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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.'"
So, if i'm to understand that correctly, if you use the grey area rule a bit, that can be construed as to allow anyone exemption if they were considered an agent of a foreign power... And terrorists are certainly a foreign power.. so if they wanted to say i'm a suspected terrorrist, then i'm obviously connected to a foreign terrorist cell, and i'm free game for no legal protection? Or am i just missing something....
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
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
The devil is in the details, and he's plotting busily away.
For one thing the bill allows FISC to issue, not individual warrants, but permission for exactly the kind of driftnet fishing expedition that's never been legal against US citizens.
Then comes the real land mine. If someone does challenge a domestic spying program, this bill says FISC can "dismiss a challenge to the legality of an electronic surveillance program for any reason". Think about that: "any reason". Not "any legal reason", not "any rational reason", not "any reason related to national security". This simply means the court can throw out any complaint without a hearing just because it wants to.
"...foreign powers and agents of foreign powers" makes this sound much better than it really is. Just remember that if spying on "agents" doesn't allow enough abuse to satisfy the people behind this, they'll interpret it as "suspected agents". After that, it will somehow expand to "alleged agents" and then to "possible agents", meaning everybody. Then they'll be able to bug the Democratic Party as before, only this time it will be legal.
Lichtblau says the FISA Court's position would be "unusual". The FISA Court is the ONLY venue that is ALWAYS in the position of deciding whether US persons are legitimate wiretap subjects. It's position is not just not "unusual", it is absolutely required every time.
Anyone who isn't complicit in creating a "unitary executive" from Bush's imperial presidency can tell that SPECTRE is just papering the discarding of Congress as the lawmaking body in the USA.
--
make install -not war
To quote Gollum: "What did he say?"
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Hm... how can Congress say that the president may have inherent constitutional authority to spy on Americans when the Supreme Court already disagreed in East District of Michigan v. Nixon? That ruling was before FISA even came into existance, but considering this is about "inherent constitutional authority," FISA's existance can be disregarded in that consideration.
...the great sage (and government employee) Gomer Pyle: "Surprise, Surprise, Surprise."
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
I'm not sure what your point is but I would start by asking "What constitutional authority?" The only people who think that Article II authorizes the President to do whatever he wants regardless of statutes are (1) Bush Administration lawyers, (2) John Woo, (3) some fourth-tier law school professors. The Supreme Court and the vast majority of constitutional scholars believe otherwise. The FISA set limits and the Bush administration ignored those limits. Now, Senator Specter wants to weaken FISA so that FISA Court review is optional. That's absurd. That's like dealing with a state's murder problem by making murder legal and declaring the problem solved.
Searching for "Laws fall silent in times of war" led to this page. Putting it in context, barring further violence US politics hopefully will begin to lose some hysteria and in another 5 years and we can get back to more pressing issues such as whether or not such and such president got or did not get a bj and whether we ought to impeach the bastard. And he didn't inhale.
Shh.
. . .there's no way in hell that august body is gonna rule against Prez.
Not really true, at the moment, as the recent ruling on the tribunals shows; however. . .
To show close you are to the truth compare and contrast C. Thomas' minority opinion in the imminent domain case, where he was both legally sound and right, with his minority opinion in the tribunal case, where he completely ignores his own legal philosophy in order to favor absolute powers for the president.
The cognitive disonance is scarey, as is the fact that these fundamental issues of American legal philosophy are coming down to single vote majorities.
KFG
i knew the law degree would come in handy some time. ok, sorry, but you guys have it wrong. the quoted language is to clarify that congress is making no attempt to divest the president of the rights he has in that office pursuant to article ii of the constitution. any efforts by the congress to limit the executive powers expressly granted to the president in article ii are illegal because they implicate a breach of separation of powers. along the same lines, the president could not pass a resolution or treaty that would take away legislative powers from the congress. i take no position on the proposed legislation.
I see all the political propoganda going around these days as nothing more than FUD. The text of the bill isn't even in TFA, so without doing some legwork (which I'm sure someone here will do), you really have no idea what is in the bill.
It's certainly within the power of congress to present a bill that would reduce the effectiveness of a previously passed bill.
My take on this is that anything going through congress should be thought through with the mindset that terrorism is not a factor. Terrorism today is like the war on drugs or the war on communism. It never ends and it's a tool used by the powers that be to do things to the citizenry that would under normal circumstances be impossible. If you strip away the fundamental principals of society to deal with a problem, then the solution is worse than the problem.
