bryan’s point about the fisa court providing a record of their doings is about the only point in favor of keeping it around a bit longer, if only till we overthrow the cheney/bush regime. i do think it’s more likely that they’re trying to avoid leaving a trail and less likely that they want to modify fisa.

but if everything’s all that secret, it’s not like there will be any public scrutiny of that record. which kinda makes the whole thing pointless.

[i, along with about a hundred others, was having tea in the rose garden with members of the nixon family the week before watergate]

I agree with Rook that one of the things… but only one… that are the target of Bushist warrantless surveillance is the Democratic campaign apparatus, both presidential candidates and probably congressional candidates as well. Hey, I’m old enough to remember Watergate as if it happened yesterday; why should I be the least bit surprised to see the political descendants of those bastards attempting the same thing today… with more acquiescence, until now, by an all too compliant Congress?

It’s not that I like FISA… I think parts of it are probably unconstitutional on the face… but that I think that FISA, as it stands, is the best we can do right now. And we certainly need to stop the Bushists’ attempt to modify FISA, or… as appears to be the case now… simply go beyond it in violation of the law.

His communications have been slowed marginally, as the smuggling operations the area is noted for are still very much alive. The funding cut-off is an illusion. Traditional Muslims don’t use the international banking system, they have their own system that is very similar to the system used by the Jews in Europe for centuries based on families and personal relationships.

The torture crap has nothing to do with intelligence methods. It has never produced any actionable intelligence, and professionals know it. There are other methods that have been revealed that inform targets not merely how you are doing something, but how good you are at it, and those are the crown jewels.

The FISA court is not a rubber stamp, which is why they are trying to avoid it. It also provides a record of what they have been up to. The judges on the court are still judges, from a separate branch of government, and they tend to defend their branch from intrusions by the executive. You can’t present classified evidence in a regular court, so you need a separate court in which the justices all have an appropriate clearance.

on a more general note, i can’t see how bringing out into the sunshine all of our information-gathering practices hurts us a whole hell of a lot. it’s not like waterboarding, extraordinary rendition, illegal wiretapping, data mining, etc, have served us well, even back when we didn’t know about them.

spying on others wasn’t invented with the advent of technology. way, way back in history, back when the only forms of communication were talking, signalling, writing, all those primitive methods, everybody knew they could be caught out if they weren’t careful, but that knowledge didn’t stop them from actually carrying out covert operations, nor did it necessarily keep their opponents from catching up with them.

sure, osama is still free as a bird [even that’s debatable] and we haven’t yet been able to hunt him down and extract our pound of flesh from him in exchange for the national indignity we’ve suffered at his hands, but we’ve disrupted his communications, at least temporarily, and his finances too, i understand [also at least temporarily, i haven’t kept up with this]. those are two important things needed for major attacks.

what we have done, by invading afghanistan and iraq and now threatening iran, all instead of chasing obl, is anger countless [mostly anti-western] extremists and inspire them to move from just hating on us to actually organizing and hitting back at us.

—————-

the fisa court is at best useless and more likely a menace. a secret entity whose sole function is to secretly backdate and rubberstamp the secret actions of the [any] administration? no thanks. if they have to go through all the trouble of getting a regular warrant for everything they do, maybe they’ll focus on just the most important and most likely suspects for investigation. certainly we-the-people would be a lot safer from unwarranted intrusion into our lives that way.

They don’t want to be held accountable, or to follow any rules. They think they should be allowed to do whatever they want, no matter what the Constitution says.

Requesting warrant from FISA is not a heavy burden, They should try to get a regular search warrant in a murder investigation, and then come talk to be about problems.

revealing sources isn’t too bright, but i can’t see that revealing methods is as damaging.

Revealing sources and methods really, truly pisses me off. That’s how you blow years of work. Reagan and both Bushes have done this on more than one occasion. It’s a wonder we know anything anymore.