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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.'"
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!
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