day of fast-moving developments.

• In a lawsuit filed in New York, the American Civil Liberties Union accused the US government of a process that was “akin to snatching every American’s address book”.

• On Capitol Hill, a group of US senators introduced a bill aimed at forcing the US federal government to disclose the opinions of a secretive surveillance court that determines the scope of the eavesdropping on Americans’ phone records and internet communications.

• A leading member of the Senate intelligence committee, Ron Wyden, came close to saying that James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, misled him on the scope of government surveillance during a March hearing. Clapper admitted earlier this week that he gave the “least untruthful” answer possible to a question by Wyden.

• Chuck Hagel, the defense secretary, said he ordered a wide-ranging review of the Defense Department’s reliance on private contractors. Snowden had top-security clearance for his work at Booz Allen Hamilton, an NSA contractor. Booz Allen issued a statement on Tuesday saying that Snowden had been fired for “violations of the firm’s code of ethics”.

• In Brussels, the European commission’s vice-president, Viviane Reding, sent a letter demanding answers to seven detailed questions to the US attorney general, Eric Holder, about Prism and other American data snooping efforts.

• Snowden was at an undisclosed location after he checked out of a Hong Kong hotel on Monday. The director of Human Rights Watch, Peter Bouckaert, said Snowden should not consider himself safe in the Chinese province.

NSA files Edward Snowden Obama Newspapers in Hong Kong feature the NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Photograph: Bobby Yip/Reuters

After the congressional briefing, Xavier Becerra, leader of the House minority caucus, said there had not been enough oversight of government surveillance programs. “We are now glimpsing the damage,” he said, referring to failures to repeal the Patriot Act sooner. “It was an extraordinary measure for an extraordinary time but it shouldn’t have been extended.”

Others said the White House and intelligence committee leaders had been misleading when they claimed all members of Congress were briefed about the mass swoop of telephone records.

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Congress briefed on US surveillance programs

By LARA JAKES

Associated Press
Published: June 11, 2013

NSA_FortMeade061113AP

This Sept. 19, 2007, photo shows the National Security Agency building at Fort Meade, Md. When the federal government went looking for phone numbers tied to terrorists, it grabbed the records of just about everyone in America.
Charles Dharapak/AP, file

WASHINGTON — Dogged by fear and confusion about sweeping spy programs, intelligence officials sought to convince House lawmakers in an unusual briefing Tuesday that the government’s years-long collection of phone records and Internet usage is necessary for protecting Americans – and does not trample on their privacy rights.

But the country’s main civil liberties organization wasn’t buying it, filing the most significant lawsuit against the massive phone record collection program so far. The American Civil Liberties Union and its New York chapter sued the federal government Tuesday in New York, asking a court to demand that the Obama administration end the program and purge the records it has collected.

The ACLU is claiming standing as a customer of Verizon, which was identified last week as the phone company the government had ordered to turn over daily records of calls made by all its customers.

The parade of FBI and intelligence officials who briefed the entire House on Tuesday was the latest attempt to soothe outrage over National Security Agency programs which collect billions of Americans’ phone and Internet records. Since they were revealed last week, the programs have spurred distrust in the Obama administration from across the globe.

Several key lawmakers, including House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, refocused the furor Tuesday on the elusive 29-year-old former intelligence contractor who is claiming responsibility for revealing the surveillance programs to two newspapers. Boehner joined others in calling Edward Snowden a “traitor.”

But attempts to defend the NSA systems by a leading Republican senator who supports them highlighted how confusingly intricate the programs are – even to the lawmakers who follow the issue closely.

Explaining the programs to reporters, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Senate Armed Services and Judiciary committees, initially described how the NSA uses pattern analysis of millions of phone calls from the United States, even if those numbers have no known connection to terrorism. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has vigorously maintained that there are strict limits on the programs to prevent intruding on Americans’ privacy, and senior officials quickly denied Graham’s description.

Graham later said he misspoke and that Clapper was right: The phone records are only accessed if there is a known connection to terrorism.

House lawmakers had more questions and, in many cases, more concerns about the level of surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies Tuesday after FBI, Justice and other intelligence officials briefed them on the two NSA programs.

“Really it’s a debate between public safety, how far we go with public safety and protecting us from terrorist attacks versus how far we go on the other side,” said Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “Congress needs to debate this issue.”

He said his panel and the Judiciary Committee would examine what has happened and see whether there are recommendations for the future.

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., like many members, said he was unaware of the scope of the data collection.

“I did not know 1 billion records a day were coming under the control of the federal executive branch,” Sherman said.

Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said there was a lot of heated discussion and that, “Congress didn’t feel like they were informed.”

Cohen conceded many lawmakers had failed to attend classified briefings in previous years where they could have learned more. “I think Congress has really found itself a little bit asleep at the wheel,” he said.

One of the Senate’s staunchest critics of the surveillance programs put Clapper in the crosshairs, accusing him of not being truthful in March when he asked during a Senate hearing whether the NSA collects any data on millions of Americans. Clapper said it did not. Officials generally do not discuss classified information in public settings, reserving discussion on top-secret programs for closed sessions with lawmakers where they will not be revealed to adversaries.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he had been dissatisfied with the NSA’s answers to his questions and had given Clapper a day’s advance notice prior to the hearing to prepare an answer. Not fully believing Clapper’s public denial of the program, Wyden said he asked Clapper privately afterward whether he wanted to stick with a firm `no’ to the question.

