New FISA Bill Would Grant Telcoms Immunity; Vote Is Tomorrow

An anonymous reader writes "This just in: a new 'compromise' FISA Bill (PDF) was just made public, which, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports, 'contains blanket immunity for telecoms that helped the NSA break the law and spy on millions of ordinary Americans.' The House vote is tomorrow, June 20. After all the secret rooms and everything ... if they get immunity and the public never finds out what happened, the only other logical next step is to convince everyone I know not to get an iPhone." CNN covers this get-out-of-lawsuit play as well.

Comments

Re:CALL your Congress Critter on this.

[electricbern]

Do I get transferred to a call center in China?

Re:Politicians will vote for the law

[damn_registrars]

At least this vote will make it painfully clear which politicians should stay and which should be removed post-haste.
Unfortunately, only half of the US house is up for re-election this year. And in all likelihood, we'll find that of that half, the ones that vote yes for this bill will come from the states most paranoid of terrorism (and other such political fairy tales).

Re:Amongst all this...the question remains...

[BlowHole666]

You sir have anger problems :) So you won an argument on the internet congratulations :) Or is it that this issue makes you angry because other people like Notguitecajun raised a question for people on slashdot to answer and you think he is a jackass because of it. Either way I hope your day goes better for you and whatever is bothering you in your life changes.

Re:CALL your Congress Critter on this.

[Duncan Blackthorne]

STFU, fucking troll. REPUBLICAN troll.

Re:Someone please drop a nuclear weapon on congres

[arrowspear]

So when the United States puts death threats on other countries/people/it's own citizens it is okay?

Ohh I see, death threats are only allowed if the United States of America makes them, I understand the rules now, thank you for clearing that up for everyone.

Back at the NSA: "Some troll on slashdot calls for nuclear war, we MUST use or wiretapping powers to stop this troll from carrying out his plans."

I think your dipshitted yap is hypocritical and short sighted.

Re:I see

[Lord Flipper]

I'm glad I know your posting history well enough to ignore it.

Gosh, I love it when a guy stands up and brags about his own ignorance.

Read the text of the law, and the details of how it maneuvers through anticipated judicial appeals, with the 'right', granted in the law, to keep breaking the law as the 'case' slowly winds its way through the system.

Oops, I forgot, you're an ignorant fuck, and proud! of it, so I suppose acquainting yourself with the details is counterproductive, or 'for sissies', eh?

Oh well, then have fun being a self-admitted moron, loser. Oh, and enjoy your ER palliative triage morphine in lieu of 'socialist' health care, too. And relax, as the cancer eats its way through your useless, wasted, ignorant rotting flesh, the morphine will make it all better... um, for all of us, in your case.

Re:Politicians will vote for the law

[sumdumass]

The problem is that five years ago our president lied to his country to convince us to get involved in a war that has damaged us as a country and made the world a more dangerous place for Americans. At the time there was some controversy over whether or not he had in fact lied flat out. By this point however that controversy has died out. Everyone knows we were blatantly lied to, and everyone is pissed (at least this is what I gather from blogs, forums, slashdot, and from people I run into). If a media group decided to thrash Bush for a while, I would watch, and everyone I know would watch, but aside from Keith Olbermann, nobody has done this. Why not? Ratings would improve from this increased viewership, especially for traditionally 'liberal' outlets, so there's actually money to be made.

No, the problem is that your spouting opinion as fact. There is no hard evidence, just speculation, showing that we were deliberately lied to. It could very well be true that the president actually believe in what he was saying. This could be because of people around him shaping the information he received, it could be because of some inherent flaw in his logic, and it could be a number of things outside of a blatant lie.

Now I don't think ratings would increase, in Olbermann's situation, the station was loosing viewers and it only brought people who already disliked bush to that station. It didn't motivate people who weren't looking for news already and it didn't create new viewers. The lack of bashing the president doesn't create viewers or keep them either. The entertainment and content being presented does.

Granted I haven't proven that ratings increase from Bush bashing, and there's a chance I'm wrong (I was unable to find ratings information for olbermann's "I accuse you mr. bush" special report), and if you want to disagree with me there, that's legitimate, but I think a lot of people (maybe yourself included?) would agree that they would be more interested in seeing Bush get a trashing than hear about the local cat being saved from a tree on Fox News.

The fact that not a single news outlet has reported on this yet, is what bothers me.

You most likely wrong on the ratings outside of a specticle or freak show type thing. And your right, news about the administration is more important then news about a cat in a tree.... or was it a swan in a tree on CNN a couple months ago?

Anyways your off on them not reporting it. You see, they have reported on it. What they did was give the facts that allowed you to form your opinion. Right or wrong, opinion is opinion and facts are still facts. Your essentially saying you won't watch news channels because they won't admit that they agree with you. The news reports the story, it doesn't tell you what to think about the story. That is what bashing the president would be doing.

Yes, and while I'm at it let me continue with my speculation:

I think there may be a correlation between the intelligence of the audience and the proportion of airtime an organization devotes to the entertainment. Notice how the most intellectually demanding material comes from newspapers and journals and not TV, and that there is proportionally less bullshit in print than on TV (correct me if I'm wrong, this is based on my experience, which is biased because I only read certain news sources).

I don't know if your right or wrong, I havn't done or seen any legitimate studies one way or another. But you have to keep in mind that the cheapest way to publish something is with print. When you gather information, you don't make a movie to store it, you write it down. When you evaluate that information and come to a conclusion, you don't make a radio program or a TV show, you document your finding. So your observation will be skewed by the shear perplexity of creating a TV show and the availability of resources and all.

Something else to consider is,