Slashdot Mirror
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."
Welcome to the "new normal" in America, where "Citizen" is a term that is interchangeable with "Felon" or "Enemy".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
LOL! Is this the "American Freedom" we secretly heard so much about when I was a youth growing up in Hungary during the Cold War?
Suddenly, it makes sense why all the senators and representatives are making so much noise about the debt ceiling instead of just voting to fix what should have been a relatively minor and uncontentious issue. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, the purpose of government is not to wield power, but to distract attention away from it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It's thoroughly inappropriate to be doing things like this in secret.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
in order to try to rush through a renewal of the FISA Amendments Act, which unconstitutionally allowed warrantless wiretapping in the U.S.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
warrantless anything is wrong and such acts should be punished for attempting, people should be burning with anger about this subject! Thanks for the info slashdot.
You are all suspected terrorists. Where is that phone number for the local FBI office...
Fuck Congress and their contempt for the common man.
Hiya.
Thank you for confirming that I am not a Tin Foil Hat for thinking this stuff is accelerating.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I hate you.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
Let then know this is not slipping under the wire. Email the President as well. Calls are good too.
At the Legion of Doom...
'Secret' is a word widely used in sensationalist headlines across the board in media, whether news, opinion or lifestyle. "Secret torture camps in country X", "Policy proposal X secretive meetings", "X's hot dating secrets". It's meant to draw attention primarily, to imply a "back-room deal brokering by shadowy players" as you put it. The way it frames and polarizes the subsequent discussion is also one of the wonderful effects of human nature, since less than 10% of people RTFA before discussion and less than 1% wish to fight the totality of FUD - not just from the politicians, but also FUD from summarizers, opinion leaders and uninformed discourse from the general public.
Read The Shock Doctrine . Then weep. Then vote for anyone other than Republicans or Democrats.
Because it wouldn't do any good - at worst they would be martyrs, and at best they would be replaced by someone else just like them. Violence is rarely the best solution, and they were elected after all, so if you want to make a change then campaign for someone else. If you can't find someone better then run for office yourself.
"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."
- Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel
anyone planted a bug in the meeting room ?
Frame the NSA for wiretapping senators on the intelligence committee.
Wait... was that was in V for Vandetta? Damnit.
Default is not inevitable, we can balance the budget, but if we only do a short term debt limit increase the US AAA rating will drop and cost the US another 100 billion a year in interest, making it that much harder to balance the budget in the future. That is what Obama is trying to do. The republicans in the senate are holding our govornment hostage and their only offer is an extra trillion dollars in debt over the next 10 years.
How can they back a bill like this whilst simultaneously the Phone Hacking scandal continues unabated? Isn't this exactly the same thing, only on a grander scale?
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for an hour. Set him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
If you believe Obama is actually trying to balance the budget, then all you need to do is look at what his plan actually entails to think otherwise. The same goes for Boener's plan. Both add over $7 Trillion in new debt over the next 10 years and spending levels continue to rise. If they were actually interested in balancing the budget, the would put us on a path to reduce spending and actually balance the budget, but all this is is a bunch of smoke and mirrors to make us think they're doing the right thing. In reality, all they're doing is continuing to expand the power of the federal government, the executive branch in particular. We need to return to Clinton administration levels of spending, adjusted for inflation of course. We can't keep the Obushma empire going.
1984 is NOT an instruction manual.
Seriously, I'm actually reading 1984 again, and the parallels are scary to what has been going on in the US post-9/11. And to imagine that Orwell came up with this in the late 40's and it's mirrored in today's USA, is literally unbelievable.
How much longer do you let this continue?
With you 100%, but it should be noted we're not that far off from Clinton levels of spending and will more or less reach it once we wind down our two land wars in Asia. We've cratered revenues, however. If we returned taxes to Clinton levels, we would have a small enough deficit that Republicans would be back to calling for tax cuts to prevent a surplus, instead of tax cuts for whatever reason they give now.
The US really needs to stop thinking that it has to be the worlds police force and pull its troops out of places that it doesn't really need them. Iraq for one (let the new democratically elected government of Iraq decide what sort of military Iraq needs to defend itself).
Get out of Europe altogether (the cold war is over and the threat of the Russians are going to send fleets of tanks west is long gone and that's assuming they actually have any armies left after the collapse of their military)
Pull all the covert guys (including CIA and special forces) out of South America and stop trying to topple or influence governments in the region (be they democratic or otherwise)
Get out of Japan (the Japanese are unlikely to attack America again, not when the Americans spend so much money on Japanese electronics, automobiles and other products)
Stop spending so much money on expensive new toys like the F35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter and start spending money on the kind of operations required to get intel on the bad guys, especially the terrorists. Stop spending money on ever more data collection (including tapping every phone and internet connection in the known world and dumping the contents of every storage device that passes through a US point of entry) and spend money on paying gurus to analyze the data to find the good bits.
