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

Terms of Usage

[Sigvatr]

Every company needs a "we can do whatever we want" clause in their terms of usage, why not the United States?

Re:Terms of Usage

[CanHasDIY]

Every company needs a "we can do whatever we want" clause in their terms of usage, why not the United States?

Because the contract expressly forbids it

Re:Terms of Usage

[slick7]

Every company needs a "we can do whatever we want" clause in their terms of usage, why not the United States?

Apparently, you didn't read the EULA.

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

[geek]

Indeed. Harry Reid and gang can pass crap like this but not a single budget in going on 5 years. Our Congress and executive branches are treasonous.

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

[geek]

> 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.

Um no. Harry Reid has never even put a budget up for a vote. He's never even created one for discussion. How can the Republicans obstruct something that doesn't even exist? Quit pointing fingers and start laying the blame on the majority holders that are running the show. You're not doing yourself or this country any favors giving assholes like Reid a free fucking pass.

Re:Perpetual war

[lightknight]

I'll ready the guillotine. Can we do previously elected officials as well?

Re:Perpetual war

[lightknight]

Indeed, but the common people of the internet are the ones who will suffer for the actions of the idiots who wish to engage in such a war, which is why all of the more intelligent internet types have been dancing on egg shells to prevent this. Of course, there are some people out there, driven by nationalism or money, who do not care if a few thousand innocents die if they get what they want. Coming up with a solution to this problem without becoming like them is, of course, very trying.

Re:Perpetual war

[Nadaka]

The Korean war never ended.

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

[fustakrakich]

Can we do previously elected officials as well?

Only if we can do the people that voted for them over and over.

Re:Perpetual war

[mrsquid0]

Once again, no amount of swearing, name-calling, or temper tantrums is going to change reality. The US is about to take a dive over a cliff because a groups of extremists are refusing stand down from a childish ideological platform and start cooperating to reach a deal.

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

[CanHasDIY]

You're too fucking stupid to even see the problem let alone actually fix it.

Says the guy who insists the entire blame for the current fiscal clusterfuck lies on the shoulders of half the government, while apparently believing that the other half are completely innocent patsies.

Logic and reason aren't your strong points, are they Cap'n?

Re:Perpetual war

[Mitreya]

Sadly a declaration of war which provides the ability to override certain areas of the Constitution is never made. People don't think it's a big deal whether Congress formally declares war or not, but it is. It would be one thing if a formal declaration had been made but the truth is we're really not at war in any real sense.

Congress has even managed to pretend that the war budget doesn't exist. Most of Iraq and Afganistan had been funded via "emergency appropriations" instead of an actual budget with everything else in it. Maybe the official budget debates would stem the warmongering a bit, if our laws cannot?

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

Re:Perpetual war

[Holi]

It is not the Senates job to introduce a budget. in fact it would be unconstitutional for the budget to be introduced by the Senate. It is the responsibility of the House to introduce budget, it can;t come from the Senate, it can't come from the President. So can we please drop this bullshit about how it's Harry Reid's fault for not coming up with a budget. The blame falls clearly on the House and thus on Boehner's lap.

Re:Perpetual war

[Mitreya]

Says the guy who insists the entire blame for the current fiscal clusterfuck lies on the shoulders of half the government, while apparently believing that the other half are completely innocent patsies.

It does appear to be the case that the blame is not (currently) distributed equally. As best as I can tell, Republicans are trying to negotiate a compromise without making any concessions whatsoever. Democrats are not blameless, but at the moment they do seem more reasonable.

There are no innocents here -- and most of the problem is due to the fact that too many representatives (on both sides) are too entrenched in their home region due to gerrymandering. Not enough of them worry about re-election, I guess

Re:Perpetual war

[cellocgw]

The Koreans never signed an armistice, but OTOH the USA never declared war there, either. It was, IIRC, a 'Police Action."

Shows you where their priorities are

[mbstone]

They have time to debate and pass secret warrantless wiretapping, but not to keep the price of milk from going up to $7.

Re:Shows you where their priorities are

[flayzernax]

Soy milk with aluminum shipped in from china is still good to go!

Re:Shows you where their priorities are

[mcgrew]

who gives a poo about Milk, it's unhealthy anyway. :) I'm all for warrantless eavesdropping.

Having the Govt able to see if i cal my mom or if i send a text to my wife saying i'm at the store buying dog food is a small price to pay for increased security and making sure some d-bag doesn't bomb a plane that i'm on.

agreed.

You're both noncomposmentos. Milk is what comes from a mother's tit and is the healthiest thing you can have; it's only unhealthy if you're lactose-intolerant.