We are dealing with three things here - 1) we live an an information age society that is fundamentally different than the one's which gave birth to the majority of our laws and 2) we have a general populous that is ignorant of that which makes our society great. The third thing is that political maneuvering is based on a polling structure that encourages answering without any pontification or even any background information. Sure, we would all like to live in a well thought out society, but we can't even force the issue of working in a well thought out environment. We can blame our congressman for making bad decisions, but a better solution would be to become involved to the point where we were helping governmental decision making in general better.
I certainly see that government will always push the limits of it's own power and understand that laws which grant power to the government should be written with a conservative (conservative, not right-wing) mindset. But I also can see that lawmakers have a different perspective than the general populous. They sometimes have a better historical perspective. They sometimes have access to information that the general public does not which factors into their decision making, and they sometimes have motivations completely unrelated to a particular bill that push them to vote one way or another. In the end, they have to live with their decisions just as much as we do. If their track record is so bad, then why is the re-election rate upwards of 90%? Surely it couldn't be pure apathy on the part of their detractors.
It's a bait and switch:
..."
..."
..."
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.
> And terrorists are certainly a foreign power
So what foreign power was Timothy McVeigh?
A Congress with guts would interpret signing statements as declaration of intent to break the law, and therefore strong evidence for impeachment the instant the law goes into effect and is presumably broken. "You signed this bill, therefore it is law. Nothing you say about it has any legal force; only the bill itself, and your signature, represent the law. We're watching you, buddy."
Oh, I just re-read the first four words of my post. Never mind.
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.
Like you, I'm getting pretty fed up with this excuse for trampling on the constitution and human faces in secret prisons scattered worldwide. While 9/11 was certainly a horrific tragedy, it certainly doesn't represent a threat of such proportions that we need to sidestep the trivialities of the constitution to preserve the continued existence of America.
While it's a completely different conflict, consider the threat that the Civil War posed to the country. 9-11 was baby crap compared to how close America came to disolving during the Civil War.
So, yeah, America has been guided through some spectacularly difficult times by that Constitution. And these neocons who are second guessing the original authors of the document, well, I wouldn't exactly put them on the same shelf of great thinkers occupied by the likes of Ben Franklin.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
The quote is just boilerplate, designed to save everyone the expense of a court case.
The fact is, nothing in any Act can constrain the executives authority to conduct foriegn intelligence data gathering. That is a prerogative of the Executive, as enumerated in the Constitution, as interpreted (repeatedly) by the Supreme Court. An amendment to the Constitution is required. First, we establish that foreign intel gathering is seperate from domestic gathering for purpose of applying 4th amendment:
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347
Whether safeguards other than prior authorization by a magistrate would satisfy the Fourth Amendment in a situation involving the national security is a question not presented by this case.
United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972)
"[T]he instant case requires no judgment on the scope of the President's surveillance power with respect to the activities of foreign powers, within or without this country."
Let us not forget that the 4th covers people. Surely if seizing foriegners is an Exuctive prerogative to making war, then siezing thier communications is also:
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004)
"The Government maintains that no explicit congressional authorization is required, because the Executive possesses plenary authority to detain pursuant to Article II of the Constitution. We do not reach the question whether Article II provides such authority, however, because we agree with the Government's alternative position, that Congress has in fact authorized Hamdi's detention through the AUMF [the post-September 11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force]. We conclude that detention of individuals falling into the limited category we are considering, for the duration of the particular conflict in which they were captured, is so fundamental and accepted an incident to war as to be an exercise of the "necessary and appropriate force" Congress has authorized the President to use."
Now establish Constitutional authority for Executive to conduct foreign surviellance:
United States v. [Cassius] Clay, 430 F.2d 165 (5th Cir. 1970)
"We...discern no constitutional prohibition against the fifth wiretap. Section 605 of Title 47, U.S.C., is a general prohibition against publication or use of communications obtained by wiretapping, but we do not read the section as forbidding the President, or his representative, from ordering wiretap surveillance to obtain foreign intelligence in the national interest."
United States v. Butenko, 494 F.2d 593 (3rd Cir. 1974)
"In sum, we hold that, in the circumstances of this case, prior judicial authorization was not required since the district court found that the surveillances of Ivanov were "conducted and maintained solely for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence information.""
In 1980, the Fourth Circuit decided United States v. Truong
"For several reasons, the needs of the executive are so compelling in the area of foreign intelligence, unlike the area of domestic security, that a uniform warrant requirement would, following [United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972)], "unduly frustrate" the President in carrying out his foreign affairs responsibilities. First of all, attempts to counter foreign threats to the national security require the utmost stealth, speed and secrecy. A warrant requirement would add a procedural hurdle that would reduce the flexibility of executive foreign intelligence activities, in some cases delay executive response to foreign intelligence threats, and increase the chance of leaks regarding sensitive executive operations."
