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Telecom Immunity Bill Hides Spying Provisions
Corrupt notes an Ars analysis of the FISA bill of which the telecom immunity provision has been getting all the attention. Timothy B. Lee enumerates the ways in which the bill loosens current protections on domestic wiretapping and opens up whole new areas to government eavesdropping. "The legislation eliminates meaningful judicial oversight of eavesdropping between American citizens and foreigners located overseas, and effectively legalizes dragnet surveillance of domestic-to-foreign traffic. It stretches out the judicial review process so much that the government will in many cases be able to complete its surveillance activities before the courts finish deciding on its legality."
What do we have to be so darned worried about? It's not like the President would compile an "Enemies List" of people to wiretap, or something. This is America, right?
oh crap
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Is it just me, or does anyone else remember how in the 80s we were always being told that the Russian government (oooh, these evil Ruskies!) spied on their people and that the US was above that sort of behavior? And is it any surprise that it's essentially the same people in power now who are FOR this sort of governmental behavior? I guess as long as they got a boogeyman somewhere......
How about the billions in chasing phantom terrorists, waging two wars, creating the DHS, funding a massive wiretapping dragnet, new TSA security crackdowns, general security crackdowns, and plenty of pricey court cases arguing against the 4th Amendment.
Your pathetic attempt at distraction ignores the devastating cost of our overreaction.
And how many billions does it cost for those murders? 9/11 may have "only" killed 3,000 people, but it cost us several billion in clean-up, insurance, legal costs et al and sent our economy into a tailspin. All these pathetic analogies to deaths from bee-stings or bath-tub accidents or homicide ignore the devastating economic costs of terrorist attacks.
I would say that say "several billion" more than covers the clean-up, insurance and legal costs. While the hit to our economy is way into the trillions - how much have we wasted on Iraq alone, and then there is the sum of all the time wasted by TSA theatrics.
The difference is that the economic cost of terrorist attacks is largely self-inflicted - we do it to ourselves out of irrational fear. That's why the bee-sting and bath-tub death comparisons are apt -- they are meant to illustrate that our society does not have an irrational response to bees despite them killing more people than terrorists, so maybe we should get a grip and stop reacting irrationally to terrorism too.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Who says it ever gets to the courts?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Wake the fuck up. Our senators don't give a flying shit about you and nor have they ever cared about what citizens believe. They are not there to represent you, me, or anybody, except they are there to represent the government of your state, nobody else. It is the house that represents you, not the senate. The house has already passed the law therefore the senate will just pass it as well since clearly the people that were suppose to represent us has failed us all.
Senators only care about one thing, money and power, and they're getting both with this bill. So, we're fucked and there is nothing we as citizens can do anything about it cause the government went corrupt a long time ago and it just continues to get bigger and bigger.
let's not lose our perspective on the nature of terrorism either
We already did. Forty thousand people die on American highways every single year. Those deaths are no less traumatic to the families than the WTC deaths to those families, or those murdered by non-political murderers.
I want some of that homeland security money to go to guard rails.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The difference between terrorism and ordinary murder is the intended victim - politicians.
This is a vast oversimplification. Try telling that to the families of those killed in a certain Israeli pizza shop or in the WTC.
How is it a vast oversimplification?
Generally speaking, the entire point of terrorism is to further political or ideological goals.
Most people define terrorism by the motivation and intent of the attack, not by the scale.
As an example, the difference between terrorists (Beltway Snipers) and mass murderers (Columbine HS shootings) is entirely one of motivation and intent. Or another example would be hostage taking. What differentiates bank robbers who take hostages from Hezbollah or Hamas taking hostages? Why do we not call hostage-taking-bank-robbers terrorists?
The GP is 100% correct.
The difference between terrorism and ordinary murder is the intended victim - politicians.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
When I was in school I learned that our government is a system of Checks And Balances. What the article is telling me is that the Telcom bill is removing all of that as unnecessary.
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
You're missing the point. The oversight process in this bill permits spying to take place for thirty days to four months before being forced to stop. The govt can spy for thirty days (plus the 1 week before submission of certification) even if judicial oversight rejects their case the moment it is presented.
The timeline assuming the agency's goal is maximizing the spying time:
0 day - spying begins without any preamble
1 week - Gov must submit certification for review
1-30 days + 1 week - judge must returns review
if judge objects
30 days after review- the govt must stop spying
unless they appeal to FISA
then they could have another 30 days
If the judges and courts have full queues that could push the whole thing to four months.
Assuming it gets rejected they presumably (IANAL) cannot use the evidence in court. Nonetheless they were legally empowered to look through your internet/telephone underwear drawer for over a month. How are you feeling about your 4th amendment rights now?
The article goes on to describe how the constraints make this law very easily abused to include spying upon americans for a wide variety of pretexts. That is the other half of the problem.
This is a terrible law even if you ignore autocracy being implemented by the telecom amnesty provisions.