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House Approves Warrantless Wiretapping Extension
An anonymous reader writes "The House of Representatives voted 227-183 to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow warrantless wiretapping of telephone and electronic communications. The vote extends the FISA amendment for six months. 'The administration said the measure is needed to speed the National Security Agency's ability to intercept phone calls, e-mails and other communications involving foreign nationals "reasonably believed to be outside the United States." Civil liberties groups and many Democrats said it goes too far, possibly enabling the government to wiretap U.S. residents communicating with overseas parties without adequate oversight from courts or Congres.'"
You put in your story
"The House of Representatives voted 227-183 to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow warrantless wiretapping of telephone and electronic communications."
But the first Sentence of the story you linked to reads
"The House handed President Bush a victory Saturday, voting to expand the government's abilities to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States."
That last part about "warrants on foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States" is SOMEWHAT IMPORTANT!!!
You made it read as if the pres got full permission to wiretap anybody without a warrant which is completely wrong. Instead of omitting the parts that you don't like, be honest and include them.
"The administration began pressing for changes to the law after a recent ruling by the FISA court. That decision barred the government from eavesdropping without warrants on foreign suspects whose messages were being routed through U.S. communications carriers, including Internet sites."
The Bill seems reasonable enough. IMO, anything going out or in the US should be exempt from FISA. FISA should only apply to internal US wired calls.
This -does- give full permission to wiretap anybody without a warrent. Anyone can be wiretapped without oversight as long as the claim is made that they are suspected of communicating with said foreign suspects.
The Democrats are totally useless. They get control of both Houses of Congress in part because the American public is tired of Bush and his blatant power grabs. Then they go and authorize the very programs that have been found illegal. They are gutless chicken shits and I am ashamed to have voted for them.
FISA allows them to do the wiretapping, and then get permission up to 72 hours later. How frivolous are their reasons that they can't even be arsed to get a retroactive warrant?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I can hear the Al Quaeda operatives now: "Oh shit, habibi! Talk quieter!"
Yeah, right. We had their communications shut down. Whenever a legislative lemming wants to pass more laws, you should ask whether the existing laws were inadequate, or the people that were supposed to be enforcing them. We had FBI alerts on the 9/11 hijackers and a briefing on President Bush's desk. We've had FISA for years and its restrictions are so lax - allowing even for warrants after the fact - that any protest of it can't be for good reason. Instead the incompetent and corrupt are getting more power to abuse, while making sure their buddies make money off the taxpayer.
I don't want to hear "Proud to be an American" from one more person who buys into this. Sit down and shut it up. I'm fed up with people who think it's patriotic to abandon the most basic, essential reasons this country exists. Not only should we listen to old Ben Franklin about giving up freedom for security, we should realize that freedom *is* our security. Bush and his crew have killed the last of our existing safeguards. They have paved the way for full-on oligarchic tyrrany here. We not only need to stop voting in people who do this, or supposed opposition parties that enable it, we need to re-establish the law of this land.
I was excited at last November's election, but I've repented of it now. I'm neither Libertarian nor Constitutionalist, but I wouldn't hesitate to work with them to fix this. We need Greens in on this because nothing's safe when the whims of the rich trump the law. Most Americans are convinced that something's really wrong with this country, we're just not agreed on what exactly, but this is should be clear to everyone - we need the rule of law back.
Bin Laden was never a good excuse for destroying our country from within in the first place!
"I will encrypt all my communications"
Email is easy, but are there any of the current crop of 'giveaway' cell phones that support it?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Except for noob terrorists (recent UK airport attacks), I think it is safe to assume that the real bad guys know all about wiretaps and counter-surveillance. Obviously their techniques are working in Afghanistan/Pakistan, so why wouldn't the same techniques also work on American soil?
I remember reading about how they talk on instant messenger using language such as "Will see you tomorrow at the football semi final game" instead of "Tomorrow is the day we attack {name of building} using our bombs, weapons and Allah!". And their training manuals (parts of them were released by the DoJ) containing information on counter-surveillance, avoiding bugs, avoiding wiretaps, etc.
"Civil liberties groups and many Democrats said it goes too far"
Isn't this one of those things that a lot of people here thought the Democrats would fix once they took congress? Or is it simply OK now that the Democrats support warrant-less wiretaps?
Either way, we're getting a valuable lesson in two-party politics.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
... for the treasonous erosion of our rights. Warrantless wiretapping they say? Sorry, but that goes against the grain of what this country stands for, the right to privacy and the freedom to conduct one's affairs without the worry of someone listening in.
This constant harping on the bugaboo of terrorism as the reason for doing idiotic shit like this is just a cover for being able to conduct the war on drugs and the war on filesharing and the war on our basic rights as free people.
Fuck them all. Next election, vote for anyone but the incumbent. They're all idiots, I know, but at least the idiots that are currently in session shouldn't be allowed to continue to ruin the country.
The actual title of the story is "Bathrooms in Capitol Building run out of toilet paper; Senators forced to use Fourth Amendment instead."
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
The issue here is doing what's right vs doing what's popular. The Democrats always went where the vote is, and the vote just wasn't in "helping terrorists win."
