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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."
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.
How's the weather in Canada?
Yeah. Great. My open response to Congress can be found at www.wtf.com
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
I feel safer from terrorists already!
Uh-oh. I hope the FBI doesn't see I made this post with the word "terrorists" in it and IJ*&^Tu
Not available to public debate? Seriously, it's scary. When something that impacts us this greatly, and gives an arm of the government this much authority is put through and passed without us being able to say anything about it, that's WRONG. The people who are in office are there because we put them there to represent our views. When we are going to finally get that concept in our heads and boot these idiots from office?
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
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
Too late? I'm afraid I have to tell you that it's a few years too late. Ashcroft has already subpoenaed your purchase records, and already knows that you don't have that there patriotic hat and pin, now, when it really counts.
Sorry, bub, but you're screwed.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
All of this conservative rhetoric about the government as a bunch of jack booted thugs, and now, they go and do exactly what they claim to oppose.
After three years of total Republican rule, we have the largest and most intrusive government ever. So much for limited government and free enterprise out of the so-called party of limited government and free enterprise.
This is my sig.
i) Write a physical letter to all of your representitives in congress to berate/laud them (as appropriate) for their votes on this bill.
ii) Join the ACLU.
iii) Convince your employer to destroy all non-essential records of employee or customer transactions.
iv) vote, and convince all of your friends to vote, in the next federal election cycle.
v) If all else fails, vote with your feet. Canada is close by.
- - - Patent applied for and deliver us from evil
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...
Given this recent revelation, I'm sure everyone is ready to trust the FBI with greater power and lesser accountability:)
It's really a shame though. I know a lot of the people working there are quite professional and care about doing a good job and protecting the Constitution of the United States, the ideals that make America a good place.
But after the legacy of Hoover misusing the agency many decades ago, evidently missing the boat on predicting the 9/11 catastrophe, the last thing they need is this kind of power handed to them by higher ups. Those superiors are political appointees with a vision for enforcement that shares more with authoritarian states than with the principles America was founded upon.
If I was a mid-level bureaucrat in the FBI, I'd make efforts to establish accountability policies, citizen review boards, etc. even if the current administration doesn't think they're necessary.
If they don't this, then they can be assured of getting tarred and feather during Congressional hearings 5-10 years from now, much like what happened to the CIA in the late 1970's.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Terrorist gun Waco Ruby Ridge Patriot Act Federal Reserve FBI CIA Osama bin Laden Saddam Hussein Echelon Carnivore
:P
Now, imagine that each time this entry crosses the Internet, government keyword parsers are triggered and the entire TCP session gets flagged for later review.
Reload often for maximum government annoyance!
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
I've noticed Presidents usually keep a lot of their predecessors' policies intact. Don't count on any Democratic successor to Bush to make a serious attempt to repeal any of this Patriot Act crap. IIRC, wasn't the "clipper chip" an idea initiated under the Clinton regime? Democrats may be "liberal" but they're just as quick to trade our privacy and freedoms for so-called security if they think it'll score points with voters.
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.
2 1337 4 u!
When the 1st Amendment no longer protects your voice.
And when the 4th Amendment no longer protects your privacy or your suff.
Thank God we have the 2nd Amendment to tell our elected representatives that enough is enough.
It's time to put "... from my cold, dead hands" back where it belongs.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
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.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
The congress has just passed a law which violates the fourth amendment. Somebody needs to sue to have it overturned, and quick.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
"When they came for the communists, I was silent, because I was not a communist;
When they came for the socialists, I was silent, because I was not a socialist;
When they came for the trade unionists, I did not protest, because I was not a trade unionist;
When they came for the Jews, I did not protest, because I was not a Jew;
When they came for me, there was no one left to protest on my behalf."
Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
In reference to the Nazi governments
policy towards 'dissidents'
I'm a programmer, I don't have to spell correctly; I just have to spell consistently
The point is, jackalope, that the US Constitution was set up *specifically* to avoid the type of government that the current administration is turning into. Given a paranoid executive, an ever-expanding budget, and completely unfettered ability to act, any government investigative organization will inevitably begin to maintain files on every citizen of that country. The potential for blatant misuse and corruption is enormous and, again, one of the things the Constitution was specifically designed to prevent.
However, since the Constitution appears to the current US government to be only so much ancient toilet paper, this comes as no surprise. What remains encouraging are a few semi-enlightened souls in Congress who seem resistant (although not nearly enough for my tastes).
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Seems a bit all encompassing to me. I think I sold lemonade at a "financial institution" on my street corner when I was six.
We've since gotten rid of all of our records of transactions. I hope the FBI doesn't come looking for any of them.
> When they came for the socialists, I was silent, because I was not a socialist;
> When they came for the trade unionists, I did not protest, because I was not a trade unionist;
> When they came for the Jews, I did not protest, because I was not a Jew;
> When they came for me, there was no one left to protest on my behalf."