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review Sealed Case No. 02-001
"The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. It was incumbent upon the court, therefore, to determine the boundaries of that constitutional authority
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.
The Legislative body doesn't have that power anyway.
While I think this bill is a horrible infringement of the rights of citizens, I think the example line used in the summary is a poor choice. All that line seems to do is explicitly say that Congress isn't trying to intrude on the President's inherent constituional powers and authority. That line doesn't really say what powers they believe the President has but in the end, even that doesn't matter because its up to the courts to figure all that out. My guess is that someone put that line in for two reasons (no idea if these reasons are legitimate/legally valid... your mileage may vary). First it shows the American people and the President that this isn't intend to hurt the power of th President to fight terrorism. Second it basically says to the court "ya we actually considered the issue of Presidential power and we don't feel we're limiting it". It sorta makes the executive branch challenge it with more than "Its about eavesdropping and they didn't even consider us so they must be taking away our power". I don't know if I'm describing this correctly or even if this is at all legally relavent but that's my thinking.
But the Supreme Court didn't enshrine any such authority and seem unlikely to given the Hamdan decision. So, I'm still confused about your point.
How dare you bring such a "legal analysis". It has no place here, this is Slashdot; a utopian non-RTFM collective.
http://cdt.org/security/20060109legalexpertsanalys is.pdf
See Section II of this for the response. It has to do with the difference between inherent and exclusive authority.
Let me amend, in case your law degree also precludes your ability to discern sarcasm: I do mean disrespect.
You are welcome on my lawn.
How fortunate.. you lost him right when he finished!
Also, withholding an opinion (until sufficient analysis is done) is better than jumping to conclusions without careful thought, as you seem apt to do. In fact, the OP's point was that many people posting here hadn't analyzed the story correctly and had the completely wrong idea (and yet are still ranting on)
The President has no constitutional authority to allow the wiretapping program, the doublespeak in the article means nothing. ... Of course since no american judge has the balls to knock down the constitution breaking laws Bush has passed such as the patriot act, Bush is effectively above the constitution. He needs no further authority since you dumbasses won't hold him accountable.
So the arguement is moot.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Why? Because if done right,
There is the deepseated fundamental flaw in your entire "point".
As soon as you have to throw in, "and the magic faeries came and make everything wonderful" which is exactly equivalent to your statement, your entire argument becomes completely worthless.
Think it *all* the way through next time.
Wake up, mods, the parent is mot a troll.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
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.'
So, um...what's the whole point of this act, if the President can simply decide that this doesn't apply to what he's doing? Are we just paying our Congressmen to generate laws and paperwork that have no meaning or way for enforcement?
Whatever happened to a system of checks and balances? Geez.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
I'm surpised nobody has posted an EFF link yet. Here's the summary & link from BoingBoing:
Cindy Cohn, EFF's stellar Legal Director, sez, "Senator Specter and the Bush Administration today announced that they have reached a deal to send all of the cases concerning the illegal NSA wiretapping (including EFF's) to the secret FISA court. This is being spun in the press as a big concession by the Administration but in truth it's an abomination -- the FISA court acts in secret and doesn't even hear argument from both sides. This bill will likely move fast, so we only have a limited window to try to stop it. Here's s direct link to EFF's action center to let you write to the relevant Congressional committees."
It takes less than 30 seconds to send an e-mail to your congresscritter, and it's really the least you can do if you really care about this issue.
First time I've read a sig line which automatically qualifies a person for a lifetime's reserved bed in Gitmo.
(Not saying I dissagree with it, you know, the internet an all...hi NSA slashdot political views supervsor!)
"If you don't have eyes you shouldn't have wings" -- Carl Pilkington
The system of checks and balances remains firmly in place. Congress cannot unilaterally override the Constitution. The language is actually probably boiler-plate to help avoid a Constitutional challenge of the new law.
As for the President we've already seen that the courts can and will override the Executive branch when they claim Constitutional privledges (Hamdan v Rumsfeld). In that case they said "go back to the Legislative branch to get clarifying law, until then we say this is beyond your Constitutional scope of power".
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
First time I've read a sig line which automatically qualifies a person for a lifetime's reserved bed in Gitmo.
