Slashdot Mirror
NSA Surveillance Reform Bill Passes House 303 Votes To 121
First time accepted submitter strangeintp (892348) writes "The first legislation aimed specifically at curbing US surveillance abuses revealed by Edward Snowden passed the House of Representatives on Thursday, with a majority of both Republicans and Democrats. But last-minute efforts by intelligence community loyalists to weaken key language in the USA Freedom Act led to a larger-than-expected rebellion by members of Congress, with the measure passing by 303 votes to 121. The bill's authors concede it was watered down significantly in recent days but insist it will still outlaw the practice of bulk collection of US telephone metadata by the NSA first revealed by Snowden."
*clap* *clap* *clap*
In C++, your friends can see your privates.
last-minute efforts by intelligence community loyalists to weaken key language in the USA Freedom Act
Instead of the NewSpeak "intelligence community loyalists" how about we call them what they really are: Enemies of the People.
They aren't, this is all for appearance sake for elections, so that they can say "I voted in favor of privacy reform to protect you" in their political ads, while having done nothing in reality. It is BS.
Exactly. It's time for term limits for Congress.
In C++, your friends can see your privates.
As true as I know it is, I'm doing my best not to lose total faith in humanity. Let's face it, not even congressmen like having their shit ruffled through, right? I could be wrong, but it remains to be seen. We'll see how this plays out.
Everybody wins here, a bunch of people get to say they did something in the fight against the NSA. The Executive branch and those in the house who support invasive domestic spying get to keep the majority of their surveillance programs, and most importantly there isn't much more meaningful oversight so who actually knows if the NSA is following the rules. The Executive still gets to hide themselves behind national security letters, "state secrets", and special secret courts.
However I do not feel like this caused any meaningful change. Hopefully the nation remains outraged at the NSA and this is just the first step in fixing our domestic spying programs, but I feel like we get a few meaningless bills passed and then this issue goes away until the next Snowden.
They know everything about you; all it takes is a "gentle reminder" and this bill is turned into a termite-eaten stack of drivel.
I didn't expect any different, It just means they had enough on enough people to effectively gut it before it was passed. We really knew that already...
If it really meant anything, this bill would have contained a passage giving Snowden immunity, as long as he testifies against everyone else inside the Govt that violated the constitution with respect to their illegal activities.
"It's not illegal when the President does it!" didn't work for Nixon, it should not have worked for Bush or Obama. Everyone should be in Jail, at this point, lol.
WTF has our country become?
.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Justin Amash voted against his own bill. In an article for "the Hill" (http://thehill.com/policy/technology/206929-house-votes-to-limit-nsa-spying) he is quoted as saying:
“This morning's bill maintains and codifies a large-scale, unconstitutional domestic spying program,” he wrote in a post on Facebook.
Changes to the language, for instance, would allow the government to obtain data about a broad section of phone records such as "area code 616" or "phone calls made east of the Mississippi."
“The bill green-lights the government's massive data collection activities that sweep up Americans' records in violation of the Fourth Amendment,” he added.
Seems that what was actually passed should actually be called the "Placate the Plebs while Continuing to Screw Them Act of 2014"
The bill basically says that metadata and data should not get collected without a warrant except when one thinks one has a reason. What kind of reason would count as an exception is not actually specified.
So while the previous practice was clearly illegal, this bill makes everything legal since it only applies the "but only if you think this a good idea" metric and clearly everybody already thought it was a good idea to spy on everyone without warrant.
Its funny, during the last election I made a facebook comment about us being serfs; and an old friend of mine who has spent entirely more time than leads to employability in the academic study of pre-rennassaince europe chimed in with quite a rant about how it was an insult to actual serfdom.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Your friend got shitty grades in those pre-renaissance Europe classes. The defining characteristic of the serf class was that people born serfs would live their entire lives as serfs and their children would too. There was no pathway to move up classes.
It's difficult to move up in classes in modern America, but it's possible. Two of our last three Presidents were raised by poor single mothers. Dr. Dre grew up in Compton and just made a billion dollars.
Actual serfs would have given anything for the rights, representation, and social mobility that we bitch about.
From what I've heard of what passed, not only does it NOT have any teeth to it, but it is written so broadly that with secret judges giving secret interpretations (even the secret judges don't consult with each other I"m led to believe), this could likely give the NSA and other TLA agencies *more* leeway to get creative in the work of crushing the US citizens' rights.
C'mon folks, no matter who is currently in office, D or R, please this time around vote for anyone other than the incumbent, and let's sweep the house and senate clean over the next couple years and start from scratch.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
We need to fire everyone in Washington DC and reform the crap out of everything. Both sides are wrong here - why vote for a flawed by design bill? It only exists for political posturing for elections.
Remember, term limits and "voting out the bastards" doesn't really mean much if lobbying (aka Bribery) is still funding their replacements. We need to fire everyone, and then keep moneyed interests from simply installing newly-bought idiots.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Some of them were thinking that the bill was so watered down that it actually authorizes spying, and weren't fooled into approving it.
And you were suckered into thinking that they were the bad guys. The establishment wins again.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
No, they did not. The nobility could and did take whatever they wanted and there was no recourse. What you're spouting is a pipe dream concocted by academia to belittle today.
This is all totally off-topic, but there is one part of your argument that merits discussion. Pointing out that a few people have experienced very lucrative social mobility is not evidence of the system as a whole being conducive to it. In fact, such arguments serve the exact opposite goal by thwarting meaningful discussion of social and economic policy. A handy thought experiment from Cracked makes it more clear:
Let's say there are a hundred of you and your friends all locked in a room, and you're all starving. I walk in, and out of my fat wallet I pull a wad of bills that it more money than you'd make in a year. I set it on a table, and say, "the last one of you left alive gets this pile of money." Then, when all your friends are dead, you get rich, and I say, "see? The system is fair: any one of you can become a rich person, if only you try hard enough. It deliberately conflates "any of you can get rich" with "all of you will get rich." And you and your friends are so busy fighting each other that nobody is asking why there was only money for one of you in the first place.
Dr. Dre may have become a billionaire, but he grew up in a neighborhood systematically ghettoized, and the majority of the kids he grew up with ended up dead or in jail, and almost all of them stayed poor.