“U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Somerville), who voted against the Patriot Act, rallied protesters by calling the law the worst attack on freedom since the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts.”
Boston Herald
September 10, 2003
I am sure you are aware that Verizon has reportedly been ordered by the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court) to turn over, “on an ongoing daily basis”, information about every customer telephone number, including landline, cell and business numbers. That information reportedly includes all numbers dialed and all calls received within the United States as well as between the United States and other countries.
As I write this newsletter, the news is filled with reports that a similar program called PRISM is in place for every major internet and email provider. The government claims they have not accessed the content of phone calls, but it seems they ARE accessing the content of emails such as videos, websites visited and more. According to reports, the PRISM program is not at this time being used on U.S. citizens.
Even if you can accept the government collecting the number and length of every call you make, are you really comfortable with them having the ability to catalogue all the YouTube videos you watch, the Netflix movies you download, or the web pages you visit? It seems that our own government has access to every phone call, email and internet search for all Americans at every minute of every day.
Like most Americans, I am absolutely outraged. But, if you’re a long time subscriber to these newsletters, you probably already knew that. You also probably know that I voted against passage of the so-called “Patriot Act” and every reauthorization since it first passed in 2001.
Before I go any further, I feel compelled to remind you that I was an early and strong supporter of President Obama. I am still amongst the strongest Obama supporters in the House of Representatives. Nonetheless, I cannot remain silent out of some sort of misplaced loyalty to President or party when I believe that basic American rights have been intentionally trampled.
I know we live in a dangerous world and there is work to do to prevent terrorists from harming us. But we must find a balance between giving law enforcement the tools they need to track and indentify terrorists and protecting the very liberties upon which our great country was founded.
This data collection has reportedly been going on for 7 years. The length of time that this has been going on and the staggering amount of data collected on every Verizon customer amounts to an incredible overreach. Even if you’re not a Verizon customer, there is clearly reason for concern. Who really believes that Verizon is the only telecommunications company required to turn over this data?
I have always believed that we must give law enforcement the tools they need to pursue criminals. However, we can do that and still protect civil liberties.
It is time for those of us who support President Obama to speak up. I believe he is a good man and has been a good President. However, I think his Administration has allowed their concern for our safety to lead them down the wrong path. If we remain silent, those who have always wished him to fail on every point stand a better chance of winning the hearts and minds of America and we will all be worse off for it. It is possible to support President Obama and yet disagree with him on certain issues – this is one of those times.
As recent revelations have focused attention on the Patriot Act, I wanted to pass along the above post, which I shared with my E-Update Subscribers and my Facebook page. If you would like to subscribe you can sign up on my website http://www.house.gov/capuano/e-updates/subscribe.shtml or like my official Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/RepMichaelCapuano.
…search whatever you want as long as you have a warrant or court order, but it appears there is a court order from FISA in this case. Though I’m not personally as bothered as some by gathering general data what does constitutionally trouble me is the requirement that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” In other words, blanket requests for information need not apply. FISA is not SCOTUS and therefore appealable and so it seems any customer of these companies would have standing to sue.
Even if President Obama believes this data will be used in limited and appropriate ways, there are two reasons why we must be cautious.
1. As the very leak of these documents reveal, there’s nothing stopping one IT guy at the NSA from gaining access on any individual that could ruin a career. We blamed the IRS scandal on a few people violating IRS policy. Who will we blame when a few NSA people abuse this data?
2. Even scarier, there will always be another Richard Nixon. Do we really want to create all these kinds of powers and abilities now, when tomorrow it could be used to curtail freedom or end political opposition?
I am more concerned about the systemic abuse of this information than I am of another Richard Nixon. President Obama actually laid out the calculation that troubles me the most, when he said “We cannot have 100% security and 100% individual liberty”.
In my view, our most important task is to re-establish our focus on individual liberty, and reel in the hypersensitivity to “security” that has existed since 9/11. I suggest that the incremental gains in security resulting from the pervasive dismantling of our individual liberty are not nearly worth the price.
We learned, in the Boston Marathon attack, that the hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars on “security” we have spent since 9/11 was rendered essentially worthless by two amateurs. All those bombproof trash cans, fancy subway and highway signs, all the wiretapping and Patriot Act excesses — ALL OF IT — did virtually nothing to prevent the attack or manage its aftermath.
Imagine what two professionals might have accomplished.
In my view, we must regain our sense of perspective. We live in a dangerous world. Freedom — especially the freedoms embodied in and implied by our Constitution — is revolutionary. That means it sometimes offends people, governments, and religious sects. That, in turn, means that it requires courage to maintain. Attacks will occur, and those attacks will be deadly.
