The Electronic Frontier Foundation and others have called for the creation of a commission like the Church Commission to investigate allegations of para-Constitutional but legal use of mass surveillance on US citizens. The Church Commission actually had a broader mandate and so should any current commission.
This proposal seeks the most practical way to honestly and truthfully deal with allegations that have arisen against national intelligence and counter-terrorism operations of the US government.
So, comment away.
Composition:
Senator Ron Wyden, Chair
Senator Johnny Isakson
Senator Amy Klobuchar
SenatorJohn Hoeven
Rep. John Conyers
Rep. Walter Jones (NC)
Rep. Keith Ellison
Rep. Mark Amodei
Scope:
The Commission shall investigate all allegations of extra-Constitutional and para-Constitutional action in US intelligence and counter-terrorism activities since the the Church Commission was impaneled.
The Commission shall consider the actions of, but not limited to, the following agencies: Office of Director of National Intelligence, Department of Defense, Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Justice, Department of State, Department of Homeland Security. It shall consider the actions of employees and contractors of these agencies and the actions of any coordinating or grantee jurisdictions, including foreign nations.
The Commission shall have the power to declassify materials necessary to presentations of its work to public scrutiny or for referral to Article III federal courts.
The Commission shall have the power to subpoena any public or private individual witnesses or documents necessary for its work. Witnesses shall be immunized or otherwise protected from retaliation by management as a result of their testimony.
The Commission shall consider allegations of abuse or corruption presented in books, media reports, testimony of whistleblowers, government investigations, or other sources and shall identify them by date, location, and agency as an index.
The Commission shall produce a declassified report to the public of its findings.
The Commission shall consider the impact upon Constitutional government of state secrecy, including secret locations, secret personnel, secret information, secret budgets, secret laws, and other departures from an open society and make recommendations for expanding an open society while fulfilling national security requirements.
The Commission shall consider the difficulties that the large numbers of clearances and the overclassification of information, particularly to avoid accountability, impose on national security.
The Commission shall consider the use of informants, the inflation of charges brought by prosecutors against suspects, and determine whether these practices have resulted in the conviction or persecution of innocent people.
The Commission shall determine whether intelligence agencies have violated the Geneva Conventions specifically or other laws of war generally in their operations and shall refer cases for proseucution under US laws.
The Commission shall be financed out of contigency funds available to national intelligence agencies at the discretion of the President.
The Commission shall have at a minimum a chief of staff, counsel, technical staff familiar with the information technologies involved. amd other employees as they shall decide.
The Commission shall have the power to put persons testifying under oath.
The Commission shall solicit the advice of experts and advocates in preparing its recommendations for legislation or reorganization of national intelligence and counter-terrorism activities.
The Commission shall ground its recommendations in arguments that explain how the Constitutional guarantees of rights in the Bill of Rights will not be violated by implementation of its recommendations.
A presidential commission? You don’t really expect the bullshit-artist-in-chief to do anything about looking into the national security state he has been building, do you?
The Church Committee was a United States Senate Select Committee. The president had nothing to do with it. The whole point of the committee was that Congress had come to the realization that it had trusted the president (Nixon) too much.
The Congress is too partisanly dysfunctional and too complicit with the national security state to create a Senate Select Committee.
Yesterday, I made the argument, which pissed some folks off, that it was necessary for the White House to get ahead of the public outrage on this issue or it would damage his Presidency. This was just an excercise in constructive proposal on that point.
There seems to be little support for it on Daily Kos, here, or at Firedoglake, which pretty much covers everyone to the left of John Boehner.
Almost everyone seems to be in waiting-for-the-Apocalypse mode or business-as-usual mode.
Our descendants will remember this failure only if they are allowed to know about it.
OK, thanks, I understand your reasoning now. Today’s Congress is not the Congress of 1975, of course. And I agreed with you when you wrote yesterday that the “White House staff needs to seriously get ahead of this”.
However, when you consider that Obama’s response to the NSA leaks was that “You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy”, which, as Dave Lindorff has noted, is utter bullshit, one has to accept that there is no hope that this administration will ever take any measures to restrict the metastasis of the national security/surveillance state.
To quote a remark I made yesterday, the NSA programs exist not to create security, but are driven by “bureaucratic mission creep, fueled by new technology, and the same drive for profits that has such an influence on ‘defense’ spending.” One can add that another motive behind the NSA’s programs is simply to spy on other countries—NSA’s original mission, which no longer has an acceptable purpose, now that the Cold War is over—and to engage in cyberwarfare.
Hope of change doesn’t end until January 2017.
Obama’s response is what I have been referring to as bubblespeak. It is platitudes that don’t address the details–exactly the wrong response. The proposal was in hopes some folks close to the bubble might hint at it.
Yes. Grasping for straws.
With contractors driving the requirements gathering, it is more than mission creep (in the traditional sense) that is going on. It is active boondoggling.
And don’t get me started on the idea of the most cybervulnerable nation in the world engaging in offensive cyberwarfare. Massive amounts of braindead in that proposition.
Most Americans back NSA tracking phone records, prioritize probes over privacy
More Democrats than Republicans find the NSA’s practices acceptable becaause—Obama!
It’s really very sad. I don’t think the plutocracy ever thought that choosing a black candidate for president would prove to be so effective in continuing and extending Bush’s policies.
Oh, they had some idea. While Democrats/liberals continue to rail against the Reagan/GHWB policies, they ignore/overlook that the real slasher of New Deal regulations was Clinton and they are eager for Clinton II four years from now.
Signs of life in a movement.
86 Civil Liberties Groups and Internet Companies Demand an End to NSA Spying