Written on Sunday, August 5th, 2007 at 9:03pm by Christopher Smith | 5 Comments

Brian Higgins: Protecting America?

Higgins

On Saturday, the US House of Representatives voted 227-183 in favor of the Protect America Act 2007. Basically, this legislation amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for a period of six months and makes President George W. Bush’s illegal wiretapping order retroactively legal.

Higgins was one of 41 Democrats who crossed the aisle to join Republicans in support of legalizing warrantless wiretapping. The problem with the bill is its intentionally vague language.

Notwithstanding any other law, the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General, may for periods of up to one year authorize the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States if the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General determine, based on the information provided to them, that–

`(1) there are reasonable procedures in place for determining that the acquisition of foreign intelligence information under this section concerns persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States

For a period of 120 days, that determination of reasonable belief is left up to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or the DNI without FISA court review. If the FISA court finds that the measures used for surveillance were improper or the targets were indeed within the United States, the Administration may appeal.

You might remember how well unsupervised wiretapping went last time.

The Democrats were seemingly rushed into action on a bill they had previously said would be evaluated in the fall. Unfortunately, they wanted to appear strong on defense and with Bush, McConnell, and Chertoff giving us their best guesstimates and hunches that an unspecified threat could unspecifically target a hypothetical target anytime within the next 6-24 months, well, the call to action was clear.

President Bush thanks Rep. Higgins, Reynolds, and Kuhl for their support of the bill.

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5 Comments

  1. Fed-Up in WNY says:
    August 5, 2007 at 11:09 pm

    Oh Geek, this is a good one. Congressman Higggins dressed as a dem but wearing a wolf’s (pin-striped) republican suit! No offense to Rus Thompson though. ;)

  2. Fed-Up in WNY says:
    August 5, 2007 at 11:12 pm

    Congressman Higgins should be more concerned with the “security” of a certain bridge in the neighborhood he calls home…
    http://southbuffaloblogger.wnymedia.net/blogs/2007/08/04/close-and-closer-the-cazenovia-street-bridge/

  3. starbuck says:
    August 6, 2007 at 2:06 pm

    The problem with the bill is its intentionally vague language.

    Instead of just rejecting it outright, It might be interesting to see constructive suggestions for re-wording it such that it would be acceptable.

    When the Lackawana Six are released some day, I hope their phone conversations are monitored. Knowing this is likely, they’ll no doubt change phones a lot, borrow phones of friends, “borrow” phones of strangers, etc.

    Suppose some of these calls are made to an interesting pattern of some other U.S. citizens, who then in turn make a an unusual pattern to Pakistan and Yemen, and perhaps then an unusual pattern of calls to other citizens who are employees with very sensitive jobs with U.S. airline companies, or water systems, or nuclear plants, etc.

    It might be logical to want to quickly be able to listen to those overseas and domestic calls.

    What steps should have to be taken at that point – should each and every phone number require making contact with a judge for review?

    Or might it be acceptable to get later approval, but you feel the 120 day period is too long? How long a period would be acceptable?

  4. Jim Ostrowski says:
    August 6, 2007 at 7:42 pm

    Brian is the Morton Kondracke of Buffalo politics. Take the opposite of what he thinks and you will rarely be wrong.

  5. Mike In WNY says:
    August 7, 2007 at 9:46 am

    Higgins has supported the Patriot Act since Day One.

 

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