Cheney Assails Press on Report on Bank Data
“What I find most disturbing about these stories is the fact that some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs, thereby making it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks against the American people,” Mr. Cheney said, in impromptu remarks at a fund-raising luncheon for a Republican Congressional candidate in Chicago. “That offends me.”
Well, what offends me is that the administration believes that if it is fighting terrorism that it has near carte blanche to do whatever it wants and then gets upset whenever anyone questions the way that they are doing what they are doing.
I have no special outrage about this financial monitoring program. In fact, I have not settled in my mind exactly what to think about this program. I do know that it seems to me that the administration seem to be allergic to serious oversight:
The data is obtained using broad administrative subpoenas, not court warrants.
This strikes me as inadequate.
And I am hardly upset with the media for releasing the information, because it seems quite obvious that the administration will not submit to adequate oversight without this kind of public attention. The way we (and seemingly the Congress as well) have found about about the NSA wiretap program, the NSA phone records program and now this program has been through media revelations.
As such, Senate Specter asks the $64,000 question:
Mr. Specter has been at odds with the administration over another previously secret counterterrorism operation, the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program. The senator said he was particularly troubled that the administration had expanded its Congressional briefings on the financial tracking program in recent weeks after having learned that The New York Times was making inquiries.“Why does it take a newspaper investigation to get them to comply with the law?” the senator asked. “That’s a big, important point.”
Given that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hinted at a number of such programs existing when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the NSA wiretap program, it seems that it behooves us to want more inquiry into what is being done and whether it is being done with proper oversight.
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June 24th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
“Why does it take a newspaper investigation to get them to comply with the law?” the senator asked.
Because congress doesn’t do any investigating itself. Why is Specter surprised that the Executive acts on its own whim, when neither the Senate nor the House have seriously challenged the president. In fact they bend over backwards to accomodate these actions, even suggesting retroactively legalizing everything the president has done.
June 25th, 2006 at 12:30 am
[Quote:]I have no special outrage about this financial monitoring program. In fact, I have not settled in my mind exactly what to think about this program.[unquote]My memory often fails me but I seem to remember this kind of financial monitoring was what the Bush leadership declined to adopt (pre-9/11) because it would expose corporate tax evasion. Amiwrong or Am I Wrong?
June 25th, 2006 at 7:27 am
Vigilante,
I must confess: I have no recollection of such a debate pre-911.
June 25th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Subpoenas “strike you” as being inadequate. How about if I want your medical records in prosecuting someone who shot you? Should I have to get a warrant from a judge? Or can I just issue a subpoena to the hospital, with no judicial oversight?
I’ll tell you how it’s done every day in this country. Subpoenas are sent, without first being seen by a judge.
Happens all the time.
Same thing with cell phone records.
How does that “strike you”? And we’re just prosecuting some street thugs, not going after terrorist masterminds.
I have a feeling the public misunderstands the power of the everyday subpoena.
Also:
Why do you take the words of Arlen Specter as gospel? The House and Senate intelligence committees were kept apprised of the program, according to Tony Snow. But that’s not good enough for Arlen Specter, because he wants to be in on everything. Well, Arlen, guess what? You’re not on the Senate Intelligence Committee. So what makes you think you are entitled under “the law” to be informed of every legal anti-terror surveillance program conducted by the Executive Branch?
June 25th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Patterico,
One problem with your examples of the usage of subpoenas is that those are specific instances in specific situations. The likelihood of widespread abuse is limited. Of course, Rush Limbaugh would probably note that subpoenas of medical records, even in a specific case, can be abused.
However, the issue here is not subpoenas specifically, nor my usage of the formulate “it strikes me.”
We are talking here about the mass accumulation of data by the federal government that is linked in large measure to perfectly innocent individuals. This goes well beyond acquiring medical records in the context of a known crime.
While I leave open the possibility that this is all quite necessary, I have not been calmed in my concerns by the responses from the White House, which typically boils down to either “trust us” or “this is perfectly legal under Article II.” I find the willingness of a ostensibly conservative administration and its ostensibly conservative supporters to see Article II through such a “living” lens to be rather disturbing. And I say this as one who considers himself to be a small government conservative who knows full well that abuse of power by the government can be a very dangerous thing, and specifically abuse of power by the executive branch when done in secret.