Face it, the American public at large does not care about FISA issues, Free Speech, or Habeas Corpus.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Considering that Democrats are now the majority in Congress, this bill would not have passed without their strong support. Being able to wiretap foreign communications between terrorists without having to rush out and obtain a warrant before the communication is dropped is critical in combating Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda has shown time and time again that they have a strong grasp of modern technology and its uses despite wanting to revert the world back to some medieval form of Islam.
This extension is only good for six months allowing Congress and the American people to review its use. If you feel that this will be used against you, refrain from calling foreigners and talking about plots to kill your fellow citizens. I am quite sure that the NSA has higher priorities than garden variety international booty calls to snoop on.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
That sentence alone is worth a +5 Insightful. I wish I had points.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
grandparent is wrong. The "F" in "FISA" stands for "Foreign"; the claim that FISA should only apply to domestic calls is ridiculous.
This bill is to bring an old law up to date. What it concerns is eavesdropping on the communications between two suspected enemy foreign nationals, whose communications *happen* to be routed over wires that *pass through* the US.
The way the law was worded before, required a warrant to listen to two foreign parties because it didn't make any distinction on *who* the parties were, or *where* they were, only the fact that the communication occurred on wires that were inside the US.
Um, no. The old law, while it does require a warrant, DOES NOT require that the warrant be obtained before the wiretap. There is a 48 hour window AFTER THE WIRETAP HAS OCCURRED to request the warrant. And from what is released, those warrants are issued over 99% of the time. We don't need to update the law, we need to teach the administration how to read the law.
Nobody here's dumb enough to fall on your sword.
New definition: Freedom, the governments right to freely with no obstacles to do as they wish. This typically includes, but is not limited to trampling all over your individual rights.
See also "minilove" and "minitruth"
"Fix it"
What is does is change the previous definition where Gonzales would have to swear on oath that it is NOT domestic spying, to Gonzales swearing on oath that he REASONABLY BELIEVES it is not domestic spying based on the evidence given to him.
He had this power before, but he had to swear on oath the truth about the spying, now he can swear a lie on oath and simply claim he was misinformed or the evidence given to him was incomplete.
The new wording is this:
"`Sec. 105B. (a) Notwithstanding any other law, the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General, may for periods of up to one year authorize the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States if the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General determine, based on the information provided to them, that--"
The old wording was this:
"(1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that--
(A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at--
(i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or
(ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title;
(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party; "
Passing this bill will allow congress to go on their vacation unabated.
... the governement watches you.
Hollywood must be so happy. They now can re-use their old scripts and just replace KGB by Homeland Security,
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Not being willing to fall on a worthwhile sword every once in a while makes you a sheep.
I'm saying I believe I have the freedom to write everything in that above post without fear that the secret police might show up in the middle of the night to take me to an education centre. So when I see people cringing in their expressions whether they be online or in real-life I am saddened because they're conforming to a shape that benefits not themselves but others.
Ballot box, Soap box, Jury box, Ammo box. I think the US is in the soap box right now. Of course as the saying goes 'In order to sustain Freedom use these boxes in this order.'
Shh.
Where were all these privacy advocates when Newt Gingrich's cell phone was being scanned by political operatives or when the Clinton Admin. 'accidentally' dumped confidential FBI files to the press? Oh, right. They're only opposed to snooping IF IT MIGHT SAVE THE LIVES OF INNOCENT AMERICAN CITIZENS. Snooping for politics is fair game, right?
It's because listening to foreign communications (communications between two parties outside of the US) doesn't require a warrant, never has, nor should it.
The problem this addresses is that sometimes, foreign communications (including communications exclusively between individuals outside of the United States) now travels through switching or network equipment within the United States, which would require a warrant under the current antiquated rules.
See this Newsweek article for a basic overview of the issue. Some excerpts:
The post-Watergate Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) required a warrant for eavesdropping on people in the U.S. But after 9/11, the administration asserted that warrants weren't needed to surveil communications involving suspected terrorists even inside the U.S. The controversy over "warrantless wiretapping" made intel officials gun-shy about eavesdropping even on messages they would have regarded as fair game before 9/11.
According to both administration and congressional officials (anonymous when discussing such issues), the White House and intelligence czar's office are now urgently trying to negotiate a legal fix with Congress that would make it easier for NSA to eavesdrop on e-mails and phone calls where all parties are located outside the U.S., even if at some point the message signal crosses into U.S. territory.
[...]
Much of the electronic communications NSA once pored over, between two parties communicating with each other outside the U.S., used to travel via satellite or radiolike signal, leaving NSA free to pluck the messages out of the air. Technological innovations, however, have shifted more and more traffic--both e-mail and telephone calls--to hard-wired or fiberoptic networks, many of which have critical switching or transit facilities inside the U.S. Therefore, intel-collection officials concluded that FISA court authorizations should be obtained to eavesdrop not just on messages where at least one party is inside the country, but also for eavesdropping on messages between two parties overseas that pass through U.S. communications gear.
"They're only opposed to snooping IF IT MIGHT SAVE THE LIVES OF INNOCENT AMERICAN CITIZENS."
Bullshit,
FISA always allowed spying on known foreign terrorists. All that had to happen was Gonzales had to swear on oath that it was not domestic spying. If he wanted to do domestic spying he had to go get a FISA warrant. If he wasn't prepared to swear on oath, he could go to the court and they would decide if it was domestic. He could even do this 72 hours after the fact.
