Senate Renews Warrantless Eavesdropping Act

New submitter electron sponge writes "On Friday morning, the Senate renewed the FISA Amendments Act (PDF), which allows for warrantless electronic eavesdropping, for an additional five years. The act, which was originally passed by Congress in 2008, allows law enforcement agencies to access private communications as long as one participant in the communications could reasonably be believed to be outside the United States. This law has been the subject of a federal lawsuit, and was argued before the Supreme Court recently. 'The legislation does not require the government to identify the target or facility to be monitored. It can begin surveillance a week before making the request, and the surveillance can continue during the appeals process if, in a rare case, the secret FISA court rejects the surveillance application. The court’s rulings are not public.'" The EFF points out that the Senate was finally forced to debate the bill, but the proposed amendments that would have improved it were rejected.

Comments

Perpetual war

[crazyjj]

These "wartime" acts will always be in place from now on, because the U.S. will never not be at war again.

Re:Perpetual war

[dkleinsc]

Of course: The US has basically been at war since 1941. It's also officially been in a state of emergency since September 2001, because presidents can do things in a state of emergency that they otherwise can't.

Another good example of a government under continuous emergency: Egypt was officially in a state of emergency from 1967 through May of this year.

Re:Perpetual war

[mrsquid0]

> Indeed. Harry Reid and gang can pass crap like this but not a single budget in going on 5 years.

That is because both parties support domestic spying, but the Republicans have been actively obstructing any economic legislation that the Democrats have introduced.

Re:Perpetual war

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly you don't understand economic messes.

The current record amounts of deficit spending were all enacted under a Democrat-controlled Congress (both House and Senate), and it has been maintained by not passing a new budget, which is likely done so that people like yourself can still attempt to point the finger at Republicans.

During the Bush era, Republicans were absolutely complicit in spending then-record amounts on deficits while fighting two wars, but they were completely dwarfed following the Congressional takeover by the Democratic super majority held through the first half of Obama's first term. And that doesn't even consider the fact that our deficit hardly took a hit when troops were pulled out of Iraq.

The incredible lunacy of it all is that Democrats are going to blame Republicans for the fiscal cliff. Democrats are holding the lions share of the taxpaying population hostage for the so-called millionaire tax that looks to tax people making above $400,000. Either the rich get tax increases, or we all do. That's a wonderful plan to repair an economy that supposedly just saw the worst Christmas since 2008.

As for the reality of our current mess? The housing crisis was caused by Democrats: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/122012-637924-faults-community-reinvestment-act-cra-mortgage-defaults.htm?p=full

The sickening part of it all is that Bush attempted to fix the housing bubble before it actually trashed our economy: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/business/new-agency-proposed-to-oversee-freddie-mac-and-fannie-mae.html

But Democrats blocked it.

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

If you actually look at the problem, then you may really see the cause of it.

Re:Perpetual war

[mrsquid0]

We have been cutting taxes for the past ten years. It has not worked. There is no non-ideological reason to think that cutting them again will help. Remember, the last time that the US had a booming economy was in the late 1990s, and taxes were higher then than they are now. Letting taxes rise to what they were before the Bush tax cuts came into effect will not tip the US economy into a recession. At worst it will slow down economic growth a bit. The real danger is that the automatic cuts in government spending that will start kicking in on Jan 1 will remove money from areas of the economy that are already in trouble.

Re:Perpetual war

[Mitreya]

Letting taxes rise to what they were before the Bush tax cuts came into effect will not tip the US economy into a recession.

It may also be helpful to stop calling that outcome a tax raise. Letting temporary tax cuts expire may be argued against, but it is hardly a tax raise unless they at least go higher than what used to be the rate in the 90s

A country that has a "secret court" of any kind

[PeeAitchPee]

should not be referred to as a democracy (or a democratic republic, for that matter).

Re:Passed by a Democrat controlled congress in 200

[crazyjj]

Passed by a Democratic Senate and House, signed by a Republican President, renewed by a Democrat controlled Senate and Republican controlled House, signed by a Democrat President. It's one of the few bi-partisan issues left.

Both sides can't agree on much of anything else, but they can both still agree to be evil. How touching.

Re:Passed by a Democrat controlled congress in 200

[Capt James McCarthy]

And yet for all the rhetoric that the press keeps pumping out about righties and lefties, the general public keeps eating it up. All the while it doesn't matter who gets voted in. Both 'sides' will screw the public. The real rouge, it's the govt against the public, not the righties vs lefties.