Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Only in a Government do you need to outlaw something that is already illegal.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
This isn't fully baked yet. You need a Senate version, a conference, a final bill... wait for it... and a Presidential signature. Ooops.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
"passed a bill outlawing illegal domestic wiretapping by the government"
Good thing they outlawed illegal wiretapping, since outlawing legal wiretapping would have made it illegal, thus making the above sentence redundant. Wait. I think I hurt my brain.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
Oh.. another veto... just because a bill passes doesn't make it a law
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
You know, in our constitution...
"Amendment 4
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."
Think Bush will get that Veto out again? He really doesn't seem to like things that get in the way of his goals.
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
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.
This is really about the separation of powers. The President insists that since he has wartime authorization, he has pretty wide authority to break the law. That is, the law is written, and he doesn't have to follow it because another law trumps it. That's what you get when you have a big, complex legal code.
This bill doesn't really change anything legally, but when it comes time for the third branch of government to have their say on the issue, Congress' intentions will be unambiguous: yes, they do mean that FISA is the ONLY way you can do domestic wiretapping.
It would be nice if laws could be simple and unambiguous, like a well-written piece of software. Instead, laws are written over a long time by a lot of different people, just like real software. Software crashes; laws get inconsistencies. You can point it out for laughs but when it's your phone they're tapping, or your right to life/liberty/property sitting in the ambiguity, it's not so funny.
Can someone more legally/politically savvy than myself explain why we need laws/bills passed to prevent the breaking of existing laws/bills?
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
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
Everyone else already pointed out why this is stupid: it's already illegal, and the President who has been breaking the law aready will have to sign it, and even if passed there is no indication this will carry any more force than FISA. It's a law just like FISA. If the President has been violating FISA openly why wouldn't he violate this law just as openly? Courts are only going to be moderately helpful. There's a large chance they will acquiesce to Bush's claims of national security - therefore any such cases cannot be tried. Plus, he had 6 years to install his own appointees that will probably agree with him, including two Supreme Court Justices. What we really need is an impeachment trial.
I'm just a bill.
Yes, I'm only a bill.
And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill.
Well, it's a long, long journey
To the capital city.
It's a long, long wait
While I'm sitting in committee,
But I know I'll be a law some day
At least I hope and pray that I will
But today I am still just a bill.
Courtesy of http://www.jacksheldon.com/school.htm
"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."
They haven't provided it privately, either, and the reason is simple.
The FISA court is well-known as being basically a warrent rubber-stamping court. Out of thousands of requests sent in the last few years, only a handfull have been rejected, and most of those were accepted with changes suggested by the court. Since the court will issues warrants post-facto, even temporal urgency isn't an obstacle to getting a FISA warrant. Basically in any situation where the request is properly made and has any merit whatsoever the FISA court grants the warrant, it can be done retroactively, and there's pretty much no reason to skip the process. So why would the administration bypass the court in order to conduct a search?
Because the searches had so little merit that even FISA would not grant warrants.
So no, Bush's administration is not going to give an example of a situation where FISA got in the way of conducting legitimate security operations because no such case exists, it could only give examples of illegitimate ones and it isn't going to do that either.
This is a great start, though I hesitate to support the inherent thinking behind it -- which is, the President has the power to do whatever the fuck he wants until Congress specifically steps in and removes one of these infinitely many powers. But that's okay, we have to do something to at least make it explicit that when the President breaks the law, that means it was illegal, not that the Pres can put the pieces back together however he chooses. And I hope they continue to pass laws constraining government power, increasing oversight, and that they do this right up to the point where one of them gets in office and realizes they are subject to those same laws.
The enemies of Democracy are
How do you outlaw something that's already illegal?
By declaring war on it, dummy.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
It's already criminal for government to access those outside of the provisions of FISA, that's, actually, the entire point of FISA. That it was already outlawed should be obvious from the fact that it is "illegal wiretapping". The description presented here and in TFA, if perhaps not the law itself, is clearly redundant.
The link to the actual amendment in TFA seems to be broken, and while I can find references to the amendment (H.AMDT.182 to H.R.2082) I can't find the text of either the amendment or the amended bill (the amendment passed after the latest text I can find, the May 7 version of the bill.)
So I'm not sure what this new bill does in this regard if anything, whether it is just a clarification, or whether it creates some new enforcement mechanism that provides a remedy when the executive isn't interested in prosecuting themselves for the crime of violating FISA.
another veto... or is that a line signature?
Either way, it's not going to have an effect on the current President.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
The US government is "at war", so they have special dispensation to break laws whenever they think "national security" is as risk.