 

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The Jack Blood Show

Liberal Lawers vs Liberal Govt? A.C.L.U. Files Lawsuit Seeking to Stop the Collection of Domestic Phone Logs

June 11, 2013 by

 

WASHINGTON (NYT) — The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Obama administration on Tuesday over its “dragnet” collection of logs of domestic phone calls, contending that the once-secret program — whose existence was exposed last week by a former National Security Agency contractor — is illegal and asking a judge to stop it and order the records purged.

Comparing Two Secret Surveillance Programs
The lawsuit could set up an eventual Supreme Court test. It could also focus attention on this disclosure amid the larger heap of top secret surveillance matters revealed by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who came forward Sunday to say he was their source.

The program “gives the government a comprehensive record of our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious and intimate associations,” the complaint says, adding that it “is likely to have a chilling effect on whistle-blowers and others who would otherwise contact” the A.C.L.U. for legal assistance.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the suit.

In other lawsuits against national security policies, the government has often persuaded courts to dismiss them without ruling on the merits by arguing that litigation would reveal state secrets or that the plaintiffs could not prove they were personally affected and so lacked standing in court.

This case may be different. The government has now declassified the existence of the program. And the A.C.L.U. is a customer of Verizon Business Network Services — the recipient of a leaked secret court order for all its domestic calling records — which it says gives it standing.

The call logging program keeps a record of “metadata” from domestic phone calls, including which numbers were dialed and received, from which location, and the time and duration.

The effort began as part of the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 programs of surveillance without court approval, which has continued since 2006 with the blessing of a national security court. The court has secretly ruled that bulk surveillance is authorized by a section of the Patriot Act that allows the F.B.I. to obtain “business records” relevant to a counterterrorism investigation.

Congress never openly voted to authorize the collection of logs of hundreds of millions of domestic calls, but some lawmakers were secretly briefed. Some members of Congress have backed the program as a useful counterterrorism tool; others have denounced it.

“The administration claims authority to sift through details of our private lives because the Patriot Act says that it can,” Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin, wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. “I disagree. I authored the Patriot Act, and this is an abuse of that law.”

Over the weekend, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said that officials may access the database only if they can meet a legal justification — “reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization.” Queries are audited under the oversight of the national security court.

Timothy Edgar, a former civil liberties official on intelligence matters in the Bush and Obama administrations who worked on building safeguards into the phone log program, said the notion underlying the limits was that people’s privacy is not invaded by having their records collected, but only when a human examines them.

“When you have important reasons why that collection needs to take place on a scale that is much larger than case-by-case or individual obtaining of records,” he said, “then one of the ways you try to deal with the privacy issue is you think carefully about having a set of safeguards that basically say, ‘O.K., yes, this has major privacy implications, but what can we do on the back end to address those?’ ”

Still, privacy advocates say the existence of the database will erode the sense of living in a free society: whenever Americans pick up a phone, they now face the consideration of whether they want the record of that call to go into the government’s files.

Moreover, while use of the database is now limited to terrorism, history has shown that new government powers granted for one purpose often end up applied to others. An expanded search warrant authority justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, for example, was used far more often in routine investigations like suspected drug, fraud and tax offenses.

Executive branch officials and lawmakers who support the program have hinted that some terrorist plots have been foiled by using the database. In private conversations, they have also explained that investigators start with a phone number linked to terrorism, and scrutinize the ring of people who have called that number — and other people who in turn called those — in an effort to identify co-conspirators.

Still, that analysis may generally be performed without a wholesale sweep of call records, since investigators can instead use subpoenas to obtain relevant logs from telephone companies. Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, two Democrats who have examined it in classified Senate Intelligence Committee hearings, have claimed that the evidence is thin that the program provided uniquely available intelligence.

But supporters privately say the database’s existence is about more than convenience and speed. They say it can also help in searching for networks of terrorists who are taking steps to shield their communications from detection by using different phones to call one another. If calls from a different number are being made from the same location as calls by the number that was already known to be suspicious, having the entire database may be helpful in a way that subpoenas for specific numbers cannot match.

 

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A leaked document has laid bare the monumental scope of the government’s surveillance of Americans’ phone records — hundreds of millions of calls

Filed under: Collection of Personal Data, Government Overreach, Invasion Of Privacy I, Politics, Legislation and Economy News, Surveillance — 2 Comments
June 7, 2013

Glenn Greenwald Says Their Goal Is To End ALL Privacy!

MOXNEWSd0tC0M MOXNEWSd0tC0M


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Monumental phone-records monitoring is laid bare

Monumental phone-records monitoring is laid bare

by DONNA CASSATA and NANCY BENAC / Associated Press

Posted on June 6, 2013 at 7:32 AM

Updated yesterday at 4:05 PM

WASHINGTON — A leaked document has laid bare the monumental scope of the government’s surveillance of Americans’ phone records — hundreds of millions of calls — in the first hard evidence of a massive data collection program aimed at combating terrorism under powers granted by Congress after the 9/11 attacks.

At issue is a court order, first disclosed Wednesday by The Guardian newspaper in Britain, that requires the communications company Verizon to turn over on an “ongoing, daily basis” the records of all landline and mobile telephone calls of its customers, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries. Intelligence experts said the government, though not listening in on calls, would be looking for patterns that could lead to terrorists — and that there was every reason to believe similar orders were in place for other phone companies.

