Slashdot Mirror
White House Wins On Spying, Telecom Immunity
EllisDees sends in a Washington Post report that Senate Republicans have outmaneuvered Democrats, who withdrew a more stringent version of legislation to control the government's domestic surveillance program. The legislation that will go forward includes a grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program.
Attention to those who shared our data illegally: Legal immunity doesn't mean you're not scumbags. That is all.
(In case anyone is watching)
Translation: In a Democrat controlled congress the Democrats could not convince their own people to reject this bill. Thus the bill passed with the help of some Democrats voting for this bill.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
The Dems caved. I'm not sure why though. The people have spoken and put them in trusted seats of power and they CAVED. I'm sure there are lot of home teams cheering from the stands only to have the players go, "ah, well, it's a lot of work to play the game. Let's concede."
I'm disappointed.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Outmaneuvered again! That seems to happen every day to these brave Democrats we elected; despite their sincere wishes to do the right thing, they just get outmaneuvered every time and have to surrender rather than risk... well, I'm not sure what, exactly, but it must be something.
It's like the burglar who smashed my window the other day. I politely asked him to leave, yet he refused. I threatened to call the police, but he said that I shouldn't. Well, you can't argue with that! He outwitted me fully and truly!
I let the burglar ransack my house because, let's face it, I had no choice. Sure, I had a gun and a cell phone, and he was unarmed, but he kept outmaneuvering me at every turn. I said I would shoot if he raped my wife, but he preempted me! Before I knew it, he was raping my wife, and it was just too darned late to stop him, so I put down my gun and wrote a press release (which I intend to publish EVERYWHERE to let the world know how this burglar has wronged me).
The Dems control congress so SOME dems had to vote for this bill to get it passed. It is simple math.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
Yeah, I didn't see anything in there about phone lines either. Did find this though:If it's not in the Constitution, the federal government's not allowed to do it, fancy that.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Of course not. That would be stupid.
That's why you're allowed up to 72 hours AFTER to file the correct paperwork with the FISA court.
It's called "checks and balances". It was a key point in the founding of our government. It WAS a key point. And it was agreed to by people who had put their own lives on the line when they signed our Declaration of Independence.
There's more risk of corrupt officials using this to further their own agendas than there is that it will stop any terrorist.
Because of this, no further investigation can be done on who and what and why and those were most likely the same people who did not want an investigation in the first place.
As a non-American I think Americans have serious issues. To lie about a blowjob: BAD! To lie to go to war and rape your rights: let's re-elect him.
Mmm. TV might have to do something with it. See a nipple or say fuck, scream. See people killed, daytime TV.
And you still think that terrorirst want to desroy your way of living? I would say it is bad that you don'[t want to destroy it yourself.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
but then I remembered I'm not American! Seriously, I'm over the whole horror of your brutal invasion of Iraq, trampling of civil rights, endorsements of torture. I'm now just watching news about american politics like its an episode of 24. Try it sometime, its actually pretty enjoyable. You had the regular spies, corrupt politician etc. But now you have mercenaries with cool names like Blackwater, unnamed gov. agencies tracking every piece of digital data, hidden detention centers... I'm waiting for the nex big twist. Maybe, it comes out that the drug war was a move by the CIA to push up drug prices, so the gov could make more money to fund their secret mercenary wars by smuggling in drugs, while at the same time filling up the prisons with second class citizens unable to vote, but conscriptable! hmmmm, I can't even tink up insane conspircy theories that aren't plausable anymore... cool!
I do wonder about this. What is the threshold where people should start to take-up arms? It seems we are really close to the threshold here:
.0001% as much as I care about the fact that they are trying to pass laws to make it legal after the fact.
...NO CARRIER
1. Companies collude with the executive branch to perform illegal and unconstitutional activities
2. Government passes law giving themselves the power to do this
3. Government passes law giving immunity to anyone who helps
I can actually FORGIVE #1, as sad as that is. But only because I trust the courts and congress to hold them accountable. But then when congress passes an immunity law, then what the heck???? That's about one step short of just granting themselves the power to do whatever they want. "You mean it's illegal to burst into your house and steal your possessions and rape your family? Oh, well, then we'll just fix that tomorrow in the next session..."
Now everybody will jump on my and say how they aren't really busting into American's houses. But that misses the point. The exact same tactic used to bust into American's phone lines is what would be required to bust into American homes. It's the same laws, same tactics. Frankly, I don't care if they listen in on suspected terrorist phone conversations
So where do I recruit an army?
It's easy. If you don't know who to contact or how to phrase your objection use this link:
https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=727&page=UserAction
Note that you can modify the letter template before you hit send if you don't agree with all of the text or wish to add points of your own.
There is another informational article on Salon.
(*) Does not apply to non-US citizens. (Although nothing actually stops you from mailing them anyway.)
BushCo don't really give a rat's ass about Congress, except when they've been tied up and begging for abuse a little too long and someone from the Administration has to go to the Hill and spit on them.
The courts, however, especially at the level of the Circuit Courts, are a different story.
The telco immunity provisions in this legislation are to keep the White House from being found (as part of some telco trial) to have broken the law. It's got little to do with protecting the telcos other than as a way to sell it to the public.
Glenn Greenwald over at Salon had a good interview with the EFF's lead counsel in the ATT/NSA/let's-just-snoop-the-whole-backbone trial that explains this quite well.
This is all about closing off the courts to examination of Executive Branch violations of the Constitution. Which is why it's actually a much, much bigger deal than most people seem to understand.
It's apparently 'reasonable' to monitor everyone in time of war. Luckily, we're always at war.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
We might not be such fools, but most people are.
I think back to visiting the film library at the hospital where I work. It was the day after one of the debates between Bush & Kerry. The folks in the film library were all planning on voting for Bush. Their reason: Kerry used too many words in the debate.
He used too many words...in a debate...
I sort of lost all hope then.
Stephen Colbert: "This is the famous pocket constitution... did you shrink this down yourself?"
Dennis Kucinich: "No, no, no. George Bush already did that."