[Infowarrior] - White House Seeks Renewal of Surveillance Laws

[Richard Forno]

White House Seeks Renewal of Surveillance Laws
By Carrie Johnson and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 16, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/15/AR2009091503182_pf.html
The Obama administration has for the first time set out its views on  
the controversial Patriot Act, telling lawmakers this week that legal  
approval of government surveillance methods scheduled to expire in  
December should be renewed, but leaving room to tweak the law to  
protect Americans' privacy.

In a letter from Justice Department officials to key members of the  
Senate Judiciary Committee, the administration recommended that  
Congress move swiftly with legislation that would protect the  
government's ability to collect a variety of business and credit card  
records and to monitor terrorism suspects with roving wiretaps.

But Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich also told Democrats that  
the administration is "willing to consider" additional privacy  
safeguards advocated by lawmakers, so long as the provisions do not  
"undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities."

The three provisions set to expire Dec. 31 allow investigators to  
monitor through roving wiretaps suspects who may be trying to escape  
detection by switching cellphone numbers, obtain business records of  
national security targets, and track "lone wolves" who may be acting  
by themselves on behalf of foreign powers or terrorist groups. The  
government has not employed the lone wolf provision, but department  
officials want to ensure they can do so in the future.

Obama's approach to electronic surveillance has been closely watched  
since he shifted positions during the presidential campaign last year,  
casting a vote to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act  
over the objections of liberals in his party. That law granted  
telecommunication companies immunity from lawsuits by Americans who  
argued that their privacy had been violated in an electronic data  
collection program.

Wiretapping and surveillance grew highly politicized during the Bush  
years after the New York Times disclosed a secret electronic  
monitoring program that had swept up sensitive information for years  
without court approval.

The Justice Department inspector general issued blistering audits in  
2007 and 2008, finding, for instance, that FBI agents had used demands  
for information known as national security letters in many cases where  
they were not authorized and had employed other tools called exigent  
letters to quickly obtain data without proper follow-up.

Chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees scheduled  
hearings on the reauthorization of the expiring provisions in the  
Patriot Act for next week. And Sens. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and  
Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who raised strong objections to the  
problems in the previous administration, said Tuesday that they would  
introduce a bill to enhance privacy safeguards.

"We must take this opportunity to get it right, once and for all,"  
they said in a joint statement.

Several civil liberties groups are exhorting Congress to use the  
expiration to begin debate on an array of domestic surveillance  
issues. One priority is national security letters, which require  
disclosure of sensitive information by banks, credit card companies  
and telephone and Internet service providers. No judge signs off on  
these, and recipients are usually barred from talking about the letters.

Durbin and Feingold want to tighten standards for obtaining national  
security letters so that the government must show some "nexus to  
terrorism," according to a Senate Democratic aide, heightening the  
current standard of showing "relevance" to a counterterrorism  
investigation. The senators also want a judge be able to review the  
appropriateness of the gag order on the letters' recipients. Such  
provisions were contained in bipartisan legislation introduced  
previously by Feingold and Durbin and supported by then-Sen. Barack  
Obama.

Their new bill, expected to be out this week, will also seek to repeal  
the legal immunity granted to telecommunications companies included in  
last year's domestic surveillance legislation. The bill would also  
ensure that new powers granted under last year's law would not be used  
as a pretext to target the communications of Americans in the United  
States without a warrant, another Senate Democratic aide said.

The letters "are really the most glaring problem" under the Patriot  
Act, said Sharon Bradford Franklin, general council of the  
Constitution Project, a bipartisan advocacy group.

Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil  
Liberties Union, said it was "refreshing" to see the administration's  
willingness to work with Congress. "The question is, what will the  
final bill look like?"

The ACLU is also urging a tightening of last year's FISA Amendments  
Act to ensure that the government is collecting the e-mails and phone  
calls only of suspected terrorists. It also wants revisions of  
guidelines that empower FBI agents to use intrusive techniques to  
gather intelligence within the United States without any evidence that  
a target has ties to a terrorist organization.