U.S. Runs Surveillance Operations Based on Secret Interpretations of Patriot Act
May 26th, 2011Via: Wired:
You may think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says it’s worse than you’ve heard.
Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. But Wyden says that what Congress will renew is a mere fig leaf for a far broader legal interpretation of the Patriot Act that the government keeps to itself — entirely in secret. Worse, there are hints that the government uses this secret interpretation to gather what one Patriot-watcher calls a “dragnet” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.
“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden tells Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”
What exactly does Wyden mean by that? As a member of the intelligence committee, he laments that he can’t precisely explain without disclosing classified information. But one component of the Patriot Act in particular gives him immense pause: the so-called “business-records provision,” which empowers the FBI to get businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations to turn over any “tangible things” it deems relevant to a security investigation.
“It is fair to say that the business-records provision is a part of the Patriot Act that I am extremely interested in reforming,” Wyden says. “I know a fair amount about how it’s interpreted, and I am going to keep pushing, as I have, to get more information about how the Patriot Act is being interpreted declassified. I think the public has a right to public debate about it.”
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“I’m talking about instances where the government is relying on secret interpretations of what the law says without telling the public what those interpretations are,” Wyden says, “and the reliance on secret interpretations of the law is growing.”
dollars to donuts buried somewhere in that interpretation is the legal justification for the massive logistics required for the TI support networks, im past believing anybody bothers w/ legal rational when it comes to the targets themselves.
This is more crap from the PTW who have totally LOST IT in terms or terrorism.
This country (US) has gone off the deep end looking for anyone or anything that comes up on some kind of bisarro radar they’ve designed to find “terror.”
This includes I gather, “any dog that barks in the night; any shadow across the sun; anyone who spends too long anywhere at anytime on the internet exploring and researching, ad naseum.”
These morons have been interpreting whatever they want and however they want since 9/11. That was their signal that whatever spying, etc. etc was okay because everyone is a terrorist now.
I’m not a terrorist. I have to get up in the morning and go to work just like you morons do. I want people to have jobs in this depression, but you morons, someone needs to find you and deprive you of all that you are doing to paint anyone and anywhere that is human into a terrorist. Sorry, I can’t abide with you being paid with taxpayer dollars for your behavior which is most unbecoming for anyone. Let alone someone that considers themselves a “patriot.”
You are morons.
Get to the back of the unemployment line.
We don’t need you, never did, never will.