The Protect America Act and the Total Information Act

Last Saturday night, in a mid-summer, late-evening vote that seemed designed to avoid the scrutiny of the American people, the House of Representatives voted to approve a piece of legislation already approved by the Senate. It has now been signed into law by the President of the United States. It is the Protect America Act.

Over at Irregular Times, we have been writing about a little known aspect of the Protect America Act - its relationship to the Total Information Awareness project.

To educate yourself on this connection, start by reading the Frontline interview with Mark Klein. Mr. Klein worked at AT&T, and saw firsthand the technology set up and operational to copy vast amounts of Internet traffic and telephone calls into a National Security Energy supercomputer - just as was planned with the supposedly derailed Total Information Awareness project.

Now consider that federal intelligence agencies had reported that they had no credible information about any plans for any specific terrrorist attack within the United States this summer. So why was George W. Bush so hurried to get the Protect America Act passed all of a sudden, within a little less than a week, before the August congressional recess? Why couldn't he just wait three more weeks until September?

Answer: It's all about the timeline. July 24th: Government attempts to squash lawsuits derived from Mark Klein's allegations about the rebirth of Total Information Awareness are denied by Judge Vaughn Walker. Judge Walker sets the date of the next hearing related to the cases as August 15 - during the congressional recess. That same day the first draft of the Protect America Act is introduced to the floor of the House of Representatives. The very next day, July 25th, the Protect America Act starts to get pushed by top leadership and the White House, who before that time had mentioned NOTHING about any special need to get a "reform" of FISA before the August recess.

What would the American people have learned about the reborn Total Information Awareness program during that August 15th hearing? We'll never know now. The Protect America Act gives Alberto Gonzales the power to keep all information related to the case secret - even from the courts.

Why does it matter? It matters because the Protect Information Act gives the government the power to search through your private emails, text messages, phone calls, financial information, and other electronic communications, and to store them and use them against you at a later date. That's against the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. If you care at all about freedom in America, this issue ought to matter a great deal.