The fact that the USA is always at war and that pretty much anything seems to count as "national security" means that on an average day they've already broken several laws before breakfast.
This bill is Congress trying to put a stop to the farce. The only fly in the ointment is that no law is final until the president signs it, and he's the one abusing the law. Is he really going to sign away his own powers? Based on his track record ("Patriot act", etc.) I doubt it.
No sig today...
Mod Parent Redundant.
Badass Resumes
What a country.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
No. It is about a power that was never made available to the federal government in the first place. Warrantless wiretapping is unconstitutional, period. That includes FISA. FISA represents exactly the same kind of reasoning as the ridiculous topsy-turvey interpretation of the commerce clause. The premise is that wiretapping itself does no harm, completely ignoring the breach of your security. Here is the fourth amendment:
You'll note the order there - it isn't an accident: first they get the warrant, then then they can search, seize and generally violate you security. This is the basis for telecommunications law that outlaws wiretapping in the first place.
FISA is based upon the very peculiar notion that they can first tap, and then ask for a warrant, and if a warrant is not issued, then they just "forget" about the tap and - somehow - everything is just peachy. But clearly, it isn't. Your security and privacy was violated, without a warrant. This of course is entirely aside from the fact that FISA is a rubber-stamp organization; just look at the statistics for warrants granted as opposed to warrants refused. Consider further the fact that I am not allowed to put a tap on your phone line. For any reason. I'm not even allowed to listen to a cell phone conversation you broadcast on an analog mode cell connection or an RF-based portable home phone. This is because it is an invasion of your privacy; and because your security is threatened. It isn't because I didn't get a warrant (I can't, as I am a citizen, not a member of law enforcement) and it isn't because I could get a warrant later, if it seemed like I needed to - I still can't. No, it is simply because your security is guaranteed by the constitution, and it is very clear that such an action would be in violation. But this is exactly what the government does with FISA. They don't bother to get a warrant, they just listen whenever they decide they want to. Clearly, FISA is unconstitutional.
Lastly, all arguments that the constitution is irrelevant here somehow because of "need" are false. If there is a real need, the constitution contains the tools required so that it may be modified such that those needs may be met. No, this is simply an end-run around the intent of the document without having to be inconvenienced by its restrictions. Remember, the constitution is the constituting authority for the federal (and state, with regard to amendments 1-10, as per the 14th) government, and any action that is forbidden on the one hand, or not an enumerated power in the case of the feds, is both unconstitutional and lacking any legitimate authority. Don't confuse power with authority.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The FISA itself already makes NSA wiretapping illegal in ways Bush personally ordered for years, as he's admitted. Last year a federal judge found that the NSA had violated the law (and the Constitution), and thereby that Bush had violated the law, in Bush's admitted offenses. The FISA makes it illegal for Bush to ignore the FISA court when wiretapping, and Bush has insisted he will continue to do just that.
Although Bush did lie about stopping his crimes when this issue first blew up in the news, last week he said he'd continue.
FISA was created after Congress (and America) learned about some of the extent to which Nixon had abused his power to spy on Americans without cause or Constitutional process. It has been amended over a dozen times since, to keep pace with changing technology and suspects. But Bush will ignore it all, because he's used to the Republican Congress Nixon lacked to perpetuate his tyrannies.
Bush is a committed criminal. Congress must impeach him immediately. While we still can.
--
make install -not war
Every branch
--
The fundamental foolishness of government is that, short of bloody revolution, it lacks some aspects of a degenerative feedback loop to stabilize it.
Separating the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the government is certainly a step in the right direction. Some might argue that the balance of federal, state, and local separation has been screwed since the Civil War. (Certainly slavery was false, and a societal crack running back to the Constitution; not trying to say the Civil War was unjustified, merely that the shift from 'these United States' to 'the United States' is subtle and important)
Internally to the three branches of government though, the question is this: do their size/complexity reflect the requirements of society, or as Civ IV so brilliantly put it, is: an accurate appraisal?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
This bill, even if it became law, is quite redundant. Using FISA is already the only legal way to do domestic eavesdropping. This bill is a statement. It essentially says "we, the congress really do mean for what you're doing to be illegal. No, we will not cover your ass by legalizing it, retroactively or otherwise."
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The problem is that having FISA issue warrants for the kind of surveillance the Bush administration wants IS NOT POSSIBLE.
How is FISA going to approve tens of thousands of warrants?
Irrelevent, because even if they could issue 10,000 warrants, 9,999 of those search requests would be completely and utterly without any merit whatsoever because the government had absolutely no reason to think that person had any useful information. FISA would not issue any of those warrants individually, why on earth would they issue them en-masse?
FISA or any other court wouldn't issue warrants for the kind of searches Bush wants. They are meritless searches. They are unconstitutional searches. They are illegal searches. That's the real reason FISA can't issue such a warrant.
Separate from FISA itself, is computerized monitoring of millions of phone calls as intrusive as a human agent listening to a particular person's phone calls? I think we'd all say no. So should we be willing to accept a lower burden on the governement for this sort of automated search?
Oh, I highly disagree. I think monitoring millions of phone calls of innocent people is WAY more intrusive than the monitoring of a single person who the agent has reason to think is doing something illegal sufficient to convince a judge that a warrant should be granted. The whole reason we have the 4th Ammendment is so that the police can't just search everyone in the desperate hope of finding a crime. Now that computers have let them do this to literally millions of people, you think it's less intrusive?!
And maybe you feel better if it's only a computer listening to you, but how exactly do you know that an agent didn't decide to listen in on your call? What do you think all that data does sitting on NSA computers; you think the NSA agents can't access it?
The 4th amendment was written in a time when 'search' meant agents of the government came into your home or business and actually PHYSICALLY SEARCHED it. Automated search of electronic communication could not possibly have been considered then, and is thus something we need to consider now.
Or a "search" meant agents of the government read your mail. What's the difference between automated search of electronic communication, and a huge room in the back of the post office with federal agents reading the mail of random U.S. citizens, other than e-mail and NSA computers allows many more random citizens to be illegally searched?
The great thing about the founding fathers is that they worded things such that they described basic principles and not specific technologies, and thus we don't actually have much to consider. The invention of the telegraph and the phone didn't do much to change the way this was viewed. Neither has the computer.
But you're right, we should consider automatic en-masse surveilance without a warrant. Hmm... nope, still unconstitutional. Well that was easy. Time for tea.
The enemies of Democracy are
Warrantless wiretapping is unconstitutional, period.
And where does the Constitution say that?
It doesn't. Why doesn't it? Because in 1789, there was no such thing as electronic communication.
In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that the protections of the fourth amendment applied to electronic searches as well as physical searches. But you must keep in mind than in 1967, electronic searches pretty much meant having people listen to other people's phone calls.
It's now 2007. Electronic searches mean a lot more than just people listening to other people's phone calls. Whether a computer monitoring all phone calls constitutes an illegal search or not is not a given. It is not unreasonable that the courts could say that computerized monitoring of phone calls is not due the same 4th amendment protections as human monitoring. Or they could say that it is. But neither has happened yet.
In the meantime, a law which says you can't use computer systems to monitor masses of phone calls isn't a bad thing - it makes it illegal now, definitively, without waiting for court interpretation of the scope of 1789's 4th amendment in 2007.
paintball
I support them by respecting the fact that they do their job, even though I don't agree with their orders. Just because I stopped giving extra funds (above my taxes) to them, doesn't mean I don't appreciate their willingness to follow orders as a good soldiers should. I would never insult a soldier for his actions in Iraq if he were under orders.
I guess there are differing levels of support...our retard-in-chief seems to see things in a binary fashion tho.
Blar.
What people who say that "This is redundant" are missing is that, for the past three or so years, when Bush has been asked about illegal activities, he states that the Iraq War Resolution gave him, in his role as "the commander guy", the power to undertake whatever means necessary to "defend the country". This law is making it explicitly clear that Congress no longer wants him to assume this particular power and, if the President tries to use this excuse again for this purpose, it is very likely that the Congress would have serious grounds for impeachment. This, of course, assumes that the bill becomes law, something that is very uncertain, given that Bush is likely to veto the legislation and that there are probably not Congressional votes to override his veto. On the other hand, it also lets the Democrats say that they are clearly not in favor of this activity and firmly ties the opposition to (implicit) support this action. All-in-all, it's a good thing, either way.
That is all.
( ie The people as opposed to the Supreme Court!)
BACKGROUND
Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper No. 83 -The friends and adversaries of the plan of the [constitutional] convention, if they agree in nothing else, concur at least in the value they set upon the trial by jury; or if there is any difference between them it consists in this: the former regard it as a valuable safeguard to liberty; the latter represent it as the very palladium of free government. For my own part, the more the operation of the institution has fallen under my observation, the more reason I have discovered for holding it in high estimation; and it would be altogether superfluous to examine to what extent it deserves to be esteemed useful or essential in a representative republic, or how much more merit it may be entitled to, as a defense against the oppressions of an hereditary monarch, than as a barrier to the tyranny of popular magistrates in a popular government. Discussions of this kind would be more curious than beneficial, as all are satisfied of the utility of the institution, and of its friendly aspect to liberty.
