Bill Bans NSA Eavesdropping

An anonymous reader writes "The US house of representatives today passed a bill outlawing illegal domestic wiretapping by the government. Now government agencies are only allowed to access your private communications under terms of FISA. 'As the Senate Report noted, FISA "was designed . . . to curb the practice by which the Executive Branch may conduct warrantless electronic surveillance on its own unilateral determination that national security justifies it." The Bill ends plans by the Bush Administration that would give the NSA the freedom to pry into the lives of ordinary Americans. The ACLU noted that, despite many recent hearings about 'modernization' and 'technology neutrality,' the administration has not publicly provided Congress with a single example of how current FISA standards have either prevented the intelligence community from using new technologies, or proven unworkable for the agents tasked with following them.'"

Comments

Unconstitutional

[Kohath]

FISA "was designed . . . to curb the practice by which the Executive Branch may conduct warrantless electronic surveillance on its own unilateral determination that national security justifies it."

The Legislative branch doesn't have the authority to take Executive powers away whenever it wants to. The Executive branch either has a power under the Constitution or it doesn't. The Congress doesn't have the authority to take away Executive powers it didn't grant in the first place.

Re:Unconstitutional

[Richard_at_work]

The problem with this is that the Executive Branch does not have the power to begin with - its an assumed power under executive order.

I just quickly read up on some of the powqers of the Executive Branch and its actually quite scary as to how many powers the President uses during his term in office that aren't actually codified in US law anywhere but seem to be used as wide ranging systems to get around law - executive orders and signing statements are the two most obvious ones, both used to circumvent laws meant to restrict certain acts and both are powers that are not granted by the Constitution nor current US law.

You people really need to do something about that!

Re:Unconstitutional

[Kohath]

...signing statements...

Those signing statements actually have no effect. They are simply clarifications of policy. All the complaining you're hearing about them is just noise. If anything, it's a lot more honest to issue signing statements declaring a policy rather than to simply implement the policy quietly.

Your attempt at scare-mongering probably worked on some other people though.

Why do we need this?

[psoriac]

Can someone more legally/politically savvy than myself explain why we need laws/bills passed to prevent the breaking of existing laws/bills?

We already have a law

[Anonymous Coward]

It is called the "Constitution." Unfortunately the presidents of the last century and this century have treated the Constitution like a worthless piece of paper. They have performed wire-tapping or something similar. That is what people get when they ask for things they want that are unconstitutional.

The only way to fix this is to vote straight Libertarian as the Republicrats or Democans are so adamant at keeping control rather than adhering to the Constitution.
_________________________________________
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.
Please visit the Pal-Item Forums at forums.pal-item.com

Re:FISA is unconstitutional

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't because I didn't get a warrant (I can't, as I am a citizen, not a member of law enforcement) Umm, the ordinary citizens were precisely the folks who went to a magistrate, presented probable cause, and obtained and executed the warrants referred to in the Constitution. It's pretty clear in its historical context that the Bill of Rights was supposed to prevent, among other things, precisely this special quasi-military class of citizenry that you refer to as "members of law enforcement".

Too afraid of what "members of law enforcement" might do to suppress this kind of thinking, to post this with a logged-in account...

Re:I wish the Congress would sack up and IMPEACH.

[ArcherB]

I've stopped donating money to the troops...they love Bush and his war so much, they can solicit donations once the funding runs out. So tired of this bullshit, so tired of being told I 'do not support the troops' beause I think they are being used in an amoral, unethical and illegal manner. Uh... Maybe I'm missing something, but it appears to me that you DON'T support the troops.

Re:Only in a divided government, yeah

[rawtatoor]

I myself got back from my tour in Iraq in '05. I would like to add that there are no 'terrorists' in Iraq. Well, I'll qualify that by saying there are no Iraqi terrorists in Iraq (we did capture some foreign fighters while I was there, and I'm sure al Qaeda has people there).

Calling an Iraqi fighting against a foreign occupier a terrorist, is in my mind like calling an American fighting in the Revolutionary war a terrorist. Cause god dammit, if someone did that shit to my country, you can be sure I would be deep in that shit, hurting them in any way i could, every day until they were gone. For that reason I have no hatred towards any of the Iraqis that tried to kill me, and did kill several of my friends. No, that hatred is reserved for the bastards that initiated this travesty.

Yeah, I'm bitter

I support most of them at least.

[einhverfr]

I would be a little more nuanced than that.

I have had friends who served in Iraq, and one who committed suicide a year after she returned.

There are certainly cases where people involved should be prosecuted and where it is right to insult people for what they took part in. If I knew someone who was involved in Abu Ghraib, or any of the other instances where it looks like war crimes occurred, you can bet I would let them have it and call them all sorts of unpleasent names. Heck I would even accuse them of trashing America's reputation to the world and not living up to any of the ideas of our great republic. I would say that such people are unworthy to call themselves Americans in any way other than whatever their case for citizenship was (probably an accident of birth).

This being said, I think it is wrong to paint everyone who serves with the same brush. THere are many who I believe would turn down illegal orders, and people who would refuse to be part of such war crimes. We need to recognize that war is a supreme test of character and some are not going to pass that test. My friend was among those who I believe would have passed that test. She served out of a sense of duty in a war which she opposed for reasons that were born out later (and not the usual ones either). While I suspect that the war crimes problems are more institutionalized that we can easily prove, soldiers have a duty to respect the laws of war and many take that duty very seriously. Such are true heroes among us and whether or not we agree with this war, those individuals deserve our respect.