Your chances of dying because some dirt bag bombs your plane is orders of magnatude less than your chances of dying because of a mechanical malfunction or pilot error takes it down.

How many people do you know pwesonally who've died because of terrorism? How many have died on the highway? Died from cancer? Died from heart disease?

You are both fools and idiots. Congrats on the stupidest comment I've seen all week.

Now please go back to Yahoo or fark or wherever you came from, slashdot was designed for folks with at least average intelligence, not mentally deficient folks like you two who can't tell the difference between three thousand and three million.

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.

See which bastards voted for it

[petsounds]

Here's the vote of each Senator on this bill. Only 23 voted Nay, only 3 of those Nays were Republicans, and 4 Senators didn't even show up to vote. And President Obama is quite ready to sign it into law.

This country is broken.

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.

It's funny...

[Charliemopps]

It's funny how our government can easily pass laws like this that the public is almost universally apposed to with very little effort what-so-ever. But when it comes to balancing the budget, something we're almost universally in favor of, they can't do a damned thing.

Re:Passed by a Democrat controlled congress in 200

[anagama]

Glenn Greenwald has some great analysis on this vote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/28/fisa-feinstein-obama-democrats-eavesdropping

Wyden yesterday had two amendments: one that would simply require the NSA to give a general estimate of how many Americans are having their communications intercepted under this law (information the NSA has steadfastly refused to provide), and another which would state that the NSA is barred from eavesdropping on Americans on US soil without a warrant. Merkley's amendment would compel the public release of secret judicial rulings from the FISA court which purport to interpret the scope of the eavesdropping law on the ground that "secret law is inconsistent with democratic governance"; the Obama administration has refused to release a single such opinion even though the court, "on at least one occasion", found that the government was violating the Fourth Amendment in how it was using the law to eavesdrop on Americans.

But the Obama White House opposed all amendments, demanding a "clean" renewal of the law without any oversight or transparency reforms. Earlier this month, the GOP-led House complied by passing a reform-free version of the law's renewal, and sent the bill Obama wanted to the Senate, where it was debated yesterday afternoon.

This is of course in contrast to his pre-election 2008 promise to oppose the original bill (which he didn't do, voting for it instead). Now he loves it so much, he won't countenance any modifications.

Democrats: The New GOP.

Putin: Bring Back The Wall!

[l0ungeb0y]

Seriously -- things were so much better when we had the Red Scare to keep our Government busy.
Ever since the Berlin Wall fell, it's been a constant War On The People.

Can the US and Russia please just go back to hating each other?
I've had it with my government truing to come up with new and improved ways to infringe my rights.

Just an extention of US Export Controls

[redelm]

Rail all you like but the US you think you knew _never_ existed. The US has always exerted strong jurisdiction and controls of both imports (Morrill Tariff caused the US Civil War) _and_ exports. Most people know about imports but few know about US Export controls which date back to 1790 with a prohibition against exporting straight pine logs useable as ship masts and spars by the enemy of the day, Great Britain. The current lists are rather long and complex -- search on CCL and EAR.

It should come as no surprise to information-workers that some of these controls cover intangibles like information (xDxxx and xExxx series codes), especially when these can be viewed as "products" and not "free-speech". To avoid running afoul of the US Const 1st Amend (and potential invalidation by courts), the export regs have exemptions for certain types of public materials like conferences.

So these intercepts, however distasteful ("Gentlemen do not read each others letters") have an established basis in law a power-grabbing government is happy to seize. Their oath "protect and defend the Consititution" seems to mean "push up as hard as we dare against it, joyfully crossing the line when we can find a good enough justification".

Ron Paul

[cod3r_]

Does not approve.

Re:Passed by a Democrat controlled congress in 200

[painandgreed]

Democrats: The New GOP.

Well considering that the Republicans are just Southern Democrats from 40 years ago that switched sides after the Democrats backed civil rights, it's only appropriate. Look at the Tea Party: Southern Conservatives in favor of states rights and leaving the union because a black man in in charge. 40 years ago, they were blue dog Dixiecrats.

Re:Passed by a Democrat controlled congress in 200

[dkleinsc]

This rampant anti constitutional behavior is orthogonal to party division. There are douche bags and sane people on both sides of the aisle.

Although, as this vote demonstrates, it's not evenly divided: The sane ones were 3 of the 47 Republicans, 19 of the 51 Democrats, and 1 of the 2 independents. 4 ducked their job responsibilities entirely. According to this vote, your best bet for sanity is electing an socialist-leaning independent, followed by a liberal Democrat, followed by a libertarian-leaning Republican. Centrist Democrats and conservative Republicans will happily vote to screw you over.