With the new wording, he only has to swear that he "REASONABLY BELIEVES, BASED ON THE EVIDENCE PRESENTED TO HIM" that it's not domestic spying.
So now that f*cking liar Gonzales can spy on whoever he wishes and simply claim he BELIEVED they were foreign, or that he wasn't given enough information that they were America. It just created a big loophole into which a liar like Gonzales can walk straight through!
I was more thinking we should build giant-space-based-lasers and fry the whole eastern-seaboard just to make sure. But your ideas are good too! ;) :)
Shh.
If Gonzales is such an untrustworthy liar, why bother with the law at all? Just spy and say he didn't, or make up the evidence for a retro warrant on the old rules. Don't bother to reply. I don't want to take time from your Jihad duty.
"So, by that logic, all foreign signals intelligence should require a warrant?"
Under the previous wording, Gonzales only had to swear under oath that they were foreign. Now he only has to swear under oath that he thinks they are probably foreign.
To a liar like Gonzales that is a free ticket to domestic spying.
I think this legislation is a good thing, and I'll tell you why:
Encryption should be ubiquitous in modern communication, and this is just another argument for it. Privacy and freedom aren't things we should take for granted. They need to be actively maintained, because there will always be nefarious elements working to undermine them. The day that encryption becomes illegal, or the day that we are required to give encryption keys to law enforcement upon request is the day that I leave this country.
-------
Incite and flee.
Why? Because such people and communications are utterly outside the jurisdiction of the US Constitution. Think of it this way, should the US have to get a warrant (FISA or otherwise) to intercept a satellite phone conversation between Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri in Pakistan? What jurisdiction does a US court have to rule on that matter? Answer: None.
remember, the constitution was supposed to be self-evident! why is wiretapping US citizens NOT OK while tapping foreigners OK?!?!?! what a great example of practicing your ideals.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
That's true. So, what's the cost of it? Possible violation of privacy... And the benefit? The government will be able to learn of foreign threats faster. You see, snooping on the two people abroad was and remains legal (Echelon, anyone?). It is just when one of the suspects is in the US, that the government runs into problems.
Is the benefit worth the cost? Not sure — but the majority of Congress have decided, that it is... The current (imperfect) law was extended for six months — until a better-designed one (all laws are software) can be produced...
Oh, and before anyone goes screaming about America sliding into BigBrother/Nazi Germany/whatever, just remember, that Frank Delano Roosevelt — the war-President respected even by the French today — has authorized illegal wiretaps (in the 1939 or thereabouts) with the argument, that went something like this: "I don't believe, an American court will interfere with the President fighting German saboteurs". Just who is a saboteur was up to the Executive to decide, of course... Or, sometimes, even up to the foreigners — the British agents, who were allowed to operate in the US.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Let me see:
Presidential powers unchecked by law: check (have we crossed the 200 yet?)
Abuse of human rights: check, advantage Zimbabwe (although just as illegal, Guantanamo Bay is not *quite* as developed as what is happening in Zimbabwe, US must try harder).
Locking up people disagreeing with regime: check, advantage US (Zimbabwe doesn't quite have the financial clout to try and have Zimbabwean laws applied abroad - DVD Jon anyone?)
Domestic spying: check, see
And this country holds itself up as the shining beacon of democracy and freedom?
Self delusional: check.
Most of Earth's telecom passes through the US. Your distinction is meaningless. Also, dropping the FISA restrictions means Bush/Cheney/Gonzales can spy on Americans who are "incidentally" part of the communications.
Communications with anyone. There is practically no need for any evidence that anyone being spied on has commited any crime, is a terrorist, or is of any value in getting any evidence of crime or terrorism. Our human rights to protection from unreasonable searches, to presumption of innocence, to due process, are out the window.
So Cheney/Bush can spy on us. On you. Feel safer? Feel American? Or do you feel more like an East German under their Stasi police state?
--
make install -not war
The CIA/NSA is using the spying they've already done (illegally, massively for at least 5 years) to blackmail Congress into granting the Unitary Executive ("dictator") any powers he wants, under cover of a "struggle with Congress" that signs over war authorizations, spying authorizations, anything the dictator wants.
Blackmailing not just Democrats. Blackmailing Republicans, too, to enforce their lockstep rubber stamps. But Republicans also get the offer of getting cut in on some power (as long as it doesn't cross Cheney/Bush). Democrats just get cut in on cosmetic power sharing, so they can be the decoy party in our soviet politburo.
--
make install -not war
Don't quote left wing moon bats like Zoe. She'll tell you ferries are flying out of her butt if it means she can give a hand to the terrorists.
Jeeze..What's next? Quoting Hamaas?
Like it or not, the US (and most nations) have always exerted strong jurisdiction over what crosses their borders. Information isn't exempt.
Cryptophone and use PGP and TOR online and be secure.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
anytime this corrupt Attorney General or this corrupt administration says so.
Anyone who believes this is limited to "foreign" intercepts is naive and ignorant to say the least.
We will never know who is being spied on because it is "secret".
Just assume it is you because it probably is then go read the fourth amendment to the constitution.
Prepare to be angry if you're not already.
There's a link at the bottom of the article that shows the vote breakdown.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll836.xml
I have only three words...
Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt!
They have no right to listen, and no reason to be suspiscious. I happen to live in a two-party state where recording of phone calls has to be known to all parties on the call. Since they're not notifying me or the other party on the calls I make, their use of the data they may glean, is inadmissible and against the law.
Just encrypt everything, locking down your conversations, speak in code, use encrypted SMS messages and so on.
Don't let them in, because they have no right or reason to be there. Period.
They want to make it hard for us to enjoy our freedoms, then I'm more than happy to make them earn their right to violate them by making it ridiculously hard to decrypt/brute/crack any encryption that I may use.
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
We've come to expect this crap from the Republicans in the House and the Senate. But the Dem base is livid that the politicians they worked hard to elect, like Klobuchar, McCaskill, and Webb, just voted not just for fascism, but for incompetent fascism. The people in charge of this operation will be guys like Gonzalez, who despite shredding the Constitution on surveillance and torture and endless detentions are too fucking stupid to know when an Arab company is about to take over the largest ports in the U.S. And before some muslim, mexican hating wingnut suddenly starts crying racism, the problem wasn't an Arab company coming into the U.S., it's that the Administration didn't know it was happening. But back to the Democrats.
They are fools because they just rolled over to placate the 28% who will never vote for them anyway, while pissing off the millions that actually do vote for them. They are fools because they enable the Big Lie from the administration that we need to cut back on liberties and oversight because they endanger us.
They are cowards because 6 years after 911, they still roll over for the most unpopular president since Nixon when Bush accuses them of being weak. And they still haven't gotten it through their thick fucking skulls that by giving into the right wing rather than standing up to them, Democrats are epitomizing weakness, not strength.
And lastly, they are traitors for egregiously violating their oath of office, in which they promise to defend the Constitution. Not the country, though the right wing talking point that this is "to protect us" is bullshit. The Constitution. And this is why I hold Webb especially responsible: how many government jobs has the man had? How many oaths of office has he taken? He just broke those oaths and sold us out.
Curse you, you 227 spineless bastards. Don't let these clowns get re-elected.
"A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one."
Nope. As long as the tap is placed in Afghanistan or such, then it is fine.
If you're placing a tap in the US, then you need a warrant.
So what you're saying is that anyone with any clue would NOT use these routes because everyone else in the "modern world" is already tapping them.
Here, let me put it in context for you. We've been "fighting" the "war on drugs" for HOW MANY YEARS now? And we've still not won. Despite the drugs coming in from other countries. Where we could tap their communications. So it would seem that the methods you appear to be advocating have failed.
Fascism begins when the efficiency of the Government becomes more important than the Rights of the People.
Shredding the Constitution is not popular. The incompetent, lying Alberto Gonzalez is not popular. The president is not popular. The media is not popular. If the media and Democrats did their jobs, they would point out the fact that when the Administration claims that FISA needs to be changed to protect America, the Administration is lying.
Face it, the American public at large does not care about FISA issues, Free Speech, or Habeas Corpus.
Each time the Democratic Congress has caved to Bush, their poll numbers go down. I guess we thought Congress had hit rock bottom when they caved to Bush on the Iraq Supplemental, Reid and Pelosi had to prove us wrong by digging a new, deeper hole. And breaking a few sewage pipes in the process.
Ask them if they'll be happy when President Hillary Clinton has these same executive powers.
Without judicial oversight.
With years of experience knowing what NOT to put on paper or telephone recordings.
With a Congress full of Democrats to support her.
It's not whether your team gets super-secret legal authority to do whatever. It's whether the other team gets super-secret legal authority to do whatever. You might trust your own people. But this means you'll have to trust the other team as well.
If it has "gone on for decades", then what is the problem NOW?
Why and How has the existing system suddenly failed?
Explain where the "fallacy" is.
If you have to lie, then you've lost already. I never said that "all signals intelligence must be a failure". Despite you putting quotation marks around it.
I said that we could not even stop the drug trade. After YEARS of being able to tap communications outside the US.
And the drug trade move a LOT more material and people than terrorism does.
You can make all the claims you want. But I have examples. And you've been unable to refute my example so far. The drug trade move literally TONS of material into the US every single year. And hundreds of people. And we are still unable to stop it even with tapping communications outside the US.
The US Senate website is not publishing the roll call of votes by Senators on the bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act making President George W. Bush's illegal wiretapping order retroactively legal.
t e-withholding-spy-law-roll-call
http://pressesc.com/news/87005082007/senate-websi
If warrants are no longer necessary to wiretap, where exactly is the check to see if the people being wiretapped are foreign nationals? The whole point of a warrant is to make sure that a requested invasive measure is being applied properly.
The deal is not that we are tapping foreign nationals exactly. The case this bill is meant to solve is more complex - tapping communications from other countries that route through our own. Because we have such a large communication infrastructe it is not infrequent that calls made from one country to another outside the US, actually route through the US - and the government wants to be able to tap those calls when the happen.
You may resume your regularily scheduled partisan bickering. I just wish we had an article that outlined technically exactly what is happening, that everyone could base the bickering on.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
really are the surrender party. They surrender to Bush at every turn. Let this be a lesson. You will get nowhere with these people. Vote the bums OUT! Or keep your mouths shut!