>
>Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984) In reference to the Nazi governments policy towards 'dissidents'
Now if only they'd come for the trite and the histrionic :-)
I think you're missing the point. The problem isn't communists, socialists, trade unionists, or Jews. They're only after the terrorists! Duh. No need to worry guys, the FBI are the good guys. It's those evil arab muslims who we need to keep an eye out for. ;-)
The difference, of course, being that "hippies" that set fire to things have committed a punishable offense and drawn the justified attention of law enforcement. Peaceably assembling, however, whether you, the FBI, and anybody else who thinks the government should be allowed to run amok likes it or not, is not a crime and, therefore, law enforcement has exactly NO business poking its nose into those peaceful demonstrators' lives. Milling about with the protestors to make sure they stay in line is one thing. Actively engaging in snooping into their lives is not only quite another, it's highly disturbing behavior from a government that's growing less and less interested in what "the People" care about and what their best interests are.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
When you can't find out who has been investigated, through what means, when, and why, it becomes damn near impossible to suspect, much less prove violations. A perfect example of that, since you brought him up, is Jose Padilla. An American citizen held indefinitely without charges being filed and without access to an attorney. All this because he was labeled an "enemy combatant" while on a plane where he committed no act of violence. When people effectively disappear based on unproven information supplied by the government, it becomes really hard for me to believe that the issue *can* be blown out of proportion.
* Not defending the actions of Jose Padilla (whatever they may have been), just believing he should have the right to a fair trial like every other citizens
*applause*
Our society can be changed (for better or for worse) through the use of four boxes. Soap, ballot, jury, and ammo.
What the kook you're replying to so desperately needs to understand is that there are some Damn Good Reasons why the four boxes are intended to be used in the right order.
KGB = Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security, USSR)
It's not a matter of if the files will be seen by people.
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.
"I don't care who the people vote for, as long as I get to pick the candidates." - Jay Gould
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now if only they'd come for the trite and the histrionic :-)
;-)
Hopefully they'll come for the carelessly apathetic first.
--
There are three kinds of people:
Those who make things happen.
Those who watch thing happen.
Those who wonder what the hell just happened.
I don't know why you're all complaining. If you are a loyal, true blue American, you got nothing to fear. Unless, like in WWI you were of recent German extraction. Or in WWII if you were Japanese in origin. Or if anybody thought you were a communist in the 50s. Or if you protested for civil rights. Or if you're a muslim today. Other than that there's nothing to worry about. It isn't like they don't have our best interests at heart, I mean, to the extent that *their* best interests match ours.
Funny, the "piddling attacks" in Iraq ARE upsetting the current regime. If the US can't keep order there, imagine trying to keep order in a vastly larger country, and more important, maintaining Big Business (tm) in such a condition of "piddling attacks".
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I'm fine with the cops PROACTIVELY having extra troops on hand and dispersed throughout the crowd.
I'm fine with the cops PROACTIVELY having vehicles strategically placed to remove any individuals who break the law.
I'm fine with the cops PROACTIVELY having cells set aside for possible law breakers.
I'm fine with the cops PROACTIVELY having riot gear assigned prior to any demonstrations.
I am NOT fine with cops spying on citizens that have NOT broken ANY laws.
The laws that we HAD were a result of past abuses by the authorities.
Now we're seeing those protections removed.
Do a google search on:
fbi bomb bari
Educate yourself about your government's activities.
They are for less government regulation remember? (oh wait)
They are for less spending. (oh wait)
They are for the little guy. (oh wait)
You know, for those reasons and others, I voted Republican in '96 and would have again in '00 if my car hadn't broken down on election day. I voted for the guy in my district (Jack Kingston) that voted yes.
At this moment, I am ashamed of saying that. It's as if the entire purpose of the Republican and Democratic parties have shifted completely to the opposite since Bush was elected.
The Republicans are now the liberals, wanting to change every damned law in a way that contradicts their original purpose so they can micromanage people's lives. The democrats are now the conservatives fighting to keep the laws as they were intended. God, even Bob Barr (R-GA) joined the ACLU after losing his district in the redistricting of Georgia.
Anyone wondering why this is a big deal, you need to ask yourself one question. What does the Justice Dept have to hide that makes them so determined to avoid citizen oversight? What are they doing that the people won't like?
Here's a list of who voted yea and nay.
Only on
Isn't it funny that those boxes have been neutered in reverse order?
We get gun control laws first, because noone "sane" would notice - they never get that far because it's not that bad yet.
Then, once there's enough gun control to make armed resistance too difficult to pull off, they start neutering the jury - re-working laws so jury notification can't happen, and twisting the legal system's procedures around until only idiots and sheep can get appointed to an actual trial jury.
Then they start disenfranchising everyone, finally moving on to trickery and outright ballot manipulation to get their way.
Then they start going after the protesters.
Sneak up slow enough, and you won't even be able to tell what's happening - after all, it's not like it's much worse than our parents had it, right?
