Sen. Tom Carper, Chairman of Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.
Dear Sen. Carper,
Thank you for replying to my email concerning overreach of the National Security Agency. I usually don't receive a response when I write to federal government officials, and I much appreciate your reply. Whenever I do receive replies from others, they are usually form letters concerning a sbject on which I had not previously communicated. Your response was right on target and formulated such that if it was a form letter, it was not obvious.
You said that you believe the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the PATRIOT Act are needed to prevent terrorist attacks and are kept in check by rigorous judicial and Congressional oversight, all within the bounds of the law. On that basis you have voted repeatedly to give President Obama the tools to conduct effective intelligence gathering while also supporting critical protections for our citizen's privacy.
You have my agreement that we certainly need a system for prevention of terrorist attacks, but whether we need the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Patriot Act in their present forms is conjectural.
My primary concern is that with any law passed by Congress and given to the Administration as an agency for operation has been traditionally fraught with difficulty. The basic problem is that the administration routinely extends the operation of the agency into areas which were not originally intended by the Congressional law. You say that like Pres. Obama you believe that Congress should review the NSA's practices and determine what policy changes should be made toward moving toward better safeguard for citizens privacy. That is a wonderful motherhood statement but full of naivety. If we had an ideal federal government wherein the Congress and the Administration were on the same wavelength of ideology that would be true. But, in the present real world of Pres. Obama operating under Marxist principles, it would be additionally naïve to believe that he would actually intend to move toward better safeguard for citizens privacy.
You also say the President is committed to working with Congress to revise Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which gives the government authority to collect phone records of citizens if there exists a connection to an ongoing terrorism investigation. That is a laugh. I am sure that you have not been blinded and unable to see that Pres. Obama routinely ignores previous agreements. He is an autocratic president and prefers to operate by administrative edict rather than work with Congress at any time. He will NOT continue to use these intelligence gathering tools of the NSA to target only those suspected of serious terrorist offenses.
In 1938, the Reichstag rubberstamped Hitler's edicts, and we had a Second World War which killed a tremendous number of Americans. Without close supervision of what Pres. Obama and the NSA are really doing, we will be heading in the same direction. You have an opportunity to stop that, but it will take a little work. Are you more interested in the condition and future of the country, or are you satisfied with agreeing to whatever a Marxist President says and concentrating on your next reelection?
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From: Senator Carper [mailto:Senator_Tom_Carper@carper.senate.gov]
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2014 4:39 PM
To: asucsy@suddenlink.net
Subject: Responding to your message
<http://carper.senate.gov/IQHeaders/Carper_Header.png>
January 10, 2014
Dear Dr. Sucsy:
Thank you for contacting me with your concerns about the National Security Administration's surveillance efforts, particularly as it pertains to the prevention of terrorist attacks. I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter.
Let me begin by saying that I understand the concerns raised by the prospect of invasive government surveillance programs. I believe that the United States government, from the Administration to Congress to our courts, must strike a balance between respecting our cherished civil liberties and privacy while also ensuring that our intelligence gathering agencies have the tools, information, and resources they need to do their jobs and keep Americans safe.
My understanding when I joined a broad bipartisan majority of my colleagues in voting to reauthorize both the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the PATRIOT Act, and my understanding today, is that these authorities are needed to prevent terrorist attacks but are kept in check by rigorous judicial and Congressional oversight, all within the bounds of the law. That's why I have voted repeatedly to give the administrations of both the President George W. Bush Administration and President Barack Obama the tools to conduct effective intelligence gathering while also supporting critical protections for our citizen's privacy.
Unfortunately we know all too well that there are still those around the world who would do us harm, and I think one reason why we've only had one major successful terror attack in the United States since 9/11 is because our intelligence community has remained eternally vigilant and has acted on the intelligence they gathered through many of these programs. I believe that it is imperative that, while working to secure our homeland, we also take steps to protect the civil liberties of all Americans to the best of our ability. We must continue to work on this all the time; in fact, I believe we can use these recent media reports as a learning opportunity in our efforts to perfect that balance.
With that being said, it is troubling to hear of more recent news stories suggesting that according to an internal review conducted by the NSA, many of the safeguards to protect citizens' privacy my colleagues and I insisted on when supporting this intelligence gathering authority may not always have been followed consistently. Like President Obama, I believe that Congress should review the NSA's practices and determine what policy changes should be made moving forward to better safeguard our citizens' privacy while still ensuring that our law enforcement and intelligence communities have the tools and resources they need to do their jobs and keep us safe.
To that end, the President announced his intentions earlier this month to make reforms to the PATRIOT Act and to the FISA law in order to increase transparency and to ensure that the laws comply with Americans' rights. Such measures include establishing an in-house Civil Liberties compliance officer at the NSA to better ensure compliance by analysts to safeguards designed to protect American citizens, as well as convening an industry panel of experts to review and issue recommendations about how technology has impacted current surveillance laws. The President also committed to working with Congress to revise Section of 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which gives the government authority to collect phone records of citizens if there exists a connection to an ongoing terrorism investigation.
My colleagues and I worked to make sure that the authorities granted in the reauthorization of FISA and the PATRIOT Act are not permanent so that we can continue to exercise strong oversight and determine whether further modifications to these laws are necessary in the future. My expectation is that President Obama and his administration will continue to use these intelligence gathering tools to target only those suspected of serious terrorist offenses, thereby striking a responsible balance between preserving civil liberties and protecting our citizens from those who wish to do us harm. Rest assured I will keep your thoughts in mind should any legislation pertaining to this matter comes before the full Senate for consideration.
Thank you once again for contacting my office. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or other issues of importance to you.
With best personal regards, I am
Sincerely,
Tom Carper
United States Senator
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