What?
It isn't that it does not work. It is that it is not sufficient for even the "War on Drugs".
Yeah, keep repeating yourself. The FACT is that we have been tapping their lines and they are still able to move TONS of material and HUNDREDS of people through our country.
Now, you can claim that that fact is a fallacy all you want, but it is still a fact.
We tap their communications and they still move TONS of material through our country.
NO
George W. Bush must not leave office, through death or any other means, without this completely fucked-up powergrab being addressed first by Congress and the courts. If all this just happened, without any blowback or successful legal challenges, than it stands as precedent.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
That foreign calls routing through American have to be treated as if one end is in America if you can't tell exactly where it is (more than possible given the complex nature of networking today). That was a recent ruling and changes precident used for decacdes, under republican and democratic presidents alike. This has nothing to do with what you're thinking of which is monitoring calls from the US to outside the US without warrants. The change of law is designed to affirm the previous assumption so that we can monitor communications outside the US.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's no indication he followed FISA and made a sworn oath before. He was previously claiming FISA didn't apply because the Patriot act gave the President sweeping powers.
k /page/0/
It's only now, that one of the programs has to go under FISA, and FISA has rejected one of the programs as illegal that Gonzales has to swear. Before he was swearing to a fact, now he's only swearing to his *belief* of a fact.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20075751/site/newswee
"But the judge, in an order several months ago, apparently concluded that the administration had overstepped its legal authorities in conducting warrantless eavesdropping even under the scaled-back surveillance program that the White House first agreed to permit the FISA court to review earlier this year, said one lawyer who has been briefed on the order but who asked not to be publicly identified because of its sensitivity."
"The first public reference to the order came obliquely this week from House Minority Leader John Boehner--one of a number of senior Republicans who have been leading the White House-backed campaign to persuade Congress to rush through an expanded eavesdropping measure before it leaves for August recess at the end of this week."
How is that a problem? It would seem to me that it would be easier to tap that way.
And
FISA allows up to 72 hours AFTER the event to get a warrant. Even in your scenario, there doesn't seem to be a problem.
And that article says:
Again, FISA allows up to 72 hours AFTER the even to get a warrant.
I'm going to have to trust our Founding Fathers on this one.
Fascism begins when the efficiency of the Government becomes more important than the Rights of the People.
What's going on here is that Democrats don't want to be "responsible" for another 9/11.
They want a bill that gives the administration wiretap powers, but subject to independent judicial oversight. However, any limitation on the Administration's power to wiretap faces a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
This leaves the Democrats with a choice: pass a bill without oversight measures, or be blamed for stopping the wirtap program altogether. Stopping the program altogether exposes them to an "October Surprise": a terrorist attack that might hypothetically been prevented if the administration could wiretap as they pleased.
Never mind the logical niceties: that the program could have operated effectively with judicial oversight, that the Republicans filibustered the bill, or that the Administration didn't have the Arabic language skills to handle all the intercepts they might have made. The Republican line from the last two elections was that a vote for a Democrat was a victory for the terrorist, that Democrats are traitors who are on the side of the terrorists. Nothing would suit them better than proclaiming that in front of another smoking hole in a major American city.
So, the Democrats punted for six months to see if the administration's popularity drops enough to get the bill they want through the Senate. The process will repeat until the Administration is so wounded nobody will stand up for it, or until after the 2008 elections.
Cowardly? Certainly. But you're right in one thin:, the problem is its the same old stupid, unreasonable boss. The problem is us. If we don't have the balls to defend the freedoms our ancestors handed down to us, then we don't deserve those freedoms.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What Risk?...you DID go all Godwin, if you didn't want to risk it you should not done it.
This is o-so bad for Americans; no warrant, no check on whatever thing that should be OK to proceed. This is even worse for non-Americans (yes, we are the oppressed of the world) since our communication, that by accident passes over the USA, can be intercepted at will without any reasonable regulation at all. What if we would intercept any American traffic?
The problem is expecting Democrats to stand up for your constitutional rights. They don't believe in your "rights". Your rights are what they give you. And wiretapping you without a warrant IS their goal. That's why they are for it. They just happen to agree with the neocons on this one.
Don't expect a democrat to defend your liberties.
Don't expect a neocon to respect your freedoms either.
You need a CONSTITUTIONALIST to defend your LIBERTIES.
Until you recognize this, you're going to be disaapointed by people you think will represent you.
Vote Ron Paul!
Half of why she was elected was probably her years as a county prosecutor -- the "law and order" angle -- where she had strong media exposure for hard work and competence. But the other half of her image was as a nerdy bicycling granola-mom. I think we assumed she would be liberal.
But perhaps she isn't rising to the office where faithfully upholding the law means upholding the constitution and the _rule_of_law_.
"You maniacs! You [shat on our constitution again]! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!"
Yes, it does. And that warrant may be applied for up to 72 hours AFTER the event.
You continue to ignore that. Because it invalidates your entire position.
The traffic HAS to cross the US. This isn't about anything we pick up from Echelon or whatever. So it's already a sub-set of everything out there.
The traffic HAS to be from or to a suspected terrorist. So it's even a smaller sub-set of the sub-set.
And a warrant is allowed up to 72 hours AFTER the event.
