Category: Editorial

Americans need safeguards against snooping by intelligence agencies that are tracking terrorists.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration monitored the international phone calls and emails of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people within the U.S. without a court order. Seven years after the New York Times broke that story, it is apparent that privacy safeguards legislated in response are inadequate — a deficiency Congress needs to rectify.

The House recently voted to extend for another five years amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act adopted in 2008. The amendments allow U.S. intelligence agencies, with minimal court supervision, to collect vast amounts of electronic communications from sources reasonably believed to be abroad, even if a U.S. resident is at the other end of the conversation. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has placed a hold on similar action in the Senate in the hopes of amending the legislation.

Meanwhile, a group of lawyers, journalists, activists and academics who communicate confidentially with foreigners living abroad has filed suit claiming that the 2008 FISA amendments have made it difficult for them to exercise their constitutional rights and execute their professional obligations. On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether the plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU, have legal standing to bring suit. Given the importance of the constitutional questions involved, the justices should affirm that they do.

But the important actor in protecting the privacy of Americans is Congress. The 2008 amendments do contain some protections for Americans’ privacy. For example, the government may not use its authority to gather information abroad to “target” someone known to be in the United States. The law also contains “minimization” procedures placing restrictions on the retention and dissemination of information about U.S. citizens and residents.

But critics say that the prohibition on the targeting of Americans is no guarantee that the government isn’t engaging in what the ACLU calls “dragnet surveillance” of Americans’ international emails and phone calls. Given that intelligence agencies are trawling for broad categories of information — perhaps as broad as “communications originating in or terminating in Yemen” — it’s inevitable that some of those communications will involve people in the U.S.

How many? The office of the director of national intelligence said last year that it is not “reasonably possible” to determine the number of people in the U.S. whose communications may have been “reviewed.”

It’s generally assumed that most of the collection involves not real-time eavesdropping on phone conversations or instant messages but the downloading of large amounts of information, which is later analyzed. In one scenario, communications from a person in the U.S. would be accessed as part of the scrutiny of a variety of messages sent or received by a foreign target. But some worry that analysts also may use the names of U.S. citizens and residents in their searches of acquired communications. The office of the director of national intelligence insists that the government does not engage in “back door” searches of Americans, but also acknowledges that government operatives have “sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law.”

In voting to reauthorize the FISA amendments, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the law “has been implemented with attention to protecting the privacy and civil liberties of U.S. persons.” Americans would be more receptive to such assurances if Congress were to adopt two amendments proposed by Wyden and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.).

One would prohibit, in the absence of a court order, “the intentional acquisition of the contents of communications of a particular United States person or the searching of the contents of communications … in an effort to find communications of a particular United States person.” (There are exceptions for emergencies in which such information might be necessary to save lives.) The other would require the Justice Department and intelligence agencies to inform Congress of how many people in the U.S. have had their communications either “acquired” or “reviewed.”

Congress must strike a new and better balance between national security and the privacy rights of Americans.

– Los Angeles Times

The priest as model of moderation in a nation embroiled in needless crisis

The papal elevation of Dr. John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan, Archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of Abuja, into the conclave of cardinals, may well be recognition of Dr. Onaiyekan’s excellence in priestly, public and private lives.

But coming at this time when Nigeria is captive to insane fundamentalist shedding of innocent blood, which feigns religiosity but has nothing to do with any faith, it is papal medallion for the imperative of the priest as a moderating influence, even when everyone else is losing his head. Pope Benedict XVI’s creation of Dr. Onaiyekan as cardinal, taking effect from November 24, could not therefore have come at a better time.

All through his priestly career, Dr. Onaiyekan has been brilliant at his theological studies and outstanding as a practising priest. Those who know him personally have testified to his sense of pious rectitude, his devotion to the highest good in secular society and his ability to to draw a line between sectarian fidelity and the need to work together with other faiths for the collective sanity of the country. He loved his faith without zealotry.

But all these previous traits have only come to reinforce Dr. Onaiyekan’s excellent ecumenical credentials, at a time his country, goaded down the road of religious infamy by a few murderous malcontents and anarchists, needs such traits most.

That also must have driven his joint nomination, with the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize, for somewhat trying to maintain some Christian-Muslim detente, in the face of terrible odds and unprovoked intra, and inter-religious killings by Boko Haram. The Nobel nomination and now this cardinal elevation just show, through the noble deeds of likes of Dr. Onaiyekan, both the secular and spiritual globe are not ready to give up on Nigeria just yet. That is salutary.

But even before this dire religious crossroads, the cardinal-designate has earned a reputation of speaking truth to power, in his own inimitable non-shrill but nevertheless clear manner, a trait Dr. Onaiyekan shares with his illustrious predecessor in the College of Cardinals, Anthony Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, retired Archbishop of Lagos Catholic Metropolitan See, even if Cardinal Okogie was a shade more combatant.

When at the brazen steal that was the 2007 general elections when much of Nigerian Christendom was given to cant, perhaps on account of the religious bent of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, then outgoing president, Dr. Onaiyekan cut through the double talk and told the world how brazen that electoral heist was.

That not only consolidated the Nigerian Catholic Church’s record of robust engagement of secular authorities on issues of public importance, as already laid down by the likes of Cardinal Okogie, it also reverberated well with the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) rank-and-file.

An indignant CAN therefore voted out its sitting president, then Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) Primate, Peter Gasper Akinola, who had prevaricated over the electoral mess and voted in Dr. Onaiyekan. That was in the best tradition of the Church as societal conscience in troubled times.

In the new Cardinal Onaiyekan, Nigerians should realise anew the immense talent this country harbours and how we can leverage these talents to lift our country. John Cardinal Onaiyekan, after his consecration on November 24, would be Nigeria’s fourth cardinal: after Cardinals Dominic Ekanem, Francis Arinze and Okogie. With all the chaos and crisis of 52 years of independence, Nigeria has produced a Nobel Laureate in Prof. Wole Soyinka and Africa’s most popular novelist in Prof. Chinua Achebe, among other illustrious sons and daughters that are the envy of the world.

With right leadership and motivation, Nigeria can hold its own among other nations. Let this common national pride in Dr. Onaiyekan’s elevation then trigger a common purpose in making our country great.

In the 18 years since the end of white minority rule, South Africa has rarely looked so shaky. Mining, the bedrock of the old economy, is in crisis as costs rise and commodity prices fall. Wildcat strikes are spreading across the industry and into other sectors. Companies are losing production, and the recognised unions, with which business was able to barter in the past, have lost influence over the labour force. Equally worrying, the political atmosphere is not only charged but increasingly poisonous. Opportunists such as Julius Malema, the disgraced former youth leader of the African National Congress, are exploiting a leadership vacuum to publicise the broader failures of the post-apartheid state and whip up support from the disenfranchised.

There is much that is great about South Africa, not least the peaceful transition from apartheid and the spirit of tolerance that has existed since. But Jacob Zuma, the president, has failed to grasp how this legacy is now under threat nor has he understood that the current crisis is a symptom of much deeper malaise. On Wednesday he addressed the UN General Assembly, and avoided the subject altogether. Back home he has failed to take charge and barely visited the mines. Instead he has put off dealing with the thornier issues until the ruling ANC policy conference in December. He assumes that the strikes will end with negotiation and compromise.

The immediate conundrum is not an easy one. After the massacre by police at Marikana of 34 striking mineworkers last month, Lonmin eventually bowed to public pressure and raised wages. It has succeeded in getting its platinum mines back in operation but at the cost of its profitability. Moreover, that concession has encouraged other miners to strike. There is no happy solution for an industry which is already operating on thin margins. If the mining houses cave in to workers’ wage demands, it will be at the cost of jobs. They will be forced to shut marginal mines. Yet if they tough it out, the strikes are liable to escalate and more production and possibly even lives will be lost.

The only other option is for the government to suppress the strikes by force. This is not a decision the ANC can take. So, a wage increase may be the only way. The problem is that the industry will be smaller and less competitive as a result.

Miners are already South Africa’s best-paid workers. But by comparison with the ruling black elite they are paupers. It may be possible for the government and industry to win some breathing space by buying them and other workers off. But this will solve only a small part of the problem.

Restructuring the whole economy is the bigger and more important challenge. A small elite within the ANC has in effect bought into the apartheid economy it found in 1994. Remarkably, South Africa in terms of income distribution has become even more unequal since. What is needed to address that is much more than a debate about wages. Radical reforms to education, the labour market, business regulation and land ownership are needed to spur labour-intensive sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture. South Africa’s economy has grown on average by 3.6 per cent over the past decade. Even that pace of growth, far short of what is needed to absorb the legions of unemployed, is now faltering.

The necessary reforms will be painful. But deferring them, as the ANC is wont to do, is not an option if further unrest is to be avoided. When the party meets for its five-yearly congress, it will decide whether Mr Zuma is the man to chart the course. South Africa should be at the forefront of continental growth. But for too long the ANC has deferred the tough decisions. That is why South Africa is now at a dangerous impasse.

– Financial Times