Congress Expands FBI Powers

Dave writes "Well, since the Patriot Act II never got off the ground, looks like Congress has done the Justice Department a favor, according to Wired News, and added in some of the most controversial provisions into a non-descript intelligence spending bill. Now the FBI can subpoena information about you from practically any business or organization - without approval or permission from a judge, and with a gag order on the targeted organization. These spending bills are generally considered confidential and usually are not subject to public debate, so despite the far-reaching implications of these new powers, it's not being publicized like the Patriot Act was. Time to get out my patriotic hat and pin before it's too late."

Comments

who can stop this?

[hawkbug]

When is somebody going to stand up and say enough is enough? A better question is, who CAN stand up to this? I don't know enough about how laws like this get passed without consent from the citizens of this country, so I would simply like to know who I can write and bitch to so this doesn't happen.

Re:who can stop this?

[surprise_audit]

A better question is, who CAN stand up to this?

They can only acquire information that exists... As more people and organisations become aware that this is happening, more information will become "disconnected" - for example, ISPs will only record that Mr.Sixpack paid $X for Internet service, but there will be no record of the websites he visited, or the people he exchanges email with. Corporate policies will require that logs of all kinds only be kept as aggregate numbers, if at all.

Alternatively, people will realize that you can fight fire with fire, and every possible item of data will be recorded, on paper, so that if the Powers-That-Be subpoena information, they'd get a response that would make SCO's million lines of printout look trivial.

Re:who can stop this?

[bill_mcgonigle]

It appears as though armed rebellion is a right enshrined in the constituition.

Only in New Hampshire:

[Art.] 10. [Right of Revolution.]
Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security, of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance ag ainst arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.
June 2, 1784

C'mon up, the snow's just about to start.

Re:who can stop this?

[Groovus]

The problem is, this bill has already been passed. We never saw it comming. Certainly writing now will let your congresspeople know your concerns, but it's too late for this one. That's the real stench of this, it got snuck in and the public didn't even know it was being voted on.

I know we have a wonderful history of attaching riders and pork barrel legislation in congress, but isn't it about time we took steps to abolish such things? I have a hard time seeing any benefit to such practices anymore. Bills should address a single problem, should be clearly named/described, and should always be made available for public analysis - The U.S. government has much more capacity to ruin the lives of U.S. citizens than any band of "terrorists" ever will, there is no justification for refusal of public disclosure of laws or proposed laws affecting U.S. citizens, period. There is no valid reason for a spending bill to have this kind of legislation attached, period.

In relation to this bill, I fail to see how having this additionaly capacity will help prevent "terrorism" moreso than what the FBI already has. Lack of information was not the problem in 9/11 - lack of correctly addressing the known information was. In any proposed expansion of powers such as this one should have to affirmatively answer the question "would the powers in question, if granted, have prevented an event like 9/11". The answer in this case is no, thus indicating ulterior motives for this legislation, and subsequently the undesireability of the proposed legislation.

Then again appealing to common sense seems to have become a waste of time in regard to the U.S. government.

Re:who can stop this?

[Quixadhal]

The big problem is that the constitution doesn't recognize money as a form of power.

If you look at all the various checks and balances in the constitution (and the Bill of Rights), it does a wonderful job of restricting Powers and ensuring that each branch of the government has some way to control the others... except that Money can be used to override all of them.

Sure, you have to have a majority vote by representatives to do thing X, but since those with the most money are leaning on the reps, guess which way the votes go?

Yeah, the judicial system doesn't accept bribes... but the dockets are done via percieved urgency, and again money makes a thing seem more important, or can make lots of other things jump ahead of a thing.

The executive branch might be ok, but in each place that government money is controlled, private funding and personal wealth of the members can be used, and thus again ensure that money wins.

Until some way to control the amount of money spent on a given bit of legislation (or to bury it) is found... that will be how things work. The only hope of the common man is that ENOUGH of us all stop spending LONG enough to have a noticeable impact on the wallets of these people. Not an easy thing to do in this day and age.

Time to move to Canada...

[ScooterBill]

I guess the administration couldn't get their way by "taking it to the people" so they just said "fuck the people" and did it anyway.

I am saddened and ashamed of our government. While I don't expect to like everything the government does, I do expect to have a government that operates in the open. Otherwise we're no better than the corrupt regimes that we criticise.

