In
a continuation of the Bush administration assault on civil liberties, the Obama
administration is asking Congress to approve increasing the personal data that
the FBI can access without a court order, including Internet browsing histories
and e-mail addresses mailed to and received from an individual.
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Current
federal law mandates communications providers to provide records in
counterintelligence investigations to the FBI without court order or a judge’s
approval.
All
that is needed is the signature of a special agent in charge of any FBI field
office on a so-called “national security letter.” The person so targeted does
not even have to be a suspect. The FBI issued 192,499 national security letter
requests from 2003 to 2006. An investigation by the Justice Department’s
inspector general in 2007 concluded that much of the data collected was done so
illegally.
At
present, the categories of information that may be gathered using a national
security letter are limited to name, address, the period in which they were a
customer and the numbers dialed on a telephone or to that phone, according to a
2008 opinion by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The
administration wants to expand that to include “electronic communication
transactional records,” which they deem to include Internet browsing history
and the e-mail addresses mailed to or received on a person’s Internet service.
The
proposal is “incredibly bold, given the amount of electronic data the
government is already getting,” said Michelle Richardson, American Civil
Liberties Union legislative counsel.
“You’re
bringing a big category of data—records reflecting who someone is communicating
with in the digital world, Web browsing history and potentially location
information—outside of judicial review,” said Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department lawyer
under Pres. Bill Clinton.
Currently,
some Internet service providers refuse to provide this information without a
judge’s warrant, while others comply with the FBI’s request.
Significance of judicial review
While
the judicial branch is another arm of the government that works to protect the
interests of the ruling class, we learn in school that it is intended to be a
structure that can check the power of the executive branch. The latest move on
the part of the Obama administration degrades this judicial protection,
elevating the executive branch.
Further
invading people’s privacy does not make us any safer. As we all know, and as
has been confirmed by the recent WikiLeaks revelations about the war in
Afghanistan, the U.S. government is losing the so-called “war on terrorism”—actually
a war for empire. Instead of admitting defeat, the administration has gone on a
witch-hunt against the brave people who leaked the information, further eroding
civil liberties in the process.
Even
without the change in the law, the government has access to a vast array of
personal Internet information. According to salon.com, the hacker who turned in the WikiLeaks
“leaker” to the government was an analyst for Project Vigilant, which
“monitors the traffic of 12 regional Internet service providers” and
“hands much of that information to federal agencies.”
Project
Vigilant is part of a larger industry for the professional monitoring of
citizens. It is known to track 250 million IP addresses daily, compile the
information that it gathers, and give that information to governmental agencies.
The
Obama administration is attempting to bypass the judicial branch in order to
gain access to more private information about its citizens. “But the emergence
of a private market that sells this data to the government … has eliminated those
obstacles. As a result, the government is able to circumvent the legal and
logistical restrictions on maintaining vast dossiers on citizens, and is doing
exactly that.” (salon.com, Aug. 2).
There
are those who argue that this severe invasion of privacy by the government and
its corporate overseers will lead people to shy away from dissent and submit to
surveillance. But it can and it must do the opposite. Working people in this country
must continue to fight back against the system that claims to be “protecting”
its people when it is, in fact, spying on them and denying their basic civil
liberties on a daily basis.
