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Even the Author of the Patriot Act Is Trying To Stop the NSA
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner will introduce an anti-NSA bill tomorrow in the House, and if it makes its winding way to becoming law, it will be a big step towards curtailing the NSA's bulk metadata collection. Wisconsin Rep. Sensenbrenner, along with 60 co-sponsors, aims to amend one section of the Patriot Act, Section 215, in a bill known as the United and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet Collection, and Online Monitoring Act — also known by its less-clunky acronym version, the USA Freedom Act."
... In other news, senators stopped short of repealing the Patriot Act, likely aware that without deleting the entire act, all they're accomplishing is switching the data collection activities to another agency, which will then perform the role the NSA currently has.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Just repeal the damned PATRIOT act. IT was supposed to be a temporary measure and it needs to go away now. Why dont these senators have any backbone or honestly left in them and just repeal it?
Completely agree, but I fear that won't happen (not even the USA Freedom Act) because Congress doesn't work for us anymore: they work for rich folks and for the corporations. That's because bribery is legal these days and those in Congress have found that 94-95% of the time the candidate with the most money wins. Consequently, fundraising is what they do 60% of the time; "following the green," as they call it. So, if companies like Booz Allen Hamilton start instructing their stooges in Congress on both sides of the isle about what they want, the PATRIOT Act will remain and the USA Freedom Act will fail.
To fix that and many other things, we first need to get money out of politics.
If that makes sense to you, I would suggest signing this petition: WOLF-PAC. Launched in October 2011 for the purpose of passing a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will end corporate personhood* and publicly finance all elections**. Since Congress won't pass such an Amendment on its own, the plan is to instead have the State Legislators propose it via an Article V Convention. At least 34 States need to cooperate for this to work, but already many have reacted with enthusiasm, most notably Texas. If successful, we should see a much more respectable group of politicians emerge within one or two election cycles.
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*) The aim is not to end legal personhood for corporations, but natural personhood. The latter became a problem following the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which grated some of the rights of natural persons to corporations and makes it easier for them to lend financial support to political campaigns.
**) At the State level, more than half of all political campaigns are already publicly financed in some way, so there's nothing strange about doing the same for political campaigns for federal office.
Pretty much the entire Act as it currently stands. There's a lot of vaguely-worded clauses that grant nearly limitless authority and do not require disclosure of the reasons for many police actions. It would be relatively easy to stitch together what is being given up by these politicians from other parts of the Act and have yourself a new Franken-agency.
By removing permissions to do those things?
How does that get stitched into another agency?
You removed the permission, and you add a whole bunch of shall nots, so that there is nothing left to stitch.
Most of these things that you object to, limitless authority, gag orders, etc are the spawn of section 215.
This is the first of 12 such bills waiting in the wings.
This bill probably doesn't go near far enough, but Section 215 is one of the most dangerous sections of the entire law. Any amount of crippling that can be done to it is long overdue. I don't trust Sensenbrenner to do enough, and I hope his efforts aren't a sop to divert attention with the appearance of doing something.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
By removing permissions to do those things?
Sigh. Firstly, you need to read section 215. It grants the Director of the FBI (not NSA) the ability to get ex parte authorizations for a search warrant, and the recipient is then gagged. That's it. The NSA isn't even referenced or involved, except perhaps to process the evidence gathered by the FBI. This is how they go to a bank, library, ISP, etc., and say "We want all your records on this person." and they have to turn them over and then not inform their client this happened. And they don't have to produce any evidence or give a reason to the recipient. It's just "wham, bam, thank you ma'am." ... and you better keep this between us.
The authority and power to do this is available in literally hundreds of other laws; Striking section 215 would simply mean they have to use a different administrative process to continue doing the exact same thing. This is political grandstanding -- not only is this "anti-NSA" bill not about the NSA, but regardless of whether it passes or fails, it will not change how business is being done.
Which, big surprise -- Our congress-critters are introducing a bill that accomplishes nothing, but has a nice, patriotic, sounding name. The "freedom act". Yeah. We can all get behind that! What does the freedom act do?
Nothing.
Typical.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
USA Freedom Act .... Isn't that what the Constitution is supposed to be?
No. The Constitution is exactly that, a constitution. It is a base governing document that lays out the form of government and various rights and responsibilities. It is silent on many things. It says nothing about how much money Social Security is getting next year, or the Marines, or if section 205 of the Patriot Act even exists.
We don't need another Law. The Laws that made this garbage legal are unconstitutional and criminal.
If you think they are unconstitutional, then can you show where they were struck down by a court as such? If they aren't struck down by a court, then they need to be repealed by the legislature.
We don't need another Law. We need to hunt down and incarcerate the criminals who created this mess.
You need another law to repeal or alter the aspects of the law that you don't like if a court doesn't strike it down. The criminals responsible for creating this mess have been the source of an active manhunt for 12 years. The ringleader is dead, and most of his original lieutenants are either captured or dead, some are in hiding. Since I'm sure you didn't mean that - you better wait until Congress repeals it, or it will still be on the books.
We don't need another Law. We need to hold government officials personally accountable for their flagrant and criminal violations of the Constitution.
An election is coming up. Do your worst.
We don't need another Law. We already have a USA Freedom Act. It is called "The Constitution of the United States."
We've covered this, but I'll add one more thing. The Constitution gave Congress the power to make laws. Congress made a law that resulted in this issue. Since the courts haven't struck it down, it is still the law of the land. How about we let Congress do their job and pass a law to try and resolve the issue instead of making specious claims that no law change is required?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"Well that isn't the only issue. BYOD also allows your company to avoid liability if the employee does anything illegal with it that you didn't authorize, such as using pirated software."
Well, I can nip that rumor in the bud. First, if you have an agreement stating that you, rather than the company, are liable or your own transgressions, in most cases it would be binding. Second, do you mean downloaded apps? Downloading is not piracy, which is a legal term meaning something else. Despite the fact that the RIAA and MPAA have spent millions trying to get you to think it is. You do their work for them when you call it that. Simply downloading a copied app is not a crime. Piracy is. They are legally two very different things.
"If your company saves money when you work from home instead of leasing more office space, you may as well argue that they're now responsible for your mortgage payment as well."
Nonsense. That is a different situation. There are definite perks to living at home, which offset any lost revenue from "renting" the space to the company. Using YOUR equipment, however, is a different story. If they did it themselves, they'd have to buy or lease the equipment. If they hired a contractor, the contractor would buy or lease the equipment (and pass the cost on to them). In contrast, you're trying to say they can require an employee to buy or lease the equipment themselves, with no compensation.
Just plain bullshit.
You obviously have no concept of what socialism means, being an American its no surprise.
Here's a hint, you don't have any form of socialism in the US, anything you see is on your imagination.
Funny how my socialist country has one of the best economies in the world and is no more authoritarian than the US. And we even manage to have universal healthcare. The ignorance of Americans never ceases to amaze!
This, ladies and gents, is a stealth-Republican. Not a conservative, but a party-line-toeing, card-carrying Republican. They've already gerrymandered the House so that they can win with a minority of votes. After Obama's reelection, they started planning to change the way states assign electoral college votes so that they could effectively gerrymander the presidency. And recently, they've started talking about repealing the 17th amendment, with the obvious goal of gerrymandering the Senate.
Keep an eye out for this. The Party leaders know this is a long-term sort of goal, but you'll hear more and more about it over the next several years.