Germans, recently privy to news that Europe’s biggest telecommunications firm was illegally wiretapping phone calls, are recalling what life was like when East Germany’s secret police were still around:
Experts say sophisticated modern methods — involving digital data, computers and mobile phones — are a far cry from the days of the Stasi who used steaming [...]

Laura Rosen hits on something that’s been bugging me about the passport story too:
Seriously, what am I missing? Isn’t there some bizarre sort of cognitive dissonance going on in seeing the reactions to the two cases? How much more intrusive is it to have federal law enforcement and intelligence scouring ordinary people’s phone records, emails, [...]

Last year, I wrote a quick post about Martin Heinrich, and alluded to something big his campaign was working on regarding FISA. At the time, I thought it would be breaking pretty soon, but it looks like it popped up earlier this year. It hasn’t seen a lot of play time (though hopefully that will [...]

The first two paragraphs in Christy Hardin Smith’s latest post on the FISA legislation are chilling:
Yesterday evening, the Progressive Caucus had a closed-door meeting with the Democratic Leadership and the entire Democratic Caucus in the House — Speaker Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel, among others. My understanding is that the Progressive Caucus met [...]

Ezra Klein, commenting on the recent Kyl-Lieberman amendment, makes this great point:
The Senate’s adoption of the Lieberman/Kyl amendment designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a “terrorist group” isn’t merely embarrassing, it’s counterproductive. Designating the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group — which in contemporary American terms means they’re a target — makes it all the more important [...]

There hasn’t been a lot of it lately, so I’m glad to see it when it occurs:
A federal judge in Oregon ruled yesterday that two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional, marking the second time in as many weeks that the anti-terrorism law has come under attack in the courts.
In a case brought [...]

Author Naomi Wolf will be at Shirlington Library Monday night reading from her new book, The End of America: Letters of Warning to a Young Patriot.
As a “late bloomer” in the world of progressive politics and feminism (I was totally uninvolved before 2003), my first encounter with her work was “The Porn Myth.” It was [...]

For those who still care:
In a 56-43 vote, the Senate today “narrowly rejected” legislation that would have restored habeas corpus rights to military detainees and given them “the right to protest their detention in federal court.” The roll call fell four votes short of the 60 needed to cut off debate.
UPDATE: Full roll call vote [...]

This is too good to pass up: the American Civil Liberties Association, frequently targeted by conservatives for being too far on the left, filed an amicus brief with a Minnesota Court today in support of Republican Sen. Larry Craig’s petition to change his guilty plea in the airport bathroom sex sting. Talk Left has the [...]

From the Washington Post:
The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time that telecommunications companies assisted the government’s warrantless surveillance program and were being sued as a result, an admission some legal experts say could complicate the government’s bid to halt numerous lawsuits challenging the program’s legality.
“[U]nder the president’s program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private [...]

Peter Baker’s latest in the NY Times this morning:
Not that they’re worried or anything. But the White House evidently leaves little to chance when it comes to protests within eyesight of the president. As in, it doesn’t want any.
A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the [...]

From Kevin Drum:
If I’m reading this right, the White House appears to be confirming that it believes the new law explicitly allows eavesdropping not just on foreigners talking to foreigners, but also on Americans talking to foreigners. All they have to do is claim that the real target is the foreigner and that a “significant [...]