;-)
I'm not sure if your music's too loud, or if the whole being dead for tax reasons thing is screwing up the communication, but I don't know if you're approving, disapproving, or just commenting
That wasn't much of a rant... I really wish you would do better next time. ;-)
I've recently moved to the US (under a special rule, I am getting a Social Security number next week to allow me to look for work (I didn't talk to INS, and I don't have a green card). It concerns me that I live in such a country, but I am interested in making this place a little more palatable. Basically, I am interested in knowing exactly what you need to vote in this country, and where I can go to get information on who to vote for. I don't watch much TV, and I don't own a radio. I would like somewhere to look online.
I think people are often confused about what Constitutional authority the President actually has, perhaps in part because they have not read the Constitution. Or maybe they have read it but not understood it. The Constitution is written in fairly plain language however, and can be taken at face value. From Article II (which defines the Executive and its powers): "The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." This says that he is the leader of the armed forces, as well as the militia of the States when called into service. It also says he can require reports of other executive offices and grant reprieves and pardons. Nothing in here says that the president may declare the combatant status of anyone, conduct wiretapping at his pleasure, etc. "He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments." So he can make treaties with consent of the Senate, nominate and appoint diplomats and judges, again with consent of the Senate, and do the same for any other officers with certain exceptions made by Congress. Nothing about wiretaps, enemy combatant status or anything here... "The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session." Again, nothing here. Some people may be confused by the Oath of Office the President is administered as required by the Constitution. It reads: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." One could interpret this to mean that the President has the power to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution'. This would be incorrect, for two reasons. One, the Constitution very specifically uses the word 'power' to denote when the People have granted power to some portion of the government - such is not the case here. Secondly, an oath is not customarily used to bestow power upon someone, rather it is a guide to how power bestowed through another means (in this case by the Constitution) should be used. Unfortunately, the situation with Congress' authority is less clear simply because of the number of powers granted and their varying scope. Article I Section 8, which defines the powers of the Congress to legislate, contains some rather ambiguous phrasing (deliberate or not) which can and is misused often (regulating interstate commerce comes to mind.) Even so, I find it hard to understand where Congress or the Executive gets the authority to wiretap or otherwise eavesdrop on communications of any form. No such power is provided by the Constitution (powers not explicitly provided for by the Constitution are explicitly denied to the Government and reserved for the States and the People by the 10th Amendment) and therefore Congress cannot legislate regulation of it, nor can the President exercise any power to do it.
Oh that's easy, get an executive position within Diebold.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
A. They don't count our votes.
B. They don't work for us.
C. They ignore the constitution.
D. They probably killed Kennedy and faked 9/11.
E. How is any of this a surprise?
F. Halliburton
G. Profit!
Are these the droids you were looking for?
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Loud? Is that what I still do for a living? I can't hear anymore.
"If you don't have eyes you shouldn't have wings" -- Carl Pilkington
Ok professor, I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here...
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Define "unreasonable" and no, a dictionary answer won't do. You see, that is the problem with the Constitution. It is purposefully vague. What may be unreasonable today may not be tomorrow. There are loads of wiggle room in the Constitution that can allow things like this. And while we are on the subject of the Constitution, what about article IV section 4 that says:
"Section 4. The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence."
The Patriot Act is IMO in part the enforcement of this article. Congress abdicated its authority to the Executive Branch a long time ago.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
So, if i'm to understand that correctly, if you use the grey area rule a bit, that can be construed as to allow anyone exemption if they were considered an agent of a foreign power... And terrorists are certainly a foreign power.. so if they wanted to say i'm a suspected terrorrist, then i'm obviously connected to a foreign terrorist cell, and i'm free game for no legal protection? Or am i just missing something....
Even worse....
What if you are a Travel Agent working in the US (w/o US citizenship). Or an exchange student whose home country uses 220/240V electricity instead of our 110/120V.
I think that makes you an Agent of a Foreign Power.
Project Vote Smart may be a good place to start (the website interface is a little confusing; if you pick the wrong state you can change it on the left-hand side of the page). Voting requirements are quite different depending on the state you're in. While the information on this website gives you a pretty good idea of what you need to do, you should look up your state's elections website (the link to which should be available on Project Vote Smart) to make sure you've got the most up-to-date information, and feel free to call your local election office with any questions (they can be found on Project Vote Smart if you know what county of your state you're in). The following points are, in my opinion, the most important to look for:
As far as deciding who to vote for, the least-biased sources take the most work to examine. Our next election in November will affect Congress (every member of the House of Representatives and a number of members of the Senate) -- when t
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
You're enabling and supporting an administration that ties people to chairs and beats them?
