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The Fine Print On Wiretapping Review
notarus writes "Congress' new bill to 'force' the wiretapping program to be reviewed by FISA has some very doublespeak provisions. One nice line: 'Nothing in this Act shall be construed to limit the constitutional authority of the President to collect intelligence with respect to foreign powers and agents of foreign powers.'"
Hoefully this won't pass, but I would almost bet it will.
We can safely bet it will not be vetoed by POTUS!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
It's a bait and switch:
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..."
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President: "Under my constitutional authority
Supreme Court, playing along: "You don't have that constitutional authority."
Rubber-stamp Congress: "Under the President's constitutional authority
Supreme Court: "The law clarifies the President's constitutional authority
Bang! You and I and everyone else who gives a damn about freedom can howl all we want, but all it takes is one Supreme Court decision to enshrine this previously-nonexistent authority as precedent.
I feel like a conspiracy-theorist nutcase even making this post, but you know, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Let's be real. Government WILL wind up with huge amounts of information about us, and the technological means to filter it. Financial transactions, electronic communications, travel -- all of those are trackable in theory, and anything trackable can be stored and mined. Over the next couple of decades, that theory will increasingly become fact.
e n-without-data-privacy/, but it's just a start. A lot more is needed.
We need laws that protect us DESPITE this inevitable progression. I.e., since freedom will lose on the battlefield of what information government has access to, we need to find ANOTHER battlefield where freedom can win. And the only viable candidate I see is to greatly strengthen laws controlling what government can DO with data, even if it possesses same.
This winds up being a system design issue, as tough as the flip-side problem of "How will government integrate all that information to get at it anyway." So we need to start solving it right away, just like the integration problem is already being worked on, then get that solution out into the public consciousness.
I think I've made a good start at http://www.monashreport.com/2006/06/06/freedom-ev
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
This administration does not want another Daniel Ellsberg leaking today's equivilant of the Pentagon Papers. Especially after reading this.
> 9-11 was baby crap compared to how close America came to disolving during the Civil War.
Well duh, it was a civil war.
But Lincoln restored Habeas Corpus when the civil war ended. When is the war on terra going to end?
IANAL, but surely FISA has no business determining if something is constitutional. Specter has come up with a poorly negotiated compromise that weakens two branches of government to the point of being hobbled. I really, really hope that consequences are fully thought out by our congress and senate before they agree to this power-grab. I'm hopeful, not expectant.
If you post it, they will read.