You keep claiming that. Yet you have been unable throughout all you posts to explain how it is "crippled" (your word).
They can still tap it. The tap can still happen. There is nothing saying they cannot tap it.
There is no "crippled" as you like to claim.
Fascism begins when the efficiency of the Government becomes more important than the Rights of the People.
Well, I'm not a registered Democrat, but all through this Bush Tyranny that we have been under I was thinking, if only the Democrats were in power, they would stop this abuse and trampling of what makes the US the US.
I've been willing to cut them some slack, from the inability to stop the war to the earmarks that they themselves get (still half that of Republicans when the latter controlled congress) but this is too much.
I now believe we are not even at parity, but WORSE off than when the Republicans were in control. Right now we have a facade of a two-party check-and-balance system, with REpublicans controlling the Executive (and Judicial) branches while the Democrats can check them with the Legislative. But if they are either so meek/weak or so willing to throw out principles for the sake of political expediency, then not only do they not deserve our support, but they should be voted out and this country to revert to a one party system. What we really need is a revolution, and since we seem to be incapable of fomenting one from inside what we need to do is REALLY screw up our country to the point that our economy and standard of living (the only thing we seem to care about these days) tanks so much we either get invaded (socially/politically more than militarily) by China or we just crumble, both physically like our infrastructure, and as a society as people who can afford to flee to canada and other parts of the world. I have every confidence that Republicans are the ones that will take us there faster. So next election I am going to vote all republicans, in the hopes that the end will come sooner.
How do you tell when a Hotmail account represents a foreign suspect? All email can be reasonably be suspected to have at least one endpoint with a foreign national and there is no way to tell without extensive investigation. This really does give them an open ended surveillance ability with minimal oversight where they can claim an honest mistake any time they cross the line.
What more evidence do we need? Democrats were swept into power on the promise to get us out of Iraq, to restore our liberties that they and their Republican colleagues sold out wholesale after 9/11, and to bring this corrupt administration to justice.
/
The enemy of your enemy is not your friend.
We are still in Iraq and there is no end in sight. Rather than having the backbone to bringing the measure to withdraw back to the floor again and again to push it through, and continue to push their campaign promises in the media, they have effectively given up on the issue, whining to their supporters and the media that it is too hard.
And now these Democrats are actively working with this administration, the same administration they told us is the most corrupt and secretive in history, to sell out yet more of our freedoms, to give yet more power to this president and the executive branch.
They are, our representatives, nearly every one of them, pathetic, spineless, schmucks. They have betrayed us all once again.
And it should come as no surprise, because these are the same Democrats and Republicans who sold us out by writing the president a blank check in Iraq. The same Democrats and Republicans who sold out our liberties by signing onto the biggest forfeiture of our liberties since the establishment of this nation. The same Democrats and Republicans who proudly signed the bill granting retroactive immunity to prosecution for every military and government agent who has tortured, kidnapped, and committed atrocities in our name.
We must act now to take back our liberties, our dignity, and our good name in the world; it is the most important cause of this age. If 2008 leaves us with Giuliani, Hillary, McCain, Obama, Romney, or any of their ilk in office, we will see more of the same and worse, and it will be too late. It will be too late to restore the freedoms that have been stolen from us. 2012 will come and go, and the robbery of the patriot act and the legacy of this administration's unprecedented executive power grab will be solidified in our nation's history and in the public conscience.
If you do not act now, what has been taken from us will never be restored, and your children's children will look back upon this generation, if there is freedom enough to look at all, as the generation that finally lost it all, lost that for which the blood of countless patriots was shed, and November 4th 2008 as the day the Republic finally died.
It is only the office of President of the United States of America that can save us from this fate. And in this battle, Freedom has one final front. Your help is urgently needed this very week. Is your freedom worth even an hour of your time? Now is your opportunity to prove it. You must sign up today. Mission information will be emailed to you directly. http://www.ronpaul2008.com/events/iowa-straw-poll
His real name is Hugh Laurie.
So one of the things we got Bush and Gonzales on is that they've been wire tapping illegally and lying about it. Won't the update of the FISA bill allow them to argue that since it's no longer illegal means they are no longer culpable? After all, if congress believes they are updating for the sake national security then no law is broken? I don't know if the changes are retroactive or not.
But if they have then I suspect that Democrats have also cut their our collective throats in making a case to impeach either Gonzales and/or President Bush and Vice President Cheney. If that's true, this is a colossal fuck up. This was the only real legal ground Congress has for "high crimes". We can't really prove that Bush lied regarding intelligence in Iraq and the war.
What a bunch of crap. Goddam Democrats. I lay this at the feet of Emannuelle Rahim. That asshat has gotten everything wrong and should be kicked out. Even new Democrats like Jim Webb has voted for this. I can only shake my head in resignation.
sri
I'm not going to get into if a call is to a US citizen outside the US. That is a very tangled web, and I wish to defer that discussion for clarity's sake.
http://voanews.com/english/2007-08-04-voa2.cfm
Legislation sought by President Bush to revise U.S. law regarding anti-terrorist electronic surveillance overseas has failed a vote in the House of Representatives.
By Dan Robinson
Capitol Hill
04 August 2007
Privacy in communication is not an "unalienable Right"... its a right established only by the Constitution. The Constitution is designed to fluctuate with time.