Some critics in Congress, as well as civil liberties advocates, declared that the sweeping nature of the National Security Agency program represented an unwarranted intrusion into Americans’ private lives. But a number of lawmakers, including some Republicans who normally jump at the chance to criticize the Obama administration, lauded the program’s effectiveness. Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said the program had helped thwart at least one attempted terrorist attack in the United States, “possibly saving American lives.”

Separately, The Washington Post and The Guardian reported Thursday the existence of another program used by the NSA and FBI that scours the nation’s main Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs to help analysts track a person’s movements and contacts. It was not clear whether the program, called PRISM, targets known suspects or broadly collects data from other Americans.

The companies include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. The Post said PalTalk has had numerous posts about the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war. It also said Dropbox would soon be included

One outraged senator, Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said of the phone-records collecting: “When law-abiding Americans make phone calls, who they call, when they call and where they call is private information. As a result of the discussion that came to light today, now we’re going to have a real debate.”

But Republican Lindsay Graham of South Carolina said Americans have no cause for concern. “If you’re not getting a call from a terrorist organization, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” he said.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the order was a three-month renewal of an ongoing practice that is supervised by federal judges who balance efforts to protect the country from terror attacks against the need to safeguard Americans’ privacy. The surveillance powers are granted under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, which was renewed in 2006 and again in 2011.

While the scale of the program might not have been news to some congressional leaders, the disclosure offered a public glimpse into a program whose breadth is not widely understood. Sen. Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat who serves on the Intelligence Committee, said it was the type of surveillance that “I have long said would shock the public if they knew about it.”

The government has hardly been forthcoming.

Wyden released a video of himself pressing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on the matter during a Senate hearing in March.

“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Wyden asked.

“No, sir,” Clapper answered.

“It does not?” Wyden pressed.

Clapper quickly softened his answer. “Not wittingly,” he said. “There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect — but not wittingly.”

There was no immediate comment from Clapper’s office Thursday on his testimony in March.

The public is now on notice that the government has been collecting data — even if not listening to the conversations — on every phone call every American makes, a program that has operated in the shadows for years, under President George W. Bush, and continued by President Barack Obama.

“It is very likely that business records orders like this exist for every major American telecommunication company, meaning that if you make calls in the United States the NSA has those records,” wrote Cindy Cohn, general counsel of the nonprofit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, and staff attorney Mark Rumold, in a blog post.

Without confirming the authenticity of the court order, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said such surveillance powers are “a critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats,” by helping officials determine if people in the U.S. who may have been engaged in terrorist activities have been in touch with other known or suspected terrorists.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., stressed that phone records are collected under court orders that are approved by the Senate and House Intelligence committees and regularly reviewed.

And Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada played down the significance of the revelation.

“Everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn’t anything that’s brand new,” he said. “This is a program that’s been in effect for seven years, as I recall. It’s a program that has worked to prevent not all terrorism but certainly the vast, vast majority. Now is the program perfect? Of course not.”

But privacy advocates said the scope of the program was indefensible.

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Wyden calls government sweep of Verizon phone records a ‘massive invasion of Americans’ privacy’

By Jeff Mapes, The Oregonian

on June 06, 2013 at 11:31 AM, updated June 06, 2013 at 12:15 PM

ron wyden.jpgSen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Senate Intelligence Committee member who had previously warned that the government was collecting too much data on U.S. citizens, on Thursday charged that the government collection of Verizon phone records was a “massive invasion of Americans’ privacy.”

Wyden, a high-ranking Democratic senator on the committee, said he had been concerned about such  surveillance for a long time but continues to be barred by Senate rules from discussing many of the details that he learned in classified intelligence briefings.

“However, I believe that when law-abiding Americans call their friends, who they call, when they call, and where they call from is private information,” Wyden said.  “Collecting this data about every single phone call that every American makes every day would be a massive invasion of Americans’ privacy.”

In a separate comment on his Twitter feed, Wyden also noted that James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, had assured him in a March hearing that the National Security Agency was not collecting data on millions of Americans — an assurance that Wyden now appears to find suspect.

The Guardian newspaper from Great Britain on Wednesday night revealed the existence of a four-page court order ordering Verizon to turn over the phone records of its customers who made calls from the U.S. to foreign countries or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

The information sought by the government did not include the contents of the calls.

Wyden has repeatedly expressed concerns about the extent of government surveillance following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the passage of the Patriot Act, which was used as the legal basis for the obtaining of the phone records.

Added Wyden in his statement:

“The American people have a right to know whether their government thinks that the sweeping, dragnet surveillance that has been alleged in this story is allowed under the law and whether it is actually being conducted.  Furthermore, they have a right to know whether the program that has been described is actually of value in preventing attacks.  Based on several years of oversight, I believe that its value and effectiveness remain unclear.”

Wyden spokesman Tom Towslee said the senator was not immediately giving interviews on the subject.  But on Wyden’s Twitter feed, he made several more statements:

Ron Wyden        ✔ @RonWyden

Letter @MarkUdall & I sent to DoJ last year with our concerns about “business records” section of Patriot Act http://bit.ly/11k9Iuk 

12:42 PM – 6 Jun 2013

Senators Ron Wyden, Mark Udall Letter to Attorney General Holder

This letter conveys the senators’ views on the Justice Department’s efforts to keep the government’s interpretation of the USA Patriot Act secret from the American public. Senators Ron Wyden (D -…

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Wyden in Intelligence Hearing on GPS Surveillance & Nat’l Security Agency Collection

SenRonWyden SenRonWyden

Published on Mar 12, 2013

March 12, 2013- Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asks questions in Senate Intelligence Committee on warrantless geolocation surveillance and National Security Agency tracking.