Those who came before us did not cower in fear nor jettison our tradition of individual freedom in the face of such attacks. Neither should we.
It seems to me that we must change the direction of our culture so that the tradeoff made by every president, Republican or Democrat, is closer to the priorities set before 9/11 than after.
If we continue the path that we have followed since 9/11, then Al Qaeda has won.
If I may and if you can answer.
Do you see any evidence in of this issue bringing together factions and/or individual members of Congress and the Senate who previously were unable to agree on most things?
Could this the be game changer for the better?
why hasn’t David, Bob, or Charley promoted this. It’s been three hours. Three hours we we won’t get back in our fight against tyranny and injustice and double parking on East Broadway.
Hi EB3, You ask a very good question. Members who don’t necessarily agree on much else are expressing concerns about the overreach here. This issue doesn’t seem to be breaking along party lines. Although there are still lots of members willing to sacrifice civil liberties for the patina of security, I certainly hope that this news will lead to positive bipartisan action.
I am surprised and disappointed by the responses of the President some some Congress. So far the BMG editors have remained silent on the issue. That surprises me.
Perhaps their youth doesn’t let me them remember the 60s and 70s when we one side had youth looking for more freedom and transparency fighting their parents who gave it all they had fighting totalitarianism so we can live in a free and transparent country. Although crazy times there was much less a schism between the two sides. The Vietnam War was triggered the “revolution”. And cultural issues such as women’s rights etc.
HOWEVER The raging hippies and the WWII vets of the 1960s and 1970s would have immediately join together in opposition to the President of the United States if he stated that the government was keeping a record on every sigle phone call made by who to whom and for how long the y spoke.
If the President then insisted that it was ‘not a big deal’ because they were not listening than I believe many within in these two polarized groups of 40 years ago would have joined in a call for impeachment.
My God how far we have come.
I hope you and others in Washington are able to use your best advocacy skills to convince the American public of the serious demolition this is doing to a most essential keystone of our Constitution.
Good Luck Congressman Capuano
until those in power are convinced that citizens won’t keep their secrets for them. We owe a tremendous debt to people like Ellsburg, Manning, Assange and Snowden.
A presidential pardon is in order, along with vigorous prosecution of the NSA spook(s) who lied to Congress.
He seems to me more follower than leader. Much like his predecessor. Who’s really in charge? Does anyone believe we’re still part of the “free world”?
Worse than slavery? Worse than rounding people up and imprisoning them because they happen to have Japanese ancestry? Worse than the Trail of Tears? Really?
Not to minimize the critical civil liberties issues at stake here, but it’d be helpful to ratchet down the hyperbole when we discuss this. This is an abuse of government power and a very serious infringement of our Constitutional rights. However, no, it is not the worst thing that has ever happened to people’s “freedom” in the history of our nation — even though it’s us who just so happen to be living through it now and us who are personally affected.
it’s still bad. Which side are you on?
You with us or against us?
There is no middle on this.
resorting to hyperbole that shows a remarkable lack of empathy towards past sufferings. Sorry, but just because something is bad — even very bad — doesn’t give one the right to claim it’s the worst thing that’s happened in over two centuries. I’m not the one who started off trying to rank shameful abuses; Rep. Capuano did. I found his conclusion on that distasteful, although clearly others do not.
No, I don’t want to live in a society where the government can mine data about my activities without true probably cause. But given the choice between that and being a forcibly enslaved African? I know which one I’d pick.
This one act allows those in the government to control by many means most anyone they want.
This is one the biggest in 200 years. Anyone of us can now be “enslaved” by nefarious dickweeds working in the federal government.
Don’t make eyes a the girlfriend of certain federal employees. The now have the means to screw with your life.
The worst attack on freedom in more than 200 years? Nope, still won’t.
The NSA wiretapping is really bad, no question, but not as bad as Japanese Interment, Slavery, or the Trail of Tears to name a few.
The internment camps were opened in 1942 (one facility was apparently created in 1939) and were all closed by 1946. As bad as it was, the entire sorry episode was clearly associated with the attack on Pearl Harbor and World War II. It took only four years (and a decisive US military victory over Japan) for the nation to reverse those abhorrent policies. The Japanese internment was an embarrassment that should teach us how important it is to stand by our national values during times of crisis — it speaks against, rather than in favor, the ruse of using “national security” to dismantle the constitutional rights of every American.
I, frankly, feel that trying to rank shameful abuses like this is like trying to say that one hostage situation is better than another because only 15, rather than 17, innocent victims were murdered in cold blood. I reject the calculus.
