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Obama Asks Congress To Renew 'Patriot Act' Snooping
mi writes: President Obama has asked the Senate to renew key Patriot Act provisions before their expiration on May 31. This includes surveillance powers that let the government collect Americans' phone records. Obama said, "It's necessary to keep the American people safe and secure." The call came despite recent revelations that the FBI is unable to name a single terror case in which the snooping provisions were of much help. "Obama noted that the controversial bulk phone collections program, which was exposed by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, is reformed in the House bill, which does away with it over six months and instead gives phone companies the responsibility of maintaining phone records that the government can search." Obama criticized the Senate for not acting on that legislation, saying they have necessitated a renewal of the Patriot Act provisions.
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wasn't this found to be illegal anyhow? why continue it if it doesn't have any relevant use other than keeping an eye on your own citizens?
I guess that new NSA data collection facility in CO needs to be used for something...
And conservatives were worried that Obama would change everything that Bush did.
How's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?
:: winks ::
:: snaps gum ::
In 2008 I seriously thougt that this man would mean change. What did I get? Yes of course he wasn't as horrible as bush, but he really didn't meet my expectations.
No.
Obama has promised again and again to safeguard our liberties. Now he has morphed into George Bush. What did I miss?
...rather than a Republican warmonger like Rand Paul...
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
Not that it matters who I quote, or what anyone says. This and things much like it will likely get renewed, or they'll happen in secret.
I don't have any good solutions, but it doesn't have to mean I like the idiots in government or their idiotic decisions.
This sig left intentionally blank.
Congress shall pass NO LAW...
ie - the patriot act is unconstitutional - has been since day 1. Anyone involved with passing the law, signing the law, and performing duties under said law are traitors to this country, and are guilty of treason. Since they all seem to consider this "a time of war" against terrorism, there's only one penalty for treason.
Get your asses up against the wall, and pass out the smokes and blindfolds. We'll fix the national debt by selling raffle tickets to be drawn for members of the firing squads.
Wow, good thing that Memorial Day is past, so that nobody's awkwardly waxing poetic about "hard-won freedoms" and the sacrifice of past generations any more!
P
echo $TITLE | sed -e :a -e s/\\sand/ly/ -e s/e$/ed/
EDIT captcha "conceal"
They need those records for another six months to manipulate elections
It would already be worth to let the provisions expire just in order to see what the FBI/NSA are blackmailing Obama with. They must have some really saucy things on him the way he licked their boots the past 8 years.
I think it is naive to assume that this isn't want Obama et al wanted all along. Good job to McConell for stalling long enough to force the issue.
Oh he is good. So the collection is a problem, so lets end the collection by outsouricing it. Problem solved.
As long as we maintain our ability to search through the records, we don't need to "collect them". CLearly the public only ever policy wonks about technicalities, nobody actually wants or needs privacy right?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
is reformed in the House bill, which does away with it over six months and instead gives phone companies the responsibility of maintaining phone records that the government can search." Obama criticized the Senate for not acting on that legislation, saying they have necessitated a renewal of the Patriot Act provisions.
What nonsense. Moving the storage task to the phone companies does absolutely nothing to make the collection less nasty. Enacting the "reform" is, at best, no different than just renewing the Patriot Act as it is. But that's "at best". In reality, it's even worse, as requiring the telecoms to keep this data guarantees that the telecoms will use that data -- so the end result is an expansion of the the amount of spying that is being inflicted on us.
Many of the things Obama has tried to do have been thwarted by the GOP's no-holds-barred approach to politics (Remember how the objective of the GOP at the beginning of Obama's first term was to make sure that he would be a one-term president? Forget about trying to work with him for the good of the country.) However, this is not something for which the GOP is to be blamed. This is Obama's own doing.
There is no need for the Patriot Act to exist any longer. There hasn't been for many years. The War on Terrorism is really the war on Fundamentalist a Saudi inspired Sunni Wahabi radicalism. The Patriot act should go away and the US powers that be should focus its efforts on neutralizing the Sunni-Wahabi threat by whatever means necessary.
Unfortunately we are taking the wrong side here in helping the Saudi's eradicate a Shia Minority in Yemen. Because the American leadership is the village idiots. We're also responsible for the Sunni Wahabi's creating ISIS in Iraq because we over threw a Ba'thist regime and created a power vaccum.
The "War on Terrorism" will end only when the Saudi's Sunni Wahabii ability to create colonies like this is neutralized.
So we've had a recent rash of threats called in against airlines. Set aside the case of a 'false flag' operation to stir up support for a Patriot Act renewal. Because if this is the case, all you TLA fuckers should lose your jobs. The remaining possibility is that these were called in by either terrorists or cranks. Either way, where are the inevitable arrests leading from the current data collection regime, huh? Couple of clicks on the metadata and the local SWAT team rolls, news at 11.
