Wired News: Congress Expands FBI Spying Power: Congress approved a bill on Friday that expands the reach of the Patriot Act, reduces oversight of the FBI and intelligence agencies and, according to critics, shifts the balance of power away from the legislature and the courts. A provision of an intelligence spending bill will expand the power of the FBI to subpoena business documents and transactions from a broader range of businesses -- everything from libraries to travel agencies to eBay -- without first seeking approval from a judge. Under the Patriot Act, the FBI can acquire bank records and Internet or phone logs simply by issuing itself a so-called national security letter saying the records are relevant to an investigation into terrorism. The FBI doesn't need to show probable cause or consult a judge. What's more, the target institution is issued a gag order and kept from revealing the subpoena's existence to anyone, including the subject of the investigation. The new provision in the spending bill redefines the meaning of "financial institution" and "financial transaction." The wider definition explicitly includes insurance companies, real estate agents, the U.S. Postal Service, travel agencies, casinos, pawn shops, ISPs, car dealers and any other business whose "cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or regulatory matters."
For heaven's sake, why? There doesn't seem to have been a massive outbreak of domestic terrorism in the past two years. I can't imagine that the FBI or that Ashcroft, our Lord High Minister of Injustice, could have reasonably defend such a desire in public.
Other portions of the funding bill eliminate annual reports to Congress on several controversial matters, such as foreign companies' involvement in the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the effectiveness of the intelligence community and antidrug efforts. The bill also nixes reports on how many times national security letters are used to access individuals' credit reports.
My, but the extent of Congress' craven cowardice is awesome, isn't it? They approve a bill that might never have survived public debate, but which should have, at the least, been given the opportunity. As part of that bill, they stick in requirements that say, basically, "Don't tell us what you're doing. We don't want to know. We think Sgt Schultz of Hogan's Heroes is a real role model: We know nothing! We see nothing! We hear Nothing! We do NO-thing!"
What earthly good is having a deliberative body as part of the government if they refuse to deliberate? What good is congressional oversight of executive agencies if they refuse to exercise it?
Pity that people don't really pay attention to Congress. There's a body needing a thorough purge. Maybe electing an entirely new House would make things worse, maybe it wouldn't. (Given the general rightward tilt of our politics these days, it would probably make things quite a bit worse.) But there must be something we can do to get Congress to act the way it's supposed to act, as a check on this sort of unrestrained exercise of executive power. Yet every time they're given the opportunity to do so, they abdicate.
Posted by iain at November 24, 2003 02:10 PM
