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."

Comments

And now they get credit for saving us

[Gothmolly]

Just like CEOs who take the credit for the $ savings of outsourcing, then take the credit for improved service by bringing the work back, but somehow keep their jobs. Or the dorks who think centralizing IT assets (hello Mainframe) is good, then later decide that distributing all the computing (hello desktop) is good, claiming credit for being revolutionary twice.

Do people really fall for this?

Re:And now they get credit for saving us

[artor3]

Would you prefer that they stick to their guns and continue doing harm? I prefer politicians who are willing to change their minds based on public opinion, thank you very much.

I don't even care if he really believes in what he's doing now. Maybe he still thinks the Patriot Act is good and he's only doing this to attract more votes. But what difference does it make?

Re:And now they get credit for saving us

[s.petry]

The point was that the systems were only invented once, but every CEO (and some politicians) have claimed to have invent these concepts over and over again, and people are stupid enough to believe them.

Mainframe = many users and departments on a system. Great invention

Desktop = single user system. Great invention

Grid/Cloud = many users and departments on a system. Not a new invention at all, it's using various components to mimic the Mainframe. The "system" is using different components and Operating systems now vs. then, but they are still trying to mimic the original system.

BYOD fits into either the "single device" or "connected to something" architecture just like today's PC.

If you try and nitpick the system, you will of course miss the analogy. The analogy is not about what is better, it's that it's not new.

Re:And now they get credit for saving us

[Jane Q. Public]

The utopian future, where users won't be crying "fix my random device you have never seen one of before, I need it to work" to IT?

Jesus. Don't blame the users. The CEOs are 98% at fault.

When they don't have to buy desktops or cell phones, they count that as a plus. Sure, it shifts a huge burden to IT, but don't forget who is really the driving force behind this.

I have a different take on it: if management wants to save money by "letting" me BYOD, rather than buying their own, fine. They can lease it from me during the workday, in addition to my pay. If they think they're going to get it for free, they can suck eggs.

Re:And now they get credit for saving us

[causality]

Would you prefer that they stick to their guns and continue doing harm? I prefer politicians who are willing to change their minds based on public opinion, thank you very much.

If we had politicians who didn't give a fuck about public opinion and perhaps even had contempt for the way it was openly swayed and outright engineered by all the fearmongering, we'd have never had a Patriot Act to begin with.

Amending the Constitution to make every Senator an elected official was a huge mistake. It's one of those things that sounds nice until you realize what it actually causes. You really do need state-appointed Senators who can and will halt rash and badly-written laws because they aren't vulnerable to "Senator X voted to make us less safe!" rhetoric at election time. It would also go a long way to curtailing the federal practice of bullying the States by withholding their own damned money if they don't do as they're told.

Re:And now they get credit for saving us

[fnj]

That's exactly the reason for the 17th. The Senate was not a malleable enough rubber stamp for tyranny. It was brilliant how the Senate damped the stupidity of the House until the 17th turned the Senate into a half-assed extension of the House.

The 16th, 17th, and 18th. Three shitty amendments that did devastating damage to the nation, passed in a span of six years. The exact same six year span which also saw the corrupt Federal Reserve come into existence.

And we were doing so well with the first fifteen.

This isn't new

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't new. The author of the Patriot Act (Jim Sensenbrenner) has been campaigning against Surveillance State since the beginning of the Snowden fiasco.

He probably decided he doesn't want to go down in history as the man who turned America into a Dystopia.

Ah Sensenbrenner

[contrapunctus]

Isn't this the same guy and attached the Real ID act to some armor for soldiers bill so no one could oppose it?

Dianne Feinstein about face

[six025]

In related news Dianne Feinstein has turned around her opinion and stated she is now 'totally opposed' to NSA surveillance of US allies.

Quite surprised at this, hopefully it is not empty rhetoric and actually goes somewhere. Very interested to see what the two leading goons of the NSA have to say for themselves in front of the House intelligence committee on Tuesday.

Peace,
Andy.

Re:And your basis for this is?

[girlintraining]

get that this is the feeling of much of /. but what example can you cite?

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.