Senate To Reconsider Wiretap Immunity

bughunter passes on a report from Wired Threat Level about the effort by Democratic lawmakers to roll back some provisions of the Patriot Act. Three of its provisions expire at the end of this year, and the reform attempt is expected to be attached to legislation to renew them. "Lawmakers are considering key changes to the Patriot Act and other spy laws — proposals that could give new life to lawsuits accusing the nation's telecommunications companies of turning over Americans' electronic communications to the government without warrants. On Oct. 1, the Senate Judiciary Committee likely will consider revoking that immunity legislation as it works to revise the Patriot Act and other spy laws with radical changes that provide for more government transparency and more privacy protections." Among the other likely goals of reform efforts, according to Wired, are limiting the government's power to issue National Security Letters, and limiting "black bag" searches to cases of spying or terrorism — 65% of past searches were authorized in drug cases.

Comments

Proof once again...

[MikeRT]

65% of past searches were authorized in drug cases

That the War on Drugs has done more to rape civil liberties than any other government initiative in modern times.

Re:Proof once again...

[mcgrew]

Indeed. But I think that's what the war on (some) drugs is really about -- a power grab that has turned the US into a police state. We have secret police ("plainclothesmen" and "undercover agents") only because of victimless crimes like drugs, gambling, and prostitution. We have the highest incarceration rate of any nation on earth, with a high percentage of them being non-violent drug prisoners.

The worst part is, these laws cause the very problems they allegedly were written to combat. For example, "marijuana leads to harder drugs". Well DUH, of course it does; the same people who sell pot sell the other drugs. "Got any weed, man?" "No, dude, it's dry. I have lots of coke, though, good shit, too." Then there's "think of the children!" Odd how it's easier for a teenager to buy pot than beer or cigarettes, and easier for a teenager to get than for an adult.

Don't get me started on drug gangs and their violence. When prohibition was repealed, the alcohol wars between rival gangs ended.

We are a nation of fools, blindly following the leadership of the amoral.

Re:Proof once again...

[ZekoMal]

With the introduction of TV, they can scare us all into believing that drugs cause so much violence. With the hiding of history, they can make us forget that prohibition leads to violence.

Re:Proof once again...

[TheCarp]

> The worst part is, these laws cause the very problems they allegedly were written to combat. For example, "marijuana
> leads to harder drugs". Well DUH, of course it does; the same people who sell pot sell the other drugs. "Got any weed,
> man?" "No, dude, it's dry. I have lots of coke, though, good shit, too." Then there's "think of the children!" Odd how
> it's easier for a teenager to buy pot than beer or cigarettes, and easier for a teenager to get than for an adult.

Actually, thats kind of BS anyway. Most "dealers" specialize in the one or two things that they do themselves. Somewhere around 80% of "drug dealers" are just users selling to support their own habit. Many of them are a lot closer to the person who gets a few friends together to go in on getting a large quantity of something at the local wholesale club than any sort of organized business.

The simple fact is that, if you take away all the pot smokers, thats more people than ALL the other illegal drugs combined. So if there is a "gateway effect" it seems to me like its just an artifact of there being so many potheads and so much variability and that users of other drugs tend to just want to "get fucked up" and tend to be indiscriminate about what they use.

That is, people who will shoot heroin and snort coke tend to be less picky about what drugs they use than people who smoke pot. Hell, some pot smokers dont even drink much alcohol, and you need go no further than junkie author William S Borroughs' book Nake Lunch to find a description of how pot smokers look down on and disdain junkies. An attitude that I can personally say I have witnessed.

The gateway drug theory has been fairly debunked. However, it has been shown that graduates of the DARE program are more likely to use drugs as teenagers than kids who didn't go through the program.

-Steve

Re:Proof once again...

[corbettw]

In my experience, the only gateway effect of marijuana is when someone finally tries it and doesn't die of an overdose or go mad, they start to think "Hmmm, if the cops and politicians lied about the effects of pot, maybe they lied about all the other stuff, too? Might as well try some meth, what's the worst that could happen?"

This is how my younger brother got hooked on speed and barbiturates, which led directly to his death of an overdose. He tried pot in high school, nothing bad happened, so he figured the other stuff couldn't be that bad, either. The idiocy fueled by the War on Drugs killed my brother.

Re:Proof once again...

[Sloppy]

That the War on Drugs has done more to rape civil liberties than any other government initiative in modern times.

Sort of. Really, there's an underlying attitude, motivation, or system of values, that created the war on drugs, and that ("government knows what is best for people and should have the means to force it") is what really rapes civil liberties.

Citizens do not believe that people should have as many rights as, say, the Bill of Rights tries to protect. The constitution simply does not describe the relationship between people and government, that most people want. If you think the constitution is based on bad ideas, then it really is just ink on a page, not the law.

And this is just how things are going to be, until people see reasons for freedom.

This is why I get so disappointed with most pro-legalization advocates. They talk about drugs, not government. You aren't going to convince anyone that freedom is a good idea, by concentrating on minor details like the properties of some particular drug. Marijuana is a 100% irrelevant topic in discussions about legalizing marijuana. The only topic that really matters, is what powers government should have -- and which government (feds vs state vs local) should have them.

And if that question is irrelevant, or if people think the answer is "the government should have the power to decide anything it wants to," then there's no such thing as "civil liberties."

And Obama is selling us out

[Anonymous Coward]

The fine summary leaves out the minor fact that Obama is opposed to watering down the Patriot act.

So much for hope and change.

Re:And Obama is selling us out

[MobyDisk]

I thought this was a troll, but it isn't.

Obama Backs Extending Patriot Act Spy Provisions

Re:And Obama is selling us out

[locallyunscene]

The article you link doesn't say what you're saying. In fact it says the administration has the same stance as the summary. They're planning on renewing all three provisions, but including more protections for civil liberties.

I'd much rather they simply let all three expire, but your implied assertions that the Obama administration is opposed to adding civil liberty protections to the bill and is at odds with congress are both unsupported.

Re:Show of Hands

[spartacus_prime]

You would think that, with a Democratic majority, this sort of stuff would pass without much trouble. This administration is too nice to the Republican minority.

Bush Admin Lying Sacks of Shit

[curmudgeon99]

As expected when they proposed it--the Patriot Act was not used as advertised.
Just 3% of the "National Security" Letters were used for terrorism-related cases.
65% of them were instead used for drug cases. So many of the actions taken by the Bush Administration to allegedly protect us from "Terrorists" were instead used for the meat and potatoes Law and Order issues the Republicans favor. Despicable!

Re:Bush Admin Lying Sacks of Shit

[Red Flayer]

Out of curiosity, what were the other 32% of the NSLs used for?

Espionage investigations? Non-drug-related money-laundering? Smuggling?

Copyright violations?

OK, I'm kidding about the last one. Kind of.

Re:Bush Admin Lying Sacks of Shit

[ZekoMal]

Hovever - What Exaclty is a phone company supposed to tell the FBI or CIA when they show up with a request from the AG/President? "No, you must get some local judge to ok that"? When that company wants to open a new office/expand/file tax returns will that "lack of cooperation" be held against them?

When you fear retribution from your own government for following constitutional laws, your government failed.

Re:Bush Admin Lying Sacks of Shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Bypass Wired and NYT's filtering and read the source for yourself: the Administrative Office of the United States Court report on applications for delayed-notice search warrants.
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/SneakAndPeakReport.pdf

You want Table 2, on page 6.

Top categories in order of frequency of report: drugs, fraud, weapons, tax evasion, racketeering, "unspecified," fugitive, theft... terrorism is so far down the list that it doesn't get a percentage to show its proportionality. In terms of raw frequency, there were 843 drug-related reports, and 5 terrorism-related reports.

Re:Bush Admin Lying Sacks of Shit

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Qwest did exactly that! They refused without a specific court order.

And in return Qwest was shut out of hundreds of millions of previously locked-in government contracts leading the CEO to go to prison on insider trading charges for making statements based on the expected revenues from those previously locked-in contracts.

Re:Bush Admin Lying Sacks of Shit

[Hatta]

What exactly did Bush protect you from? Bush is responsible for more American deaths than Bin Laden is. You would not have been able to say the same about Gore or Kerry.

Re:Show of Hands

[morgan_greywolf]

You would think that, with a Democratic majority, this sort of stuff would pass without much trouble. This administration is too nice to the Republican minority.

It's not a Republican vs. Democratic issue. I know it seems like it, but it's not. The Democrats are going to put on a nice show for all of us to show us that they at least "tried", but in the end, this won't pass. Big telecom has powerful lobbies, and the TPTB in the military and civilian intelligence agencies have all deemed telecom immunity to be too important to national security.

Re:Show of Hands

[tcopeland]

Obligatory Onion: BREAKING: Democrats Hoping To Take Control Of Congress From Republican Minority In 2010

But what do you expect? After all, as Biden said, some of the guys he campaigned for are turkeys.

Re:Show of Hands

[mcgrew]

The thing is, the Democrats are as power hungry as the Republicans. And the PATRIOT act was passed by a nearly unanimous vote.

A pox on both their houses, I say.

Re:Absolute power corrupts absolutely

[zippthorne]

You need to add some more questions. A very important one I can think of is "How long do they request to have this power?" If the answer is "indefinitely" then there'd better be a damn good answer to those other two questions you listed.

Why is it that the only bills that ever seem to "sunset" are tax cuts?

Re:Double Jeopardy?

[Chris Burke]

In order for companies to function, they need some predictability. Congress' granting retroactive immunity to the telcos set a bad precedent. But having done so, revoking it also sets a bad precedent.

No, it sets a good precedent -- don't think you can break the law, and then have Congress retroactively cover your ass, because it won't stick. You want predictability? How about "obey the law as written, not as you hope it might be in the future"?

Undoing the damage done by retroactive immunity is a good thing.

On the other hand, is it ever late too late to seek justice?

No, but... *shrug* The question is, among all the injustices done during the previous administration which will go unpunished, is it so important to punish this one? I'm not really sure. Frankly I tend towards the line of thinking that says "lets move on". It was a crazy time. We, as a nation, were crazy. A lot of people did bad things and ultimately I think most of them at some level believed they were doing good. Not just "I was following orders", but "I was following orders in order to Save America".

I dunno. I'm very much against retroactive immunity, but at the same time I'm not so sure how diligently we should pursue prosecution for every violation of the law in the last 8 years. I am much more concerned with making sure it doesn't happen again in the future, and I'm not a big believer in punishment as a deterrent for future crimes. No criminal thinks they are going to get caught, and for a lot of the crimes in question the perps probably really believed they were not committing crimes. I'm not sure seeking justice in these cases is, you know, productive.