M

Not enough people care enough to make this stop

[deque_alpha]

We (meaning people who are afraid of what the gov't is doing and are at least a little politically minded, not just /. readers) need to figure out how to get more people to care about their civil liberties and realize that the current government is taking them away. Until enough people are upset about this, it will not stop untill it is too late. Unfortunately, I don't believe Joe Sixpack will care about this until it starts affecting his fast food and TV viewing habits, and even then I think he'll be pretty accepting of it. I saw a bumper sticker recently, though obviously meant to be sarcastic, seemed to sum up the feelings that most people have on this topic: "That's OK, I wasn't using my civil liberties anyway."

How can we help put the implications of things like this in face of more people and move them to action? It seems like an impossible task...

Re:Conservatives Sell Out Again

[pr0t0plasm]

If you assume that there was ever any substance to the 'smaller government' rhetoric, then this administration has been a great betrayal of Republican ideals.

If, however, you view the singular goal of the Republican party as the expropriation of taxpayer wealth for the enrichment of the entrenched industrial elite, and all of the cultural conservatism and libertarian rhetoric as tactics to achieve this goal, then this has been the most successful Republican administration ever.

John Titor at work...again

[GillBates0]

Man, every time I see a story like this (and about the RIAA, DMCA, the Patriot Act, the misdoings of the Dept. of Homeland Security), I go one notch up in believing John Titor.

The link to that site has been posted quite a few times in /.'s discussions. He claimed that he was a Time Traveller from 2036. Among the "predictions" he made back in 2000, was the Black hole research at CERN, the Chinese Man mission, the Iraq war, the Columbia disaster, and most importantly the VAST increase in powers that the US Government gave itself to suppress citizens.

The last one supposedly leads to a US Civil war in 2004. I might have laughed at his posts in 2000, but with these more and more frightening developments, I can't help but wonder.

An interesting read nevertheless.

Re:John Titor at work...again

[certron]

Should I be replying to this? I've read most of the site before, and decided, for my mental well-being, to just accept it as a parable, a bizarre, well-crafted Libertarian dream-come-true. I have to say, my mental well-being is slowly declining...

Want more disturbing news? Bush just signed a $401.3 billion defense bill. (Defense? Attack? whatever...) Included in the bill: "Lifts a decade-old ban on research into low-yield nuclear weapons and authorizes $15 million for continued research into a powerful nuclear weapon capable of destroying deep underground bunkers."

from http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/24/bush.ap/ index.html

Re:More?

[Frymaster]

it's not like the fbi wasn't running amok yesterday though... yesterday they were justifying spying on anti-war prosters by claiming that lawful dissent was potentially terrorism. their big argument to support this assertion? anti-war demonstrators have attended "training camps"... and terrorists often attend "training camps". ergo: protesters == terrorists.

don't trust me. trust the sf chroncial

fbi scrutinizing anti-war protestors

choice quote:

Particularly chilling, he said, was the use of the phrase "training camps'' to describe instruction on nonviolence given to demonstrators. That phrase is often used to describe terrorist training sites.

i predict with these new powers the fbi will be surveilling all suspiscious "training camp" attendees such as major league baseball players.

time-limited disclosure

[attonitus]

If one assumes that the aim of legislation like this is not just to create a technocratic totalitarian state, and that it has some value to investigating authorities, then there are limits that should be put on it.

For example, time-limited disclosure. If the FBI think that I'm channeling funds to a terrorist organisation and want to get hold of my paypal records to check on that then fair enough. And if they don't want me to know that they've tried to do it, then fair enough too. Until they establish that I'm not a terrorist. At which point, I want to know what's been happening. So have time-limited secrecy. By default, any use of these powers could be disclosed 3 months (say) after it occurred, unless the investigators have appealled to a higher authority to keep it secret.

Frivolous abuse of power is then discouraged (because every investigation that fails to find anything interesting is published) and systematic abuse of power is at least partly discouraged (because if you want to cover up what's happening, you're going to have to get a judge to agree to it after 3 months).

Very nice.

[pmz]

1) FBI can subpoena information about you from practically any business or organization

2) without approval or permission from a judge

3) a gag order on the targeted organization

4) spending bills are generally considered confidential and usually are not subject to public debate

5) not being publicized

Goddammit, why is it that so much of the science fiction I read is coming true? Just recently, I decided to read Starship Troopers, where the whole damn book is about how the 20th century democracies failed leading to a system that voluntary military service had to be completed before a person became a citizen.