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US Says It Gathers Online Data Abroad

 

Published: Friday, 7 Jun 2013 | 2:45 AM ET

By: Charlie Savage, Edward Wyatt & Peter Baker

The federal government has been secretly collecting information on foreigners overseas for nearly six years from the nation’s largest Internet companies like Google, Facebook and, most recently, Apple, in search of national security threats, the director of national intelligence confirmed Thursday night.

The confirmation of the classified program came just hours after government officials acknowledged a separate seven-year effort to sweep up records of telephone calls inside the United States. Together, the unfolding revelations opened a window into the growth of government surveillance that began under the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has clearly been embraced and even expanded under the Obama administration.

Government officials defended the two surveillance initiatives as authorized under law, known to Congress and necessary to guard the country against terrorist threats. But an array of civil liberties advocates and libertarian conservatives said the disclosures provided the most detailed confirmation yet of what has been long suspected about what the critics call an alarming and ever-widening surveillance state.

The Internet surveillance program collects data from online providers including e-mail, chat services, videos, photos, stored data, file transfers, video conferencing and log-ins, according to classified documents obtained and posted by The Washington Post and then The Guardian on Thursday afternoon.

In confirming its existence, officials said that the program, called Prism, is authorized under a foreign intelligence law that was recently renewed by Congress, and maintained that it minimizes the collection and retention of information “incidentally acquired” about Americans and permanent residents. Several of the Internet companies said they did not allow the government open-ended access to their servers but complied with specific lawful requests for information.

More From the NYT:
Despite Ambivalence, a Strong Embrace of Divisive Security Tools
Sounding the Alarm, but With a Muted Bell
Blogger, With Focus on Surveillance, Is at Center of a Debate

“It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States,” James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement, describing the law underlying the program. “Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.”

The Prism program grew out of the National Security Agency’s desire several years ago to begin addressing the agency’s need to keep up with the explosive growth of social media, according to people familiar with the matter.

The dual revelations, in rapid succession, also suggested that someone with access to high-level intelligence secrets had decided to unveil them in the midst of furor over leak investigations. Both were reported by The Guardian, while The Post, relying upon the same presentation, almost simultaneously reported the Internet company tapping. The Post said a disenchanted intelligence official provided it with the documents to expose government overreach.

Before the disclosure of the Internet company surveillance program on Thursday, the White House and Congressional leaders defended the phone program, saying it was legal and necessary to protect national security.

(Read More: US Secretly Mines Data From Internet Companies – Reports)

Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, told reporters aboard Air Force One that the kind of surveillance at issue “has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats as it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.” He added: “The president welcomes a discussion of the trade-offs between security and civil liberties.”

The Guardian and The Post posted several slides from the 41-page presentation about the Internet program, listing the companies involved — which included Yahoo, Microsoft, Paltalk, AOL, Skype and YouTube — and the dates they joined the program, as well as listing the types of information collected under the program.

The reports came as President Obama was traveling to meet President Xi Jinping of China at an estate in Southern California, a meeting intended to address among other things complaints about Chinese cyberattacks and spying. Now that conversation will take place amid discussion of America’s own vast surveillance operations.

But while the administration and lawmakers who supported the telephone records program emphasized that all three branches of government had signed off on it, Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union denounced the surveillance as an infringement of fundamental individual liberties, no matter how many parts of the government approved of it.

“A pox on all the three houses of government,” Mr. Romero said. “On Congress, for legislating such powers, on the FISA court for being such a paper tiger and rubber stamp, and on the Obama administration for not being true to its values.”

Others raised concerns about whether the telephone program was effective.

Word of the program emerged when The Guardian posted an April order from the secret foreign intelligence court directing a subsidiary of Verizon Communications to give the N.S.A. “on an ongoing daily basis” until July logs of communications “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

On Thursday, Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Democrat and top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said the court order appeared to be a routine reauthorization as part of a broader program that lawmakers have long known about and supported.

“As far as I know, this is an exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years,” Ms. Feinstein said, adding that it was carried out by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “under the business records section of the Patriot Act.”

“Therefore, it is lawful,” she said. “It has been briefed to Congress.”

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White House Gives Online Sales Tax Bill Thumbs Up and Reid Plans to Bypass the Senate Finance Committee For A Vote

Filed under: Economic News, Financial, Fiscal Irresponsibility, Fiscal irresponsibility, Government, Greed, Internet Neutrality, Internet News, Politics, Legislation and Economy News, Special Interests, Taxation — Leave a comment
April 23, 2013

 

 

 

Bastiat Institute.org Facebook page

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OVERNIGHT MONEY: Online sales tax bill gets boost

 

 

By Vicki Needham and Peter Schroeder – 04/22/13 06:58 PM ET

 

TUESDAY’S BIG STORY:

Online tax bill on the move: The Senate overwhelmingly agreed, 74-20, on Monday to end debate on a bill that would allow states to tax online purchases from Internet retailers located outside their borders, seemingly setting up passage of the bill as early as Tuesday.

Despite the support in the upper chamber, the bill could face resistance in the House. So far, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has said he is going to take a close look at the legislation before giving it an all-clear.

Meanwhile, the White House gave the legislation a thumbs-up on Monday with Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, saying the bill would put online retailers on the same footing with businesses that have a physical presence in states.

“This administration has carefully considered the legislation, and our team has met with a broad array of people on the issue,” Carney said. “And we have heard overwhelmingly from governors, mayors and the business community on the need for federal legislation to level the playing field for our businesses and address sales tax fairness.”