This is what these programs are supposed to do: catch the bad guys (or crazy guys). So, if you can't even round up a couple of suspects, what exactly have you idiots been doing up until now?
Have gnu, will travel.
[_] Because drugs
[X] Because terrorists
[_] Because think of the children
[_] Because infringement
Let it expire!! :~(
eom
It's probably the best way to get conservatives to let go of the Patriot act...
Once power is given to authority, they never want to give it up. Anyone notice the sudden surge in terrorism news stories the last couple of days? The Pentagon has increased security for unkown reasons at many bases today. Funny how it coincides with the Patriot Act renewal fight.
I should probably point out that, as President, he can basically order government agencies to do certain things. He's done that on immigration even though he might be skirting law or established policy.
Or he could have told the public before a whistleblower came forward.
I mean, the buck stops with the President, right?
We need to elect someone who puts an end to this nonsense. Maybe the guy who said this would be a good candidate:
Oh, wait...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If the NSA had only been spying on terrorists we wouldn't even be having this conversation. (although it's not really a conversation, but you get my point)
Why would the NSA and CIA be spying on Congress? Is it someone's goal to set up the apparatus of a police state?
Why is the NSA spying on the EU Parliament? Are they looking for terrorists in Parliament?
See: TED How the NSA betrayed the world's trust — time to act
at: 4:30
also see at: 12:40 (or at 12:00 for better context) "I don't think they're looking for terrorists in Parliament."
(see at: 6:00 if you believe in encryption golden keys)
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
"It's necessary to keep the American people safe and secure."
Grammatically, this is written as a statement of fact. Assuming everyone agrees on what the sentence actually means (granted, they don't, but go with me here), it is either true or it is false statement. We may not be able to tell if it's a true or false statement, but it is a true or false statement.
In the real world, it really means "I, President Obama, believe that [this] is necessary to keep the American people safe and secure."
I'll grant Obama is either an expert or is relying on experts and I'll grant that his opinion is an informed one, and I'll grant that for some definition of "safe and secure"* that I don't subscribe to he might actually be correct. However, making a statement as if it was a true-or-false statement doesn't change the fact that he's still just giving us his opinion.
* Any definition of "safe and secure" that I would subscribe to in peacetime includes being able to assume that my private conversations, including who I am communicating with, are not being monitored.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I maintain that democracy only works for small city states.
Then thank god we aren't a democracy! We're a republic.
obama is the new Hitler.
What a waste.
What a waste of money. Your money!
Note to Obama: You are being lied to.
Seriously, and trying to sidestep most of the political angles: This is what happens when a person with authority collects a small set of advisers -- in an effort to cut noise/increase focus/get to data-driven decisions -- and then those advisers are not challenged or regularly rotated or infused with new thinking.
This instance pains me, partly because by my citizenship I'm on the wrong end of the Patriot Act aka "Putin's Law" ...but even more because I make my living by gathering and giving security and privacy advice on both the technical and compliance sides. When Obama's not even getting the quality of mid-market commercially-available advising, we're all in deep doo-doo.
To wit:
- Let's get real: metadata IS the data. Who/when/how/where you called is just as important as the what/why content of the call. The ears don't get much more totalitarian than this, we just don't have totalitarian fists yet. (Oh wait... *watches news about street cops outfitted with combat armaments and light tanks, then acquitted for movie-style executions*)
- NSA's collection of citizen's communication data and metadata have not led to even one single foiled terrorist plot. Not one. It's not even the right model to catch the stuff we know about in hindsight. The only reliable detection tool for decades has been manual notification by family and friends to authorities, and there's still no good unified repository and workflow system to handle it.
- There are multiple documented instances of abuse where the collected information was too tempting for federal employees not to do something stupid or illegal or both. (LOVEINT is almost funny, but multiple instances of commercial espionage have been alleged and documented.) If we amass this kind of information, people will use it for whatever purpose they imagine -- justified or illicit -- because admitting there's no legitimate function is the worst option of all.
- In the big picture, total security really does obliterate freedom. How I wish we could discuss that without hyperbole. Maybe we could stay grounded by involving the French, who are further into a discussion about how overreaction to Muslim immigration will destroy their governing principles as effectively as any perceived human threat.
- It deeply troubles me that Obama appears to have no better tech-sourced intel than 3rd tier CEOs buying security guidance from consultancies with 800 number to a sales guy and $150/hr bill rate.
What a sad state of affairs.
I think not...(*poof*)
The US house and senate have agreed to very little these past few years. If this is how the Patriot Act is repealed, I approve. That said, I am conflicted rooting for the gridlock that has been the US political process for the past few years.
"There was that one case... and the other one... then there was that case with the thing... and the person with the other thing... Yeah, we need to keep this running."