I won't even mention 1984 (oops) or Farenheight 451 (oops again!).

This shit has been predicted for over 50 years, now! The visionaries spoke and were ignored.

Free and democratic?

[quacking duck]

Not intending this to be a troll, but something about Bush's speeches always grated on me. I finally figured out why: his prolific use of words like "freedom" and "democracy". Not so much that he said them but the sheer frequency of its usage.

What bugged me was that he feels he needs to keep saying it. Ever notice that China is officially the "People's Republic of China" despite very little representation for or by the people? Then there's the "Democratic Republic of Congo", which isn't democratic. And let's not forget the "Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea"--a 2-for-1 deal there.

My 2 cents: the more someone feels the need to use rhetoric to hammer a point, the less that point happens to be true.

You have completely missed the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

The "hype" that you so casually brush to the side is the fact that the government is simply making itself less and less accountable for its actions. Do you have the slightest clue as to why the Constitution was drafted the way it was? The limiting power it (supposedly) has? It's to keep government from growing out of control. Unfortunately things like the 4th Amendment are considered relics these days, where fear and the wreckless pursuit of "security" are at the forefront.

Regardless if anyone has been "harrassed" or not (and they have already, and don't get me started on civil asset forfeiture laws) the government will continue down this path, and I don't see the voting population of this country seeing too much of a problem with it. By the time they will it will be too late.

Freedom and Terror lecture by Prof. David D. Cole

[saha]

I would like to encourage you to watch this great lecture streamed through the internet. Prof. David D. Cole of Georgetown University Law Center explores the parallels between the first Red Scare, the era of McCarthyism and todays equivalent... terrorism. If you have a good internet connection with Real player and an hour of your time, I would recommend catching this enlightening lecture. To learn how denying the civil liberties of others may later trample on your very on liberties and rights in the future. Parts of the original Patroit Act are in this lecture as well.

"Freedom and Terror: September 11th and the 21st Century Challenge Freedom"
by Professor David D. Cole, Georgetown University Law Center
Real Player stream

The lecture is available by webstream on demand:
http://www.umich.edu/~sacua/webstream.htm

For more information on the Academic Freedom Lecture
Series please see:
http://www.umich.edu/~sacua/AFL/afllecture.html
----

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't trade unionists.
THEN THEY CAME for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
THEN THEY CAME for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Martin Niemoeller, Lutheran Pastor.

Come to Australia!

[Xaria]

Bring the tech companies over here instead! I could use the work :)

Seriously, though, I can't believe what you guys call "freedom". We don't technically have "freedom of speech" over here, so it's not legal to insult people all over the place, but I haven't had a problem with that yet. And you can always call your politicians a bunch of bastards over here and everyone will laugh and agree with you. Besides, voting is compulsory. You think that's a bad thing? It's against the law to not be allowed out of work to vote. Everyone gets their say, because they have to. You might not like that, I think it's fantastic.

Of course, Australia's been grovelling to the US a lot lately. Bunch of Tall Poppies, the lot of you! :P

Don't mod me down, making fun of people is the Australian way! It's fun! :)

Re:This is blown way out of proportion

[poot_rootbeer]

Does anyone care to guess how many violations or abuses that have been uncovered where a private citizens rights have been violated?

Did anyone guess Zero? Because thats exactly how many violations there have been.

I don't think very highly of the ill-informed knee-jerk reactionaries and scaremongers that tend to populate every YRO story here, but I don't find this rebuttal to their rhetoric any more convincing.

We can't know whether the Patriot Act powers have ever been abused or not. All we can know is that zero abuses of the Patriot Act HAVE BEEN UNCOVERED.

No matter how many eyes it has on it, Open source software can still contain bugs. Open government is no different.

I still think they're both generally better than the alternatives.

Re:Apples and oranges

[gcaseye6677]

If you are in a public place, you can be videotaped by anyone, as you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. If someone wants to videotape police actions but are worried about a tape being confiscated, they should have the VCR seperate from the camera, connected wirelessly. Then they would still have the tape, showing the camera being smashed. News reporters would eat that up.