Under current law, states can only collect sales taxes from retailers with a physical presence. Consumers using the Internet to buy goods are supposed to declare the purchases on their tax forms, although few follow through. Some online businesses have begun to voluntarily add the state taxes.

 

The Supreme Court ruled more than two decades ago that companies only have to collect from in-state customers, but also said that Congress could weigh in on the issue.Retail groups have long supported the issue and put their weight behind the measure, propelling it to this point.

Supporters say that the proposal could give billions in extra revenue to struggling state and local governments. The bill would also exempt small businesses with less than $1 million in out-of-state sales.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has been pressing for passage of the bill for at least two years, said the bill is needed to help states refill their coffers depleted by a lingering economic downturn.

“What it means is a lot of money for the states and localities,”  he said.

Still, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said Monday that the online sales tax bill would create a new tax and leads America down a “dark path.”

Supporters’ efforts were revived by a vote last month on the Senate’s budget proposal in which 75 senators voted in support of the plan, giving them the go-ahead to press for a quick resolution of the bipartisan bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced last week he planned to bring the bill straight to the floor, bypassing the Senate Finance Committee and setting the stage for a vote.

 

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Pledging to speak “until I can no longer speak,” Kentucky Republican Rand Paul on Wednesday launched a filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan to be the next CIA director, getting assists from a half dozen other lawmakers

Filed under: bureaucracy, Government, Politics, Legislation and Economy News — Leave a comment
March 6, 2013

With bipartisan aid, Paul filibusters CIA pick Brennan

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Senate Foreign Relations member Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. questions Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013, during Kerry’s confirmation hearing before the committee to replace Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

 

By Carrie Dann and Kasie Hunt, NBC News

Pledging to speak “until I can no longer speak,” Kentucky Republican Rand Paul on Wednesday launched a filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan to be the next CIA director, getting assists from a half dozen other lawmakers over the course of hours standing on the Senate floor.

The filibuster continued into its eighth hour after Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois objected to Paul’s request that the Senate take up a non-binding sense of the Senate resolution stating that the U.S. government cannot target “noncombatants” with drones on American soil.

Paul objects to what he calls the Obama administration’s lack of clarity over whether a suspected terrorist who is an American citizen can be targeted with a drone strike within U.S. borders.

Arguing that such a resolution would be premature, Durbin instead invited Paul to testify at an upcoming hearing on the issue of drones.

But that offer was not enough for Paul to halt his protest.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., engages in a discussion with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., over the use of lethal force on American citizens on U.S. soil and the nomination of John Brennan as CIA director on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

Hours into his filibuster, Paul acknowledged that Brennan will ultimately be confirmed, saying the lengthy delay is merely a “blip” in his nomination. But he and other participants emphasized that the debate is intended to shine a spotlight on the government’s balance of civil liberties with national security.

Paul spoke solo for over three hours before being joined on the floor by other lawmakers who stepped in to continue the filibuster.

Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Marco Rubio of Florida – as well as Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon — participated.

Over six hours after beginning the filibuster, a visibly tired Paul could be seen eating what appeared to be several pieces of candy in between sentences. At one point, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., set a thermos and an apple on his desk.

 

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Rand Paul’s Filibuster Is Picking Up Major Steam With Both Parties

Brett LoGiurato | Mar. 6, 2013, 4:03 PM

Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan to be CIA Director has started to gain significant momentum this afternoon, as other prominent Republican Senators and conservative minds have praised Paul’s three-plus-hour long effort.

Around 3 p.m. this afternoon, Republican Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) joined Paul on the Senate floor to join in his filibuster. Shortly after, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) also began taking part.

Finally, to make the filibuster bipartisan, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon came to the floor to speak.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), one of the GOP’s rising stars, tweeted support for Paul’s filibuster:

is asking a legit question of Holder.Why so hard for them to just give straight answer?Almost like they feel it is beneath them.

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Erick Erickson, the editor-in-chief of the conservative website RedState, urged Rubio to join the filibuster, along with Lee and Cruz. Erickson said it would “cement” the legacy of recently retired Sen. Jim DeMint, who was historically one of the Senate’s most frequent employers of the filibuster technique.

If Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio go give Rand Paul a filibuster assist, Jim DeMint’s legacy will be cemented as a force for change.

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Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden Joins Rand Paul For Historic Bipartisan Filibuster Over Drone Strikes

by Andrew Kirell | 4:29 pm, March 6th, 2013 video

Sen. Rand Paul‘s (R-KY) filibuster of John Brennan‘s CIA nomination just became a bipartisan affair: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) announced he will join the effort to protest the Obama pick’s appointment by railing against executive overreach on targeted killings.

Several hours into his filibuster effort, Paul’s Republican colleagues in Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) joined him on the Senate floor. But it took nearly four hours for a Democrat to surprise everyone and make the filibuster a bipartisan one.

Shortly before 4:00 p.m. ET, Sen. Wyden announced, via Twitter, that he was heading to the floor to speak out against the president’s executive overreach on targeted killings and the lack of congressional oversight thereof:

Several minutes later, Wyden appeared on the floor and Paul handed off the mic to the liberal Oregon senator.

 

Read Full Article and Watch Video Here

 

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Senate renews government surveillance measure. Two amendments that would have provided basic oversight for US government’s warrantless surveillance program voted down.