You are totally appealing to emotion which is a fallacy.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/03/fisa.up grade.ap/index.html
I'me no fan of the two party system, or the increasingly weak-willed Democrats,
but this isn't *as* extreme of a defection as some are making it out to be. 40
fucking "red-state" Democrat votes. On the other hand, the 20 lazy fucks whom
abstained from voting on such a sickeningly saccaharine and deceitfully named
bill as "Protect America Act" ought to have their pay docked since they can't
even manage to do their "jobs."
Were that I say, pancakes?
As long as not everyone uses that sort of encryption your call will stand out like a sore thumb. About the only good thing about that phone is that it makes voice printing a bit harder, but until you see an independent evaluation by a respected but non-US cryptographer I wouldn't invest much trust in it.
Jack Bauer is in the super secret NSA communication intercept room along with various other people.
...
Unnamed extra #1: "Sir, you need to see this. It's Osama's cell phone! And the call is coming across OUR circuit!"
JB: "Dammit! He's up to something. I want that call intercepted and get me a translator! I want to know what he's saying and to whom he is saying it!"
Unnamed extra #2: "But sir, if we don't get a warrant within the next 72 hours, that will be ILLEGAL!"
JB: "No problem. I only need 24. Just tap that call!"
JB walks over to a different phone and picks it up.
JB: "Get me the FISA court! This is an emergency!"
Begin one-way telephone communication bit
JB: "I have an emergency and I need a warrant! No, I'm not going to wait! Yes, I will be right over! That's right, I want your Liberal judge ass sitting on that bench when I arrive!"
JB slams down the phone and walks over to unnamed extra #1.
JB: "Are you getting it all?"
UE#1: "Yes sir. Will there be a problem with the warrant?"
JB: "Not as long as I still have 3 days to get it there won't be."
JB then grabs some paper work and runs to his car. He then races across D.C. avoiding enemy mines, fighter aircraft and snipers. He screeches to a halt outside of the Court and runs up the steps. He slams open the door to the judge's chambers and throws the paperwork at him.
JB: "Listen, you have less than 71 hours and 26 minutes to sign that warrant or I'll have your terrorist loving Liberal ass!"
Unnamed Judge: "Always nice to see you, Jack. Here's your warrant. Let's see, that leaves you 71 hours and 24 minutes to get back to your secret spy base. Can you manage that this time without speeding or running over anything? Hmmmmm?"
JB: "You Liberal judges make me sick! My ass is on the line every time I have to drive over here! Good bye!"
JB then runs down to his car, notices the parking ticket on the windshield and throws it away. He then gets in and races back to work. Avoiding various mines, attacking aircraft and snipers.
Yes, I can certainly see how a 72 hour limit on getting a warrant AFTER THE FACT would be a "crippling" restriction on our intelligence gathering.
What if the judge HAD BEEN AT LUNCH for an hour? What if Jack Bauer had decided to WAIT 3 DAYS before calling the judge? What if Jack Bauer's car had gotten a FLAT TIRE?!? Does he have a can of Fix-A-Flat?!?
The reasoning of the bill is to protect but it may actually open the whole place up to total snooping.
The US 250 million people, a massive part of which are or were (quite recently) foreign. So you have relatives and family abroad. So you send them an email or phone to say hello and that is communicating with a foreign national. And that is enough to let you get tapped.
So this could backfire on you bigtime.
Republicans are no better. Who is actually better? No one!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The same Dems who also VOTED for this treasonous piece of legislation.
They claim that FISA had a problem and that this bill fixes the problem. The reality is that this bill has very little to do with the recent court ruling and goes far beyond fixing the problem, to the point of being wholly unrelated.
The court ruled that messages routed through the US were subject to stricter standards than messages routed only through other areas. This bill, rather than fixing that specific issue, grants broad new powers to eavesdrop on anyone as long as the "target" is outside the US.
Instead of reading the press summaries of the bill and the summaries of some liars on Slashdot read the bill for yourselves. It's just a power grab that uses the recent court ruling as a cover story.
"tapping communications from other countries that route through our own. Because we have such a large communication infrastructure it is not infrequent that calls made from one country to another outside the US, actually route through the US - and the government wants to be able to tap those calls when the happen."
No, that's the EXCUSE. The REALITY is probably one one-hundredth or one one-thousandth of "interesting" calls fit that criteria.
First of all, if you already KNOW the call is interesting, tap it outside the US with Echelon or whatever which everyone is saying we can and do ALREADY. So why do we need this law? If you do NOT know the call is interesting, the only way to know is to tap EVERYTHING - and that is by definition un-Constitutional. THIS law is intended to bypass the Constitution by using an EXCUSE to MAKE ABUSE EASY!
It's a "get out of jail free" card for Gonzales and the FBI and the NSA and the rest of the alphabet soup crowd to abuse the system - just as the FBI has been caught abusing the Patriot Act repeatedly (not that they weren't abusing the rest of the "justice" system for decades now - just ask the American Indian Movement who won Federal court cases proving the FBI did illegal blackbag jobs for years against them.)
It's that simple.
It has absolutely NOTHING to do with legitimate signals intelligence or fighting terrorism or anything else that could be construed as legitimate under the Constitution.