Thomas Jefferson's views were much stronger! -
" I consider trial by jury the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of it's constitution. " If you think that Jefferson overlooked the right to elect our representatives, you should consider a second quote of Jefferson, from a letter written in 1789, while serving. as ambassador to France: " Were I called upon to decide whether the people had best be omitted in the Legislative or Judiciary department, I would say that it is better to leave them out of the Legislative. "
One Example: A Glorious Tradition of Free Speech
In 1735, jury nullification decided the celebrated seditious libel trial of John Peter Zenger. His newspaper had openly criticized the royal governor of New York. The current law made it a crime to publish any statement (true or false) criticizing public officials, laws, or the government in general. The jury was only to decide if the material in question had been published; the judge was to decide if the material was in violation of the statute.
Later "Judicial Refinements."
A U.S. Supreme Court decision, (Sparf and Hansen v. U.S.) in 1895, declared (in legal principle) that those jurors were criminals! The acceptance (in principle) of the immunity of a seated jury limited the full impact of the decision. This subject is explored more fully in the book, -
More recently - California has allowed judges to enter jury rooms, under certain special situations, to evaluate if the jury is reasoning properly! These actions have been examined (2001) by the California Supreme Court, and found acceptable based on the 1895 Supreme Court decision.JURY NULLIFICATION: The Evolution of a Doctrine,
pub 1998, by Carolina Academic Press, Author: Clay S. Conrad.
Jack
References for the political jury.
1. The best! But can you find it?
JURY NULLIFICATION: The Evolution of a Doctrine
A Cato Institute Book, pub 1998, by Carolina Academic Press,
Author: Clay S. Conrad
2.
WE THE JURY: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy
by Jeffery Abramson, professor of politics and legal studies
at Brandeis University, published 2000, Basic Books
>The 4th amendment only mentions people and things. The 4th amendment does not mention conversations or phone calls.
If they'd had phones back then, you can bet your ass they would have included them!
The idea is that the government has to leave you alone unless it can articulate some reason that a judge would find convincing that you have committed a crime. *That* is the essence of the 4th amendment. Anything more than listening to you as you walk down the street should require a warrant. The framers knew the value of keeping the government weak.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
You don't know that.
And the reason you don't know that is that the court providing oversight that would ensure such was specifically avoided.
All you have is their claims about the specifics of the wiretaps.
Um, no.
The reports are that they do this and then go after them without warrants, "traditional" or otherwise. In fact, that the very recording is through an automated system based on the connectedness. Were they securing warrants, this would be clearly within FISA. (Except that even the FISC would probably deny the warrants, since even FISA warrants still require probable cause, which such analysis would be unlikely to produce, even by a stretched definition.)
That's not true, either, it (whether it should be or not) fairly clearly is not, which is why, if the reports were generally as you describe, the system would be legally uncontroversial, though perhaps still politically controversial.
Yeah, see, the whole principle of limited government is that the citizenry, through laws dependent on the basic law, the Constitution, determine what government can and cannot do. Government may keep secrets within that legal framework, but parts of the government don't get to decide they have more power than they have been legally assigned just because they think things might work better that way. Government officers have the powers they are granted through law, not the powers they think would be convenient.
Not that, in fact, the Bush Administration has asked for forgiveness or permission.
Strange that so many reports of terrorism investigations both here and abroad even before this system became public reported terrorists doing that. I suspect that the NY Times revelation was not the first time terrorists considered the possibility that they might be being surveilled.
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.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
So there's a bill to make illegal wiretaps ... illegal? Does anyone else see the problem here?
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Some of us think differently: http://ivaw.org/
I'm a member.
If the bill is vetoed, then can the president claim he really does have this power? What if the bill is repealed?
Creating a bill like this implies that the current practices are legal, and that this law changes that. In the minds of the players, the law actually weakens exactly what they are trying to protect.
...is what holds the world together from all-out chaotic, no-holds-barred total war. Why don't more people get this? Most, if not all, who oppose the invasion and occupation of Iraq know damn well that Saddam was a brutal, evil dictator. Opposing an illegal, sovereignty-violating invasion and occupation does *not* equate to endorsing Saddam's regime!
Parent is right -- if the U.S. administration really believed its own bullsh*t, it should be deploying troops to at least a dozen other nations that don't do things the good ol' U-S-of-A-way. Hell, they should have invaded Canada already since we are all evil marijuana-smoking, p2p-downloading terrorists. The fact they only invade oil-rich, linchpin nations to destabilize and control resources is pretty obvious.
It's an age-old strategy: keep things unstable and chaotic, and loot loot loot during all the confusion.
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?