The problem with this program (from an FBI-perspective, not a privacy one) is that it floods them with too much data. There's a false notion that since data is good that more data is always good. Not all data is good data. You need to go through it and find the useful parts. As you get more and more data, you eventually become unable to weed through the data to extract the good parts. You either wind up ignoring it entirely (and thus missing good data coming in) or you grab hold of any data point you can find without properly vetting it (due to no manpower for that step) and wind up chasing down phantom leads.
That's why a properly limited (warrant-based) system would not only be better for privacy, but would actually be better for national security.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Can we just fuse them back into the "Democratic Republicans" and be done with the whole show every other year? It's getting tiresome and it's mostly a waste of money and TV airtime, and in general a huge insult to the collective intelligence of the US people.
Seriously. Why not change the whole election game to something like the American Idol election? Everyone can vote as often as they like, corporations get a mass text rebate so they don't lose their right to choose who's going to make their laws, and the money for the messages goes to a fund for nations with crippled economies. In other words, hand it to the IRS.
And the candidates don't have to lie to us about what they claim they'd do, they have to sing and dance for us so they at least entertain us instead of just making us mad.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Fuck this asshole and his lies.
The government will still do what it wants. They have done so in the past, they keep doing what they want in the present. And they will keep doing what they want in the future.
Why did anybody vote for this asshole?
If we, the people, can't even look at the content of a trade deal, I'm not too enthusiastic about letting the government look at the content of my activity.
For my money, Mr. Obama. the NSA, et. al. scan take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The Terrorists Win!!!!!
to quote the prophetic lyrics penned by The Who. Obama has proven that he is just another greasy, lying, scumbag of a politician. Closing down Gitmo? Well, maybe not. Against the Patriot Act? Easy to say when you're not in power. The list goes on.
I don't agree with everything that Rand Paul says but I accept his premise that government cannot be trusted when it comes to the Patriot Act. The government will tell us that it's for "our safety". That is it protecting us "from terrorists". The fact of the matter is that all of this NSA data has not prevented a single "terrorist" attack. Just like the TSA charade playing out at every airport in this country. The fact of the matter is that random bombings and other acts of terror cannot be prevented - period. The Israelis have been dealing with this for decades and have been unable to prevent bombings.
The Patriot Act is a power grab, plain and simple. It gives the government the green light to collect personal data on every person in America without any probable cause or court order. Supporters say, yes but it's only the phone number and the duration of the call not the actual conversation. How long do you think it will take before recording of the conversations sneaks its way into the Patriot Act? Where does it end?
I can hear the congessperson's bones snapping and popping as the establishment twists thier arms behind thier backs...
The pressure must be intense to pass this. We aren't privvy to the details. Something has to be driving the passage of this extension. As citizens, we must
demand that the reasons for extending this law be justified. The proponents must come clean.
The FBI won't point to any cases where the Patriot act helped foil Terrorists, but can we know where it has been used at all.
Shortly after it went into law, several AGs were finding ways to use it to track drug dealers.
What HAS it been used for? Are there any real journalists anymore?
Fuck off, tyrant.
Or, better yet - record and publicize every word typed and spoken by every member of your administration, with zero redaction, and then we'll allow you to record us.
What does our dear leader stand for, anyway? It's getting hard to tell.
The warrant-less collection of telephone metadata is a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, but Mr. Obama (constitutional lawyer that he allegedly is) continues to disregard that document whenever it becomes inconvenient. Just yesterday, he got his willy slapped by the 5th circuit appeals court for overstepping his constitutional authority -- again -- this time because of a unilateral decision on immigration that got the attention of 26 states.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Thanks Obama! I appreciate you following up with wanting to violate our civil liberties with opening up your big yapper. Now the GOP will do everything in their power not to support it and the people will actually get the protection they deserve. 2016 can't come soon enough you no talent ass-clown!
Obama == nigger
Check this out!. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxnp2Sz59p8). It's more than meta data, it's about Total Surveillance.
We are trading the low probability risk of being killed by a terrorist for the high probability risk that we will be living in 1984 on steroids.
On balance, I think this president has been okay -- not great, but okay. This is one of a handful of disappointing positions that I'll never understand.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Except this is all bullshit because the courts have already ruled that the Patriot Act does not authorize snooping. It was a generous reading that let this happen in the first place. For those wondering this was probably the biggest reason that the EFF pulled their support: because if an amendment to the Patriot Act was to acknowledge that snooping was restricted then it would also implicitly acknowledge that snooping was legal when not violating those restrictions. Not passing the extension would actually do more to kill snooping than the proposed changes being made. (in the legal sense they will obviously find some other bullshit from 50+ years ago to justify this crap)
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
It seems like Obama has gone so far off from where he indicated he would go when originally running for office that I can't help but wonder what happened. I have to assume that since coming into office he has learned things that aren't common knowledge that have turned him from the path he originally envisioned. What could he have possible learned and will we ever get the whole picture?