It should be apparent by now to anyone with an IQ over 50 that ANYTHING the Bush crowd does is both illegal and un-Constitutional by definition and is intended to increase the power of the state at the expense of the population and/or to line the pockets of their cronies.
The Bush administration is purely and simply a CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE - much like the entire Bush family. People who refer to "the Bush crime family" have it exactly right. Has everybody ignored the recent documentary about how one of the Bush elders planned a military COUP in the US decades ago? HELLO!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Existing law allows for wiretaps without a warrant. They just need to find a friendly judge to give them a warrant after the fact. The problem is that it takes a lot of effort to shop around for the judge who will give you a warrant for spying on your political opponents. No good for Bush, so the Republicans and 57 Bush enabling Democrats had to make it easier for him.
That's what THEY want YOU to think. Yow!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So, if the Prezdent wants to read our emails, it would un-American to object. Send them to him--all of them. I did. president@whitehouse.gov
I've never heard of Congres before. Is this anything like Congress or is this a new type of cheese?
Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt!
Soon, encryption for private e-mails will be forbidden as well. But don't worry: hide your communication in spams: I'll coin the term spamenography for that (like steganography). Ideal to thwart traffic analysis and it provides a lot of plausible deniability.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Blackbriar
I am amazed at the complete and total ignorance of people here who are replying and whining and complaining that this wiretapping is illegal and unconstitutional. You people need to get a life and actually read before openning your keyboards on items that you obviously know nothing about. The US Supreme Court gave the Preisdent the right to do this back in the early 1970's under the "Instant" case and not only said that this was legal...but it was in the US Constitutional Presidential Powers to do so and as such NO ONE, not the courts nor the Congress; has the ability to deny the President the power to do this without a Constitutional Amendment, and the chances of you even getting one is less then 0.0000000002% as over 15,000 amendments have come up in over 220 years and less then 30 have been actually voted into law...and one of these was recinded! So read it and weep lefties, as if you have nothing to hide; then what is the fuss about? And if you are not talking to a known terrorist member or group, then you have nothing to worry about. And if you are, then you should be tried under the fullest extent of the law. U.S. Supreme Court UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972) 407 U.S. 297 UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN ET AL. (PLAMONDON ET AL., REAL PARTIES IN INTEREST) CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT No. 70-153. Argued February 24, 1972 Decided June 19, 1972 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?c ourt=US&vol=407&invol=297 thus finding that the domestic spying against agent(s) or foreign power(s) or US Citizens working with or for any foreign power(s) operating in the US and against US policy or against the safety of the US was INDEED CONSTITUTIONAL!!!
So please take you whining and complaining somewhere else as you have just had your rear handed to you on a silver platter.
I think it's fairly obvious that Bush's unauthorized wiretapping has dug up enough dirt on current Democrat House members that he could basically blackmail them to get this sort of thing passed. Well, things could be worse. Cheney could be forcing an ultimatum down Congress against Iran & North Korea, or diverting funds from the Treasury to his Big Corporation buddies... Just another conspiracy theory, but it makes sense, no?
They revised the law for SIX MONTHS. They're going to come back to it to give it a better review. Only a SMALL NUMBER of democrats voted for it. Most Republicans did. Could Slashdot be more melodramatic?
I thought about the issue reasonably and rationally, instead of spewing hate filled rhetoric and hyperbole that would do nothing but emphasize my own ignorance and lack of intellectual ability.
But I'm not you, so your way could work too...
It boils down to basic property rights. Property crossing a border is subject to unlimited search and seizure. Every country on earth recognizes this fact.
If one end of a conversation is outside of the US, then the property is crossing the US border and is subject to search and seizure. End of story.
Godwin's law, and the added losing caveats attributed to it, is often misused to ridicule valid reasoning. Godwin made the law because chumps were using Hitler analogies when the topic wasn't severe, like about Bill Gates, and he didn't want real proper uses of a Hitler argument to be watered down.
If the topic of the post is actually fascism, which government spying on the populace was a part of, then Godwin's law does not apply.
Godwin's law is supposed to be applied when, for example, I say George Steinbrenner is worse than Hitler, because the topic is wholly unrelated to fascism.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
It only establishes protections for certain rights. Your rights exist with or without the Constitution (and hence they are "unalienable"). Protection just means that Government personnel cannot infringe those rights with impunity. If the protections are eroded -- by an overreaching executive branch, a complacent Congress, or a judicial branch that looks the other way -- then you still have those rights. But they will get trampled all over.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
A fair election could be prevented if the administration could wiretap as they pleased. Well, at least that would be true if such a thing weren't already being prevented in so many other ways.
How could the democrats be so completely powerless and stupid as to bend over for ANY bill they don't have a LOT of support on. And hint, most americans don't want to be spied upon. Really.
I'd really rather see the government as a whole shut down than to continue on it's current suicidal path.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could elect open-source algorithms to make voting decisions? The source could finally be completely known and people could know what they're voting for.
according the the NYT articles. So how URGENT is it really to change a law to avoid going in front of a secret rubber-stamp court ?
Ron Paul didn't defend anything -- he didn't vote.
o use/1/votes/836/
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/h
At least the Democratic candidates all voted No.
To quote your sig, "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."
I definately agree. As we all know, the best swords are delivered by Santa Claus!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling