Senators Want Secret Warrantless Wiretap Renewal

An anonymous reader writes "A group of Senators are meeting in secret today, while most people are focused on the 'debt ceiling' issue, in order to try to rush through a renewal of the FISA Amendments Act, which expressly allowed warrantless wiretapping in the U.S. The law isn't set to expire until next year, but some feel that the debt ceiling crisis is a good distraction to pass the extension without having to debate the issue in public. The meeting is being held in secret, but it's not classified, so people can demand to know how their Senator voted."

Comments

Re:Which Senators was in the secret meeting?

[nschubach]

FTA:

        Dianne Feinstein, California (chair)
        Saxby Chambliss, Georgia (vice chair)
        John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia
        Olympia J. Snowe, Maine
        Ron Wyden, Oregon
        Richard Burr, North Carolina
        Barbara A. Mikulski, Maryland
        James Risch, Idaho
        Bill Nelson, Florida
        Daniel Coats, Indiana
        Kent Conrad, North Dakota
        Roy Blunt, Missouri
        Mark Udall, Colorado
        Marco Rubio, Florida
        Mark Warner, Virginia

Re:That explains everything.

[Philip K Dickhead]

I need some input from the Lawn Crowd, did it feel like this in the Watergate days? I'm getting the horrible feeling that after a nice quiet 90's with nothing but a fun little sex scandal we're seeing a whole different class of nastiness today.

No, it wasn't like this.

Watergate was a relatively singular event, which elicited widescale public outrage. You couldn't go anywhere without it being a topic of convesation and dispute.

This is one of ten-thousand such outrages, perpetrated over the past decade. Like most of them, people don't know of it happening, or why it might even be wrong.

Sleep tight, America.