My Letter to My U.S. Senator Regarding NSA Abuses

Dear Senator Kaine:

I am in receipt of your reply, dated today, August 9, in response to my recent emailed letter concerning the abuses of the National Security Agency and the wholesale violation of my, and your, rights under the Fourth Amendment to be free from warrantless searches.

While I am appreciative of your reply, frankly sir, it does not cut the mustard.

You wrote, and I quote:

"The primary mission of the U.S. intelligence community is to detect and prevent the very real threat of terrorism on our homeland. According to General Keith Alexander, Director of the NSA, and Robert Mueller, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the intelligence community has successfully used these programs to identify and thwart dozens of terrorist plots at home and abroad. Additionally, leaders from the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have defended these programs stating that they are transparent, lawful, and have been instrumental in defending our homeland."

The assertions of General Alexander and Director Mueller are just that -- assertions -- unsupported by any documentation available to the public or even to most Members of Congress.  Moreover, they have never addressed the fact that the wholesale dragnet collection of private communications of American citizens who have done nothing wrong -- nothing to warrant suspicion -- failed to stop the underwear bomber, the Boston bombers, the shoe bomber, or the New York car bomber.

The Guardian newspaper reports today www.theguardian.com/world/2013… that a secret backdoor interpretation of Section 702 of the FISA Act Amendments is in fact being used by the NSA to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.

Thus, it is obvious that the President, and Senator Feinstein for example, have simply lied to the American people repeatedly, the President most recently during his interview on Jay Leno's Tonight Show broadcast earlier this week.  Sadly, the President's assertion that "we don't have a domestic spying program" is plainly false.  For me, a life-long Democratic activist who voted for the President twice, that finishes it.

But, as you well know, the President isn't the only liar in high places.  DNI Clapper's recent outrageous statement, when caught lying to Senator Wyden under oath, that he had answered in the "least untruthful manner" when the senator asked whether the National Security Agency was collecting data about millions of Americans, speaks for itself.

Moreover, as is apparent from a recent interview with former NSA analysts William Binney and Russell Tice on PBS www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJS7F-…, this kind of illegal surveillance has been going on since at least 2002.  It is simply outrageous and worthy of prosecution that the NSA is not only collecting my phone calls, emails, and chats with friends in China and Australia, but has been bugging for more than a decade the conversations and other communications of Justices of the Supreme Court and for that matter, while he was in the Senate, the President himself.

Again, while I appreciate your response to my recent letter, I submit that you must do more -- much more.  I urge you in the strongest terms possible to stand with Senators Wyden, Udall, Blumenthal and others and to fight for comprehensive reform of the Patriot Act, the FISA Act, and the FISA amendments.  Among other specific reforms I insist, yes, insist, that all authorities authorizing these unconstitutional surveillance programs be revoked, that the facility in Bluffdale, Utah be permanently shut down, that substantial reform of the FISA court be implemented along the lines of the proposal put forward by Senator Blumenthal in order to make its decisions and interpretations of public laws fully transparent and the manner in which appointments are made to the FISA court be more broad-based and inclusive, and that DNI Clapper be removed from office and prosecuted for making false statements to the Congress.

Those initiatives will not fully restore the Fourth Amendment to its rightful place in our scheme of limited government, but they would represent a reasonable beginning toward that end.  This time, when your staff member responds to my letter, I urge you to instruct him or her to deal directly with the issues I have raised and to state specifically what you plan to do to resist and roll back the growing surveillance state of which I am embarrassed to say I am a citizen.


Sincerely,


Poasterchild