Filed under: Fundamental Rights, Government, Government Overreach, Hypocrisy, Legislation, Politics, Legislation and Economy News, Rule Of Law, Secrecy, Security, Special Interests, Surveillance, Unconstitutional, Unethical — Leave a comment
December 31, 2012

Activists voice dismay as Senate renews government surveillance measure

Two amendments that would have provided basic oversight for US government’s warrantless surveillance program

    US senator Ron Wyden

    An amendment by Ron Wyden (above) would have required the government to estimate the number of US citizens it had spied on. Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

    Civil rights campaigners voiced dismay on Friday over the US Senate‘s re-authorization of the government’s warrantless surveillance program, and the defeat of two amendments that would have provided for basic oversight of the eavesdropping.

    The Senate voted 73-23 to extend the law, called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act, for five years. The House of Representatives has already passed the measure, which President Obama has said he will sign.

    But while the program was extended as expected, campaigners saw a silver lining in that the vote was closer than when the legislation was first introduced in 2008.

    “We’re incredibly disappointed, not just that it passed, but that they rejected some very moderate amendments that wouldn’t have interfered with the collection of intelligence,” said Michelle Richardson, an ACLU expert on surveillance issues.

    An amendment by senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon would have required the secret court that oversees surveillance requests to disclose “important rulings of law.” It failed 37-54. An amendment by Merkley’s fellow Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden would have required the government to estimate the number of US citizens it had spied on. It fell by a narrower margin, 43-52.

     

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    Indemnification Clauses And Commando Organizations : Are Our Tax Dollars Being Earmarked To Pay For The Deadly Mistakes of Private Companies like Blackwater?

    Filed under: Black Ops, bureaucracy, Costs of War, Fiscal irresponsibility, Government, Government Overreach, Greed, Hypocrisy, Military Maneuvers, Politics, Legislation and Economy News, Power Struggle, War on terror, Wars and Rumors of War — Leave a comment
    December 10, 2012

    KBR shouldn’t be able to sue government, Oregon members of Congress tell the Pentagon

    Six Oregon members of Congress released a letter to the Pentagon Saturday urging it resist efforts by defense contractor KBR to have American taxpayers pick up the estimated $100 million bill after a federal court judgement last month in favor of 12 soldiers from the Oregon National Guard.

    “Contractors that put our servicemen and women, as well as innocent civilians, at risk should be held accountable,” says the letter to Jo-Ellen Darcy, assistant secretary of defense. “At the very least, U.S. taxpayers must not be the ones paying for their mistakes. We are eager to see this case resolved and to hold accountable those that negligently expose our troops to toxic chemicals.”

    The letter was signed by Ron Wyden, Jeff Merkley, Earl Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonamici, Peter DeFazio and Kurt Schrader. Wyden, Bonamicici and Schrader released the letter at a news conference Saturday. They were joined by about 20 of the Oregon National Guard veterans and their family who were part of the lawsuit against KBR.

    The federal jury in Portland ordered KBR to pay $85 million to the 12 Oregon soldiers who were exposed to the carcinogen hexavalent chromium while in Iraq in 2003.

    Under a once-classified indemnification clause in the contract, KBR subsequently sued the Army Corps of Engineers to cover about $100 million in damages and legal costs.

    Last week, Wyden inserted an amendment into the defense authorization that requires the Pentagon to disclose when it enters into indemnification agreements with contractors like KBR.

    – The Oregonian

     

    Taxpayers may not be on the hook for KBR’s legal costs in sodium dichromate suits

    qarmataliext1.jpgView full sizeKBR Inc.Qarmat Ali in 2003

    It’s not clear who’s going to pay legal costs for defense contractor KBR Inc., which is being sued by National Guard soldiers who accuse the company of knowingly exposing them to a carcinogen.

    While the company persuaded the Army Corps of Engineers to write an indemnification clause into its 2003 contract to restore the flow of Iraq’s oil, the Corps has twice refused KBR’s request to cover its costs in the two lawsuits proceeding against it in Oregon and Texas.

    Lawyers for KBR say they believe the company is entitled to have its expenses covered by taxpayers but is proceeding through the litigation in the meantime at its own risk and expense, said Geoffrey Harrison of the Houston firm of Susman, Godfrey. The company expects to challenge the Corps’ denial “maybe at the end of the case,” he said.

    The indemnification clause was classified, but its existence has emerged in the course of depositions and filings in the lawsuits brought by Oregon and Indiana soldiers.  Last month, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to investigate KBR’s “excessive” expenses and the terms under which the Pentagon had provided it “a blank check.”

    In 2003, the soldiers from Oregon, Indiana, the United Kingdom and elsewhere were sent to Qarmat Ali in southern Iraq to provide security for KBR’s contractors, who were charged with repairing a water treatment plant. One of the chemicals stored at the plant was sodium dichromate, a powder that contains hexavalent chromium, a potent carcinogen. Some of the chemical compound was loose and drifting at the site and had stained the soil. Soldiers said later they suffered a variety of maladies, from nosebleeds to breathing difficulties, that they believe were caused by exposure to the chemical.

    KBR has denied knowingly exposing the soldiers to the carcinogen and suggests that their ailments may have been caused by the harsh conditions of the desert.

    A Nov. 18, 2011, letter from a Corps of Engineers contracting officer to a KBR official posted on the website of the Project on Government Oversight spells out the reasons the Corps denied KBR’s request for financial protection.