And in the past I have not been a particular fan of the Senator from Pennsylvania, to be honest. However, since I have found myself trusting the Bush administration on these issues less and less, I will take whatever port in the storm that I can.
Given that I was wholly unimpressed with the oversight of the NSA wiretap program by the Intelligence Committee, I find my default position to be skepticism vis-a-vis these programs and the administrations explanations of them.
June 25th, 2006 at 11:40 pm
We are talking here about the mass accumulation of data by the federal government that is linked in large measure to perfectly innocent individuals.
How do you know this? My understanding is that one end of the transaction has to be a terrorist. Why do you think that “in large measure” it is “perfectly innocent people” who are affected?
Did Arlen Specter say that or something?
June 25th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
And in the past I have not been a particular fan of the Senator from Pennsylvania, to be honest. However, since I have found myself trusting the Bush administration on these issues less and less, I will take whatever port in the storm that I can.
I.e. you’re trusting Arlen Specter to tell you that the Administration is doing something illegal here. Right? You don’t have any independent argument to offer me that they have acted illegally, do you? If you do, you should take it to the editors of the NYT and LAT, because they haven’t found anyone yet who can positively assert that this program is illegal.
June 26th, 2006 at 6:39 am
Patterico,
I base the fact that mass accumulations of data is taking place on the NYT piece and the logic fact that to do data-mining and patterns analysis one has to have a great deal of data. If the government knew precisely which bits of information they needed, they wouldn’t need to “sift” though anything, now would they?
To quote the NYT piece: The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, has allowed counterterrorism authorities to gain access to millions of records of transactions routed through Swift from individual banks and financial institutions around the world. The data is obtained using broad administrative subpoenas, not court warrants.
It seem rather unlikely that those millions of records are all al Qaeda’s. Instead many, many of those records (indeed, most) are of trasnactions made by innocent people, with account numbers and names attached, are in the hands of government officials. It is a mass accumulation of data, as I noted.
And I think you are getting overly distracted by Specter.
And understand: I am less concerned about this program than I am about the NSA wiretap program and the phone records program. And beyond any specific program it is the administration’s lack of seriousness on the topic of oversight that is my base concern. This story specifically catches my attention because of the prior pattern.
June 27th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Patterico,
Your examples of subpoena-only data are inaccurate. Those instances would require a judicial search warrant. *Especially* in the case of medical records, the HIPAA regulations would require a judge to throw unwarranted evidence out immediately.
Law enforcement would (or at least should) prefer to err on the side of caution with regard to warrants vs. subpoenas, because incorrectly obtaining material evidence can dismiss a case and let an alleged criminal walk on a technicality.
But all this is beside the point. Our system of checks and balances requires that at least two branches of government oversee each other before search or seizure can be undertaken. The Framers were very clear about this, they were pretty fed up with the capriciousness of King George’s agents dropping by their homes at all hours just to harass them. As one who has been in a similar position, being harassed illegally by agents of our government, I stand firm by our Framer’s intent, which also indicated that the Fourth Estate should feel free to step in and correct checks and balances when they go awry. Hence Madison’s insistence on the First Amendment.
If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read the Federalist Papers. It sheds valuable light on the rationale for the Charters, and helps us understand the perspective that has allowed our Constitution to stand the test of time. At least it did until the last 25 years or so.
June 28th, 2006 at 7:57 am
I just don’t trust this bunch to protect the rights of citizens or human rights for that matter. Their track record is abysmal. The lack of congressional oversight shows a breakdown of the checks and balance system.
Secret prisons, Guantanamo, torture, rendition, Plamegate, Abu Ghriab. What has become of our country??
June 28th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
Your examples of subpoena-only data are inaccurate. Those instances would require a judicial search warrant. *Especially* in the case of medical records, the HIPAA regulations would require a judge to throw unwarranted evidence out immediately.
Perhaps you’d like to provide a link to support this.
June 29th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Or perhaps not!
I don’t think you can find one.