You dont beat terrorists by shooting at them with Sidewinder missiles, you beat them by finding where they are through good intel and blowing up their camp with a few artillery pieces or bazookas.
You dont beat IEDs with massive radar installations that make radio telescopes look small, you beat IEDs with detector dogs, guys carrying metal detectors, bomb detection robots and bomb squad teams.
Conspiracy theories are nuts, but we really have to agree there are conspiracy facts: people with higher power will always try to conspire against any other people, it always seem to happen that way. There are no conspiracy theories, but it's just a fact that there as so many examples out there where politics is just a tool to fuck up citizens. I'm wondering how the hell those guys can do this hit without even alarming citizen. I think we have come to be 99% sheeps who will not question or not worry about this, 0.5% turning crazy because of knowing this, and 0.5% being the actual elite who fuck up everybody.
Nice try. Protip: if you want to troll people, don't contradict yourself so much.
Unfortunately I can't mod in this discussion so could someone mode the parent down, the "President Chocolate Jesus" is really uncalled for and is just trolling. I don't like President Obama, and agree that the up roar during President Bush's administration over these issues by Democrats is strangely missing (hey at least the Republicans are consistent).
Time to offend someone
Don't forget the War on Drugs and the expansion of the ATF. Waco and Ruby Ridge weren't about corporate profits.
I notice how carefully you selected your beginning and supposed end dates for the plummet. It's still plummeting under Obama. He doesn't get a pass. If you believed his "hope and change" rhetoric during the campaign, you were gullible. If you still believe it you're just an idiot.
ah, this group is lead by Dianne Feinstein.
No surprise. Thanks a lot California for not voting her out of office years ago. Ugh.
He warned us about how parties would lead to the current situation in 1796.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington's_Farewell_Address
I keep hearing about gay rights, but I still don't see any violations.
I really hate that term as well as it shows someone is a political hack. As it isn't a personal attack I am generally more forgiving.
Time to offend someone
That's actually not even remotely true. While yes, the wars are significant adding to our budget, we have significantly increased spending across the board. In 2000, we spent $1.77 trillion, 18.2% of GDP with a deficit of $0.04 trillion. Our 2011 budget is $3.83 trillion, 26% of GDP, with a deficit of $1.65 trillion. Adjusting the 2000 budget of $1.77 trillion to 2010 dollars would result in $2.22 trillion or $1.61 trillion less than we're currently spending. If we used the last Clinton budget and adjusted it for inflation, we'd have a deficit of $0.4 trillion in a year where tax revenues are at a relatively low level. So, not even close. Eliminating the entire military budget still lives us with a massive deficit, so we can't just blame this on the wars.
I do believe there are blacklists. I suspect I'm on one; more than one, I would even wager.
and I believe everyone that 'stirs up trouble' will find that the jobs and offers kind of dry up, slowly over time.
it sucks. yes, it certainly does. when I run out of money, I'll be on the street (or something equally worse). and I guess at that point when I have nothing left, I'll be thinking in even more extreme terms.
if the 'job creators' (yeah, that's the new euphemism for 'rich republican motherfuckers') want to keep people in their place, they at least have to ensure they still have *income* or else there WILL be riots in the streets.
so maybe for people like me who run out of support - maybe we're the ones to raise the union flag. but I just don't see my fellow software, hardware and systems guys following. they are TOO comfy with their playstations, blue ray players (I refuse to sell it the sony way; fuck sony!) and smartphones. there are a lot of people under water, but not enough to really rise up.
yet.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Unless you plan to do something about it this time... It is the same ole BS they passed before. Nothing different except for the date, and the public did not do a thing but sit on their ass and twiddle their thumbs and watch the movie stars on the tv. The public doesn't care? I can't speak for all of them, but yes they had a rally about this, and you could count the attendants on your hands. The sorry good for nothing media didn't even cover it. They would lots rather cover BS on entertainers.
It most certainly is NOT trolling. I use the term to ridicule the unearned adulation that the political left heaps upon the atrocity that's in the People's House.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I really hate that term as well as it shows someone is a political hack. As it isn't a personal attack I am generally more forgiving.
You, sir, are a hypocrite.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
When I first saw this headline I thought it said "Senators Want Secret Warrantless Wiretap REMOVAL" and I was truly shocked...
But then I saw it was RENEWAL and realized that nothing had actually changed...