    “It remains my opinion that this clause does not extend to the chemical and industrial hazards resulting in the alleged exposure of U.S. National Guard and British Military Personel who provided site security at Qarmat Ali to sodium dichromate,” wrote John Rodgers for the Corps. “KBR, as the subject matter expert in oil field issues, was responsible for assessing conditions at each site to which it was sent and taking appropriate action to prevent exposure of any personnel at the site to industrial and environmental hazards.”

    Further, wrote Rodgers, the Corps disputes KBR’s assertion that the Army “failed to provide benign conditions” the contract called for.

    “Both parties to the contract fully understood the conditions in Iraq and the Army interpretation of this provision,” he wrote. “It was not until well after this litigation had been filed that KBR complained that the Army had failed to provide benign conditions.”

    Rodgers further noted that the Army has decided to “remain neutral” in the lawsuits against KBR.

    Celia Balli, KBR’s senior counsel, noted last week that the government has the ability to step in and assume the defense in the cases against KBR, but has decided not to do so.

    When asked if KBR has considered settling the soldiers’ cases, Harrison said no.

    “The company is not at all interested in paying any money to settle claims brought by these plaintiffs’ lawyers,” he said.

    –Mike Francis

     

    U.S. Commandos’ New Landlord in Afghanistan: Blackwater

    A U.S. Special Forces soldier trains on his MK-12 sniper rifle in Iraq, 2007. Photo: U.S. Navy via Wikimedia

    Updated 7:50 a.m.

    U.S. Special Operations Forces have a brand new home in Afghanistan. It’s owned and operated by the security company formerly known as Blackwater, thanks to a no-bid deal worth $22 million.

    You might think that Blackwater, now called Academi, was banished into some bureaucratic exile after its operatives in Afghanistan stole guns from U.S. weapons depots and killed Afghan civilians. Wrong. Academi’s private 10-acre compound outside Kabul, called Camp Integrity, is the new headquarters for perhaps the most important special operations unit in Afghanistan.

    That would be the Special Operations Joint Task Force–Afghanistan, created on July 1 to unite and oversee the three major spec-ops “tribes” throughout Afghanistan, which command some 7,000 elite troops in all. It’s run by Army Maj. Gen. Raymond “Tony” Thomas, a former deputy commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, and is already tasked with reforming how those elite forces train Afghan villagers to fight the Taliban. And its role is only going to grow in Afghanistan, as regular U.S. forces withdraw by 2014 and the commandos take over the residual task of fighting al-Qaida and its allies. Perhaps that’s why Academi’s no-bid contract runs through May 2015.

    Academi spokeswoman Kelley Gannon declined to comment for this story. But it’s highly unusual for U.S. military forces to take up official residence on a privately owned facility. According to Lt. Col. Tom Bryant, the spokesman for Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan, it’s only supposed to be temporary, as the command plans to move to Bagram Air Field by summer 2013. But Camp Integrity is already shaping up to be a crucial location for an Afghanistan war that’s rapidly changing.

     

    Peter Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who’s closely studied the private security industry, finds the spec ops’ private HQ unsurprising. “We’ve seen these kind of close, intertwined relationships in the field between the public and private forces before,” he says. “The U.S. military and the CIA, reportedly, have hired these companies to do everything from building bases, running the facilities and logistics, to serving as the guard forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan. You get to a certain point where you wonder where the U.S. military and private military roles begin and end. But to me, the interesting question is what have we actually learned from these past experiences?” (Full disclosure: Danger Room editor Noah Shachtman works with Singer at Brookings’ 21 Century Defense Initiative.)

    The uber-special ops command’s birth at Camp Integrity apparently occurred for a simple, mundane reason: overcrowding.

    In March, the U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees all commando units around the world, instructed a local unit in Afghanistan to prep for the creation of a new force that would encompass all American special operations forces there. The problem was, there wasn’t sufficient space at existing spec-ops facilities to house the 217 additional personnel that made up the initial complement of the Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan. “We were forced to look for a temporary home until we were ready to consolidate our operations” at Bagram, Bryant says. So it turned to Academi.

    Through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which had an existing contract with Academi for operations at Camp Integrity, the commandos awarded Academi a no-bid deal worth $6.6 million in its first year. They jointly determined that “no other vendor” could have accommodated Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan by the July 1 deadline for the command’s establishment, particularly as it needed secure facilities. A deal was reached with Academi for use of Camp Integrity on May 15.

    “Meeting the deadline of May 15, 2012 was vital for U.S. national security interests and organic Afghan capabilities of local security and governance,” according to an announcement of the basing deal quietly released this week — over six months after Academi began moving the command into its privately-owned home. Without explanation, the contract further states that failing to set up the new special-ops command on time could have jeopardized the U.S. troop drawdown, thereby imposing “insurmountable costs” for keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan longer.

    Academi’s contract for providing the “life support services” to the task force is worth $22.3 million. If all options on the contract are exercised, and the planned move to Bagram takes longer than the command anticipates, it will last until May 2015 — an indication that the special operators’ counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan will continue after most U.S. forces come home after 2014. Last month, Gen. Joseph Dunford, President Obama’s nominee to take over command of the war, said “counterterrorism” would be among the missions of a post-2014 force.

    U.S. and Afghan negotiators recently began discussions over the scope of that residual presence, and a big factor in that debate will concern which Afghan bases will host American troops. But it’s less clear what authority U.S. diplomats and Afghan bureaucrats have over a privately-owned base like Camp Integrity, although Academi’s operations are already certified by Afghan authorities.