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
I'm not sure that I agree with you on that. Americans are pissed and I think they'll stay pissed. They still feel particularly misled about going to Iraq to stop Saddam Hussein from selling WMD to terrorists. No WMD have turned up, and the evidence linking Iraq to US-terrorism are weak at best (however, if I recall correctly, Hussein was offering a $60,000 stipend to families of Palestinian suicide bombers hitting Isreali targets). Furthermore, Americans are pissed that Bush went into Iraq, guns ablazin', with no exit strategy other than to ask Congress for more money -- this is still leaving a horrible taste in the mouths of voters (it will continue to unless he fixes it). There is also the matter of Cheeny hiring his former firm to take a large chunk of rebuilding Iraq with no RFP issued. Americans are sick of his rhetoric -- every time this guy is asked the tough questions about Iraq, he spews out the same "I don't know anyone in their right mind who thinks the world would be better off with this guy in power". His response doesn't answer the question, and all that it does is makes it clear to me that in Bush's mind, the ends certainly justify the means.
In order to get re-elected, Bush will have to pull some serious rabbits out of his hat. Specifically, he'll have to show some pretty convincing evidence of WMD in Iraq and get Iraq settled with the majority of our troops out of Iraq with an Iraqi government in power.
Unless he fixes these issues, there's no amount of campaign spending that will erase the memory of Bush's fuckups in foreign policy. He's got all the rope he needs -- I'm certain that he'll finish the job of hanging himself. After a presidency like this one (the next year notwithstanding), you must think that all of your fellow countrymen are a bunch of assholes if you think that they'll vote for this guy again. Living in America my whole life (and being an American), I've met a fair number of other Americans in a fair number of regions. Most of the ones I met seem like pretty nice, intelligent people. I sure as hell hope for my sake that they can put 2 and 2 together on this one. I think that they will.
PS -- FWIW, I don't think that we'll do much better with Democrats in the White House.
-Turkey
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.
Hmmm... leave it to the FBI to see a "human chain" as a threat. Here's another one:
So let's see here: we can't videotape the cops because they feel "intimidated," but of course the same doesn't apply to police, who routinely videotape activists. In fact, videotaping and photographing the police is essential to stopping police repression of peaceful protests.
And using the internet to "raise funds" and "coordinate activities" is suspicious?
I guess I should just turn myself in.
Even if you assume that belief was still held by Lutherans in the Nazi era and specifically by this Pastor, that only makes the quote more poignant.
You must not only stand up for the freedom of those groups who you aren't a member of, you must also stand up for the freedom of those groups who you don't like.
The enemies of Democracy are
No, no, no. All their rich men are corrupt. What the man they locked up did was to challenge the status quo.
ALL of them could be locked up for being "corrupt". But the police chose to only arrest the one man who was too "liberal". Amazingly enough, all the other corrupt crime bosses got a pass.
I say this to illustrate what is wrong about "law and order" police states. It all depends on who the leaders choose to prosecute. With careful selection, you can eliminate all your political enemies, and reign supremely corrupt forever.
Who of Enron is in jail? Seven billion stolen by fraud, stolen while the administration cheerled them on and blamed hippies for shutting down power plants. But somehow, the Justice Department has time to raid a cathouse in New Orleans and slam Tommy Chong in federal prison for selling plastic tubes.
It all depends on who you choose to see committing a crime. The crew who enabled Enron in California kicked out the only man who fingered them as the guilty party, and now control the governor. Wanna bet the Enron lawsuit gets dropped now? No criminals exist if no one prosecutes.
Or perhaps we should just disallow 'donations' to political offices.
How far do you want to go with this? And are you imagining the probable unintended consequences while you make that decision?
You could disallow donations to political offices, but continue to allow people and groups to advertise for politicians they approve of, in which case the current practice of "people give money to candidate or party, which buys political advertising with it" will just get replaced with "people buy political advertising directly". Washington will still be ruled by money, but now it'll be exclusively money from large contributors who can afford commercial time, instead of individual contributors.
You could also disallow whatever you define as "political advertising" entirely, in which case (aside from the obvious First Amendment problems) people's opinions will be influenced by "the news" instead, and the segment of money which rules Washington will be restricted further: to those corporations large enough to own news outlets and slant the reporting they provide.
It's not as if your Senators are whoring for campaign contributions to pay for their new mansion or yacht; those campaign contributions pay for the propaganda that gets fed to voters before election day and keeps the best funded candidates in office. Any attempt to limit that propaganda will just end up as a limit on free speech. If you want to reduce the influence of money on politics, the only way to do so is with an informed electorate who will be less susceptible to expensive advertising when deciding who to vote for. What's worse, producing an informed electorate will have to happen from the ground up. You won't find any easy "campaign finance reform" answers: try and anticipate the unintended consequences of "matching funds" type ideas (hint: most involve increased barriers to entry for independent and third party candidates), for example, and you'll see why.