Slashdot Mirror
Lawmakers Threaten Legal Basis of NSA Surveillance
Nerval's Lobster writes "The author of the Patriot Act has warned that the legal justification for the NSA's wholesale domestic surveillance program will disappear next summer if the White House doesn't restrict the way the NSA uses its power. Section 215 of the Patriot Act will expire during the summer of 2015 and will not be renewed unless the White House changes the shocking scale of the surveillance programs for which the National Security Administration uses the authorization, according to James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), an original author of the Patriot Act and its two reauthorizations, stated Washington insider-news source The Hill. 'Unless Section 215 gets fixed, you, Mr. Cole, and the intelligence community will get absolutely nothing, because I am confident there are not the votes in this Congress to reauthorize it,' Sensenbrenner warned Deputy Attorney General James Cole during the Feb. 4 hearing. Provisions of Section 215, which allows the NSA to collect metadata about phone calls made within the U.S., give the government a 'very useful tool' to track connections among Americans that might be relevant to counterterrorism investigations, Cole told the House Judiciary Committee. The scale of the surveillance and lengths to which the NSA has pushed its limits was a "shock" according to Sensenbrenner, who also wrote the USA Freedom Act, a bill to restrict the scope of both Section 215 and the NSA programs, which has attracted 130 co-sponsors. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has sponsored a similar bill in the Senate."
"MOVIN’ ON UP" my ass
Yesterday, I had a child. My dear son. Today I found him dead. He left a suicide note: "The only reason for my death is Slashdot Beta."
Also I had a daughter a few days ago. But then I also found her dead. This time she had been murdered. The autopsy came back: She had been mauled by Slashdot Beta.
This must end!! Think of the children! Kill the Beta!
Screw Beta Slashdot. Stupid dumb asses.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
And this is why it can be smart to put time limits on bills, even if you think they are a good idea at the time. In that sense, the original authors of the Patriot Act were smart.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Section 215 of the Patriot Act will expire during the summer of 2015 and will not be renewed
Its time to put this experiment to bed. Like prohibition, which lasted 13 years, the Patriot act (now 13 years old), and damage it has caused needs to be rolled back. Not just Section 215, but other major portions of the act as well.
We are not safer now. We are simply less free now. It has not prevented terrorist attacks, either here or abroad. Boarder security continues to be a utter joke, and secrecy provisions are the antithesis of our supposed freedoms.
Its probably time to start yanking your congressman's chain. Its time to point out that the simple fact we are not asleep any more is basically all that is needed, and all that was ever needed. Its time to point out that 13 years of lies and secrecy is enough. Its time for them to stop carrying the governments message to their constituents, and start carrying their constituents message to the government.
Do I expect this to be successful? No. Not as long as a single one of those congressmen were in office for the initial passing, or the prior re-authorizations. They are too heavily invested in the act, and the administration has too much control over them.
Time to clean house. Stop fearing your district's loss of seniority by electing new people. Vote them all out. If we do it piece meal, career bureaucrats and career politicians will just co-opt the new members. Remove the leverage.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I'm willing to burn my not-inconsiderable karma on this, the beta really destroys the flow of what I actually come here for - the discussion! If it becomes mandatory it'll kill a site that has been my favorite place on the web for a long, long time
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Has anyone tried to email the editors directly to see if the can talk some since into their DICE pointy haired boss's or maybe we could find the email of the DICE PHB responsible and we could slashdot his inbox...
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Is this REALLY about the NSA surveillance? Or is it about leverage for Congress critters, particularly Republicans, on the Executive branch?
"You want your PATRIOT Act renewed? You need to cut back on your surveillance. And my surveillance, we mean repeal Obamacare (or whatever the bill(s) du jour are)."
Besides, whether or not the NSA surveillance is authorized, do you think the NSA gives a fuck. They are going to do it anyways. They'll just have to be sneakier.
Actor Maximilian Schell died last week. He played the defence lawyer in Judgement at Nuremberg. It's a film about the trial of judges who were around before Hitler came to power and stayed on rather than resign. It's a great, great, film. Here's a bit of Spenser Tracey's verdict at the end:
'There are those in our own country, too...who today speak of the protection of country...of survival. A decision must be made in the life of every nation...at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy...to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. The answer to that is: Survival as what? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult.'
The trouble is, there is no practical existential threat from Al Qaeda. There is no unified command structure amongst the Muslim nations - many of which have the same ethno-linguistic-political-economic divisions that have the western nations bickering all of the time. They have no army. No navy. No air force. They are not a fundamental threat to the west and the overreach of this sector of government needs to be brought back into perspective.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Dice, I am protesting the beta site. I will not follow any links from a beta redirect and I will not participate in any meaningful discussion.
Your new Slashdot design is hideous. The comment layout is an abomination which is /.'s strong point, its why we come here. This isn't twitter or Facebook, we come here to get away from that. Please abandon your attempts to cash in on this site, you will loose more members then you will ever hope to attract with your new and unimproved design.
Fellow /.'ers, join me in this protest. Do not post a comment related to a beta redirect article or click any links. Instead, post a comment in protest of the beta design.
Admitting your side is wrong, too, is the first step.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
There is literally *not one single thing* that works in any manner that can even begin to approach what is commonly referred to as "usability". That in and of itself is constructive criticism because it would be impossible to enumerate every problem with the new site.
But to answer your question, here is the official thread with plenty of detailed criticisms and suggestions
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
The editors know... we made it clear in the beta announcement thread and at least one editor said he was going to bubble it to the top of the foodchain. This is a topdown order and going to straight-up KILL slashdot. I don't think DICE even cares, and apparently neither do the editors as their still drawing paychecks. This is some serious shit; I don't know how things went down but I'd like to think Taco had the integrity to leave when he knew which way the ship would be going -- maybe he had family concerns financially. But the others, I feel bad for them, but damn, goddamn indeed, they need to stage a revolt because the users of /. are about to if this shit is forced down our throats....
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
dude beta sucks big giant hairy goat balls