    Academi won’t talk much about Camp Integrity. A spokesman, John Procter, told Danger Room in March that it contains a “24/7 operations center, fueling stations, vehicle maintenance facility, lodging, office and conference space and a fortified armory.” His colleague Gannon declined to elaborate for this story. According to its contract, Academi will provide everything from food to tech support to “armed security services” for the mega-spec ops command at Camp Integrity.

    But the commandos won’t be the only U.S. military tenants at Camp Integrity. A Pentagon agency called the Counter-Narcoterrorism Program Office also uses Camp Integrity as a base of operations to aid in its war on Afghanistan’s drug lords. Academi provides the office’s small Kabul cell with, among other things, “a secure armory and weapons maintenance service.”

    Academi’s old incarnation, Blackwater, had deep ties to the secretive U.S. special operations community. Founder Erik Prince was a Navy SEAL, and the firm aided the Joint Special Operations Command with counterterrorism targeting and “snatch and grab” operations in Pakistan. But while the new ownership of the rebranded Academi has previously emphasized its differences with the old Blackwater regime, some continuities are on display — like how the military’s newly expanded spy service will rely on Academi for self-defense training.

    Bryant, the spokesman for the Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan, says the command intends to complete a move to Bagram Air Field, one of the major logistical and command hubs of the war, by summer 2013. (Use of Bagram beyond 2014 is likely to be an issue in the U.S.-Afghan negotiations for a residual force.) While the exact date for the move is still “fluid,” Bryant says the move to Bagram should “favorably posture our headquarters for the next 25 months and beyond.” For the time being, the heart of the enduring commando mission in the U.S.’ longest war can be found at the headquarters of its most infamous private security company.

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    New Bill Could Finally Legalize Hemp in the US

    Filed under: Economic News, Legislation, Politics, Politics, Legislation and Economy News — Leave a comment
    August 11, 2012

    Politics, Legislation and  Economy

     

     

    The legislation would get around the DEA’s refusal to differentiate hemp from marijuana and allow American farmers to grow it.
     

    A bipartisan group of senators has introduced a bill that would exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana. The bill, if passed, would get around the DEA’s refusal to differentiate hemp from marijuana and could result in American farmers being allowed to grow the industrial crop.

    The bill, Senate Bill 3501 , was introduced last week by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and cosponsored by Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR). It would amend the Controlled Substances Act to make clear that hemp is not a drug, even though it is part of the cannabis family. Hemp has much lower levels of THC than marijuana grown for recreational or medicinal purposes.

    The bill marks Wyden’s second attempt this year to get hemp de-listed. He tried to offer an amendment to the farm bill the Senate passed in June to do just that, but the Senate leadership ruled the amendment was not germane.

    “I firmly believe that American farmers should not be denied an opportunity to grow and sell a legitimate crop simply because it resembles an illegal one,” Wyden said. “Raising this issue has sparked a growing awareness of exactly how ridiculous the US’s ban on industrial hemp is. I’m confident that if grassroots support continues to grow and Members of Congress continue to hear from voters then common sense hemp legislation can move through Congress in the near future.”

    The bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    Meanwhile, another hemp bill, House Resolution 1831 , which would also clarify that hemp is not marijuana for the purposes of the Controlled Substances Act, languishes in the Republican-controlled House.

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    Dem senator advocates for industrial hemp bill – The Hill’s Video

    Filed under: bureaucracy, Government, Health, Jobs, Legislation, Medical Research — Leave a comment
    June 13, 2012

    Dem senator advocates for industrial hemp bill – The Hill’s Video.

    Dem senator advocates for industrial hemp bill

    By Daniel Strauss – 06/13/12 05:14 PM ET

    Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) explained the difference between industrial hemp and marijuana on Wednesday in a floor speech advocating for an amendment to a Senate farm bill that would allow American farmers to grow hemp.

    Wyden’s amendment would remove a federal regulation banning farmers from growing hemp and replace it with a state-administered permit system. Wyden’s amendment (#2220) is co-sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

    “This is, in my view, a textbook example of a regulation that flunks the commonsense test. There is government regulation on the books today that prevents America’s farmers from growing industrial hemp and what’s worse is this regulation is hurting job creation in rural American and increasing our trade deficit,” Wyden said.

    The amendment would likely win more support from other members of the Senate once they learned that it really wasn’t an attempt to legalize marijuana, Wyden continued.

    “When my colleagues get, I think, more information on this outrageous, outlandish regulation, I think most of my colleagues are going to say that the restriction on industrial hemp is really a poster child for dumb regulation,” Wyden continued. “The only thing standing in the way of taking advantage of this very profitable crop is a lingering misunderstanding about its use, and the amendment that I have filed on this issue will end a ridiculous regulation once and for all.”

    Wyden added that there were major differences between industrial grown hemp and marijuana.

    “Now I know that there are going to be members of Congress and others who are going to be listening and say ‘all this talk about hemp is basically talk about marijuana.’ The fact of the matter is while they come from the same species of plant, there are major differences between them.

    “Under this amendment the production of hemp would still be regulated but it would be done through permitting programs, not the federal government,” he said.

    Wyden said nine states had already introduced permitting programs that banned the growth of marijuana and that industrial hemp had a very low tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) level — much lower than marijuana.

    “Under 0.03 percent. The lowest-grade marijuana typically has 5 percent THC content,” Wyden said.

    “The bottom line,” Wyden added, “is no one is going to get high on industrial hemp.”

    Wyden introduced his amendment on Thursday. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) put forward similar legislation, H.R. 1831, in the House. —This story was updated at 5:46 p.m.

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