We know, now, that slavery is immoral. We know, now, that our treatment of Native Americans was immoral. In my view, the murder of just one innocent is just as immoral as the murder of dozens. Morality does not readily lend itself to measurement along a scalar axis.
Like it or not, this episode is the first time that a violation like this is happening to hundreds of millions of Americans. This is the first time that the federal government has claimed the right to dismantle the right to privacy of EVERY AMERICAN. Once taken away, that right will be difficult or impossible to restore.
I think eb3 is correct.
Then do you agree or disagree with Rep. Capuano’s claim that the Patriot Act is the worst attack on freedom since the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts?
The examples you first cited — the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII, slavery, our many abuses of Native Americans — were immoral. The Alien and Sedition Acts were explicit attempts to restrict the constitutional rights of every American. Those are two different concerns. In my view, it’s simply counter-productive to try and compare slavery to today’s NSA abuses.
I think Mr. Capuano was correct when, in 2003, he called the Patriot Act “the worst attack on freedom since the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts”. I think the evidence being revealed now shows how correct he was.
To me, enslaving someone is a pretty obvious denial of freedom. If you mean “the worst attack on freedom that involves all Americans, not just persecuted minorities,” then that’s something else. I guess I view that as a somewhat depressingly limited concept of “freedom,” but if that’s what we’re talking about … under that definition, then, I’d also have to consider McCarthyism, which was a rather frightening assault on people’s rights of free speech and association. And Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus and the resulting arrest of thousands, a fair number of whom apparently were just critical of the president and were not joining or aiding the rebellion.
I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that we have had quite a few other periods where we have fallen alarmingly short of our Constitutional ideals. That’s not at all meant to minimize what’s going on now. It’s more meant to 1) help put this in historical context and 2) point out that “but it’s happening to me! Now!” should not affect how we view the severity of a given situation in order to label it “worst ever.”
You’re attempting to turn somervilletom’s (and Rep. Capuano’s) concern that this is happening to everyone now into “but it’s happening to me! Now!” That is at the least uncharitable, and I think it is reprehensibly dishonest. If you were addressing apologists for previous rights abuses, that comment would be warranted. You aren’t and it’s not.
If you think it uncharitable, fine. I happen get annoyed by hyperbolic blanket statements that label something contemporary the “worst” or “best” in American history when it seems to me this hasn’t included a fair examination of other incidents that could also qualify. Perhaps I should have changed “me” to “us.” Or maybe just said “But it’s happening NOW.”
I don’t see anything dishonest about this, though. I simply don’t agree that the Patriot Act was the worst assault on freedom in American history given the many other things that have happened over the past 200 years. If I bring up examples, the response seems to be “but that’s different.” I don’t see why.
But OK, no one else here is interested in attempting to put this in historical context of other civil liberties violations, and we’re all supposed to agree that the Patriot Act was the worst violation of freedom since the founding of our nation. Apparently that’s a prerequisite for being outraged over the current abuses. Still don’t agree, but given the responses, I don’t see any point in trying to convince anyone otherwise.
Because nobody is saying “those things weren’t so bad.” They’re saying “this is being done to everyone,” with the implied point that your examples were not done to everyone. You may not believe that “most pervasive” is the same as “worst,” but the implication in your comment is that people are only calling it worst because it’s happening to them. It’s also false to say, as you do, that “no one else here is interested in attempting to put this in historical context of other civil liberties violations,” when the statement you object to does that very thing.
You don’t agree that it’s the worst. OK, we get that. There’s no need to impugn the motives of good people in their assertion that it is.
“
I can see how that could be interpreted as question other people’s motive but. I don’t think that was the intent. I don’t think anyone in this thread’s goal is to questions people motives. Oceandreams’s comments have been very civil.
it’s the volume and the potential effect.
Totalitarism for all. Nobody to turn to. The things you point to were violent and incarcerating. This is not. BUT the consequences for the entire country can be a lost democracy. No violence needed. No more USA as we know it.
on the “it’s bad” part instead of devolving into debate about where it should rank? The Congressman called it the worst. You think there were worse things. You made the point, but there’s no benefit in litigating it to this extent. What matters is that we oppose what happened. All of this is just a distraction from that.
…and the other progressive and libertarian leaders that are coming together in defense of human rights and liberty.
Congressman Capuano, can you clarify this sentiment?
Do you think the argument that “attacks on freedom” like slavery and the McCarthyism are “worse” then the current NSA wiretapping scandal is valid.
n/t
because it is relevant. Yesterday you were harping on no discussion, now that there is discussion, let it happen and stop being such a f’n hypocrite.