Once you fall for the Fear Card being played, and toss away Due Process, you are EXACTLY as Evil as any Nazi was, the only differences being the methods and bodycount.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
So in short, you're exactly like the Nazi's except for all the things that made them Nazi's?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
its just that simple. in the 50's there was the mccarthy 'commie hunts'. fix that and the world will be safe again.
...'.
60's had vietnam. fix that and the world will be safe again.
70's had watergate. fix that...
80's and 90's had war on drugs. if we can fix that, all our problems will be solved.
skip to the '00 century and we now have 'war on terror.
and guess what, it won't be won, it won't fix ANY of our problems and next decade (god willing) we'll have forgotton all about this silly gov power-play and we'll have a BRAND NEW chicken-little thing to run around saying 'the sky is falling', etc.
people - there IS no reason to keep giving gov more and more power. give it more power and we seem to get no new returns on our investment. soon, the gov has its fun and then goes off to choose another plaything.
this is just how the world works. and no, nothing got any better for winning or attempting to win any of these 'battles'. because they are not winnable and if it takes 10 or 30 years, we WILL finally realize that.
not everything in life is a 'war on
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
If MS continues the way they are, by then they will be the government.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Duh, read a book. Write a new law if you want the gov't to be unable to monitor you and your friends abroad.
Actually thats not right either. The Geneva conventions do apply certain protections to all people, but those are far less generous than the specific protections afforded to civilians and POWS. It basically splits enemies into three groups, civilains, uniformed enemy solders, and nonuniformed combatants. Civilians are provided the most protection for obvious reasons. Uniformed solders, as combatants, don't have the same rights as civilians but are still given certain addition protections for following the rules of war. This is done to encourage nations to follow those rules. This doesn't mean that "enemy combatants" have not rights at all, but they certainly DON'T have the rights that POWs have.
The whole purpose of the convention is to create civilize rules for war that encourage warring nations to follow the proscribed conventions or risk losing the protections that their civilians and solders enjoy. Thats the carrot and stick of the treaty. Those following the rules get better treatment than those who do not.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I found at http://www.readprint.com/ ... it's pretty interesting, it's by a chap name of George Orwell ... titled 2006 or some such ...
Basically, it doesn't matter. The first requirement to vote is that you be a citizen of the USA. Which you may be in seven years, but you aren't now, from the sound of your post.
Once you get over that particulr hurdle, you can worry about who to vote for/against.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The ACLU has taken the Specter bill and has modified the FISA act (using "track changes") to show how the law would be changed by this bill. It is available here:
http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/FISA.redline.doc
This is not a compromise and it has no additional restriction on the power of the executive. Every change this bill would make gives more power to the executive. This is potentially more far reaching the PATRIOT act.
It redefines electronic surveillance to exclude routing, addressing, dialing, or signaling which would take the kind of eavesdropping they've admitted to with the phone companies out of the jurisdiction of FISA or any other law. So the gov't would legally and without a warrant be able to constantly track who is talking to whom.
It redefines "Attorney General" to include anyone authorized by the A.G. This is important because it also allows the A.G. to authorized a wide variety of surveillance and allows the A.G. to order electronic communications companies, landlords, and other private parties to aid in the gathering of intel and that private party will have no recourse or right to disclose that the surveillance is taking place. In other words this takes the controversial power that the PATRIOT act authorized to get library records and then gag order the librarians and extends it to your ISP, phone company, and landlord! This power would be held by anyone that the A.G. designates! So it would allow the A.G. to designate Special-Agents-In-Charge in each FBI office to issue their own warrants for domestic surveillance without ever even mentioning it to the FISA court.
It would allow the A.G. to move all lawsuits challenging the legality of surveillance to the FISA court and would allow the feds to introduce secret evidence to prove that the cases should be dropped. The FISA court would be allowed to dismiss such cases "for any reason."
It would give the administration the OPTION (not requirement) to submit entire programs past and present to the FISA court for approval. Note that since it is optional it could potentially give the administration an out for creating domestic spying programs and submit them to no court for approval.
It removes the prohibition against surveilling communications that might include US citizens.
It removes the 15 day limit for unlimited domestic surveillance and physical searches during time of war.
It removes the requirement that the administration tell the FISA court what they are looking for when requesting a warrant, so now they just have to say who, when, and where. Not why or what. How could a judge make a competent decision in a case like this?
It changes the 72 hour emergency grace period to 7 days.
-- QED