In a speech on the Senate floor yesterday, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) said the current debate over amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is not simply one more dispute over intelligence policy. Rather, he said, it calls into question basic issues of democratic governance and the rule of law.
He presented the case against the pending FISA amendments, particularly the provisions that would immunize telephone companies against lawsuits regarding their participation in domestic surveillance.
“Did the telecoms break the law? I don’t know. I can’t say so. But pass immunity, and we will never know,” Sen. Dodd said.
The President’s warrantless surveillance program, he said, is of a piece with other Administration departures from established legal norms including its policies on coercive interrogation and extraordinary rendition, as well as its pervasive secrecy.
“What is this about? It is about answering the fundamental question: Do we support the rule of law or the rule of men? To me, this is our defining question as a nation and may be the defining question that confronts every generation, as it has throughout our history.”
Sen. Dodd and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) announced their intention to filibuster the FISA Amendment bill.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) spoke in favor of the bill, including the provisions on shielding telephone companies from legal liability for their actions.
“Those who are opposed to the President’s efforts to monitor al-Qaida’s communications after 9/11 should take their argument to the President, not to the private companies that patriotically complied with government requests to help this country,” he said.
Denice Ross, former U.S. Chief Data Scientist and Data Policy Institute lead at the Federation of American Scientists, will be honored for her stewardship of public data by the National Academy of Public Administration, where she has been named a Fellow.
Confirmation that the construction of the security perimeter and associated security infrastructure at RAF Lakenheath are still ongoing once again raises questions about whether U.S. nuclear weapons have already been deployed to the base.
Alaskans are sensibly pulling back from the vogue for bans and returning to a western tradition that has worked for more than half a century – one that welcomes innovation but also oversees it closely.
The strength of our nation’s data policy isn’t just in the rules we write, but in how effectively we translate those rules into a system that prioritizes the public good. Join us in this movement to design and build more resilient national data policies.