Lets face it metadata can be very useful in analysis on what happened and to get to other people in the cell once some members has been identified by their actions.
In geek speak, metadata is like server logs. The more data you have the more accurate picture emerges.
Wait, so I was right?! And everyone said I didn't vote for him because I was a racist!
They just want to stop the growing revolution, spying on us is wrong. George Orwell's 1984 is being used as an instruction manual on stripping freedoms. Snowden for president...
That's what he is.
I voted for Obama twice, I really do not know who I will vote for next year. I may join the growing ranks of disenfranchised voters and not vote at all. If all we have is a choice between two sides of the same coin, then we really have no choice at all.
Anyone who still supported Obama after he signed that first extension to the PATRIOT act is either a hypocrite or a fucking idiot.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Nixon looks like a patriot compared to this bullshit..
At least Nixon had the decency to resign after getting caught taking a few records from one hotel room. Obama is demanding the right to burglarize every record in the US.
If only Stalin knew about the Gulag, he'd stop this terrible injustice!
If only Stain knew about the famine in the Ukraine, he'd see to it that the people were fed!
And the U.S.A in USA Patriot Act stands for Unlimited Surveillance of Americans.
It just requires you to stop believing the lie that your only choices are R or D
When Republicans and many Democrats passed the Patriot Act, it was always assumed that it would only be Foreign threats that would be targeted. The government, after all, would never target its own citizens.
But Obama has proven that the law can be stretched to go after political opponents.
CNN reports the Obama administration has named a national security threat it believes is more dangerous than even the Islamic State terrorists beheading, crucifying and burning innocent human beings: Right-wing extremists.
According to CNN, âoeA new intelligence assessment, circulated by the Department of Homeland Security this month and reviewed by CNN, focuses on the domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists.â
Joe Biden on how intrusive you can get from meta data and not to trust the president with it
I love how people bring up that one party or another was in the majority when a bill was passed without bothering to even check if it would have made a difference.
Yes, the Republicans were in the majority when the PATRIOT Act was voted on - of course in the house over 2/3 of the Democrats voted for it and in the senate there was only a single no vote. So party makeup had pretty much nothing to do with the passage of that bill.
Senator Obama never would have supported this. Nor his current trade agreements. Nor Oracle's claims that APIs are copyrightable.
What happened to Obama? Has he been watching Fox News and started believing all the lies they tell about him?
This is the continuation of Karl Rove's plot first put into action on Sept 11, 2001 to replace America's Democrat leadership with Republicans.George Bush had plastic surgery and replaced Obama before the 2008 inauguration! Even Michelle has been fooled!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
It's all BUSH'S fault!
Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.
Obama should think long and hard about fucking over 300 million people.
All it takes is one who doesn't care any more, and the shit hits the fan.
If they renew this program Can they see my Dick?
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
the article only has quotes on him asking to approve it. there is zero about his reasoning. did he just say those 4 quoted phrases about senate having to say yes? or did he provide any semblance of a reason for why they have to say yes?
i can't find his actual words anywhere.
here are the latests "new" on whitehouse.gov:
Reasons We Need the Clean Water Rule
4 Years of Building Energy Efficiency Across America
Implementing the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order
Under the despised Bush, warrantless wiretaps were allowed for phone calls that had one end of the conversation outside the US and the other end inside the US. Obama's "change" was to make it universal without regard to the international boundary.
the part where he ran for office in 2008 opposed to gay marriage (even argued against it at an event hosted by preacher Rick Warren) and then got into office and "evolved" to a pro gay marriage position (while his campaign guy David Axelrod has admitted that his position was always a lie). Oh, I GET IT... you are probably happy he lied about THAT; the position he evolved to was the right one in your view. Bill Maher and other Obama supporters have said they always assumed he was lying about things like this and his religious beliefs in order to get elected.
Many of you current- or former-supporters of Obama were perfectly happy to see him lie about his positions on things as long as you secretly believed that he was snookering middle-America and would bend your way once in office.
Well... guess what?
It turns out that professional liars will lie to anybody about anything when they no longer need them... and Obama no longer needs you.
he is a progressive, and they believe the Constitution is a "living document" that can be "re-interpreted" on-the-fly by judges, lawmakers, the President, and bureaucrats any time it suits them, and even when doing so requires pretending to be ignorant of the meaning of basic words.
When you put a progressive in the White House, you HAVE no Constitution.
Hang on, it's gonna get worse, because Hillary was a progressive before "progressive" was cool - and SHE is the biggest proponent of big government spying and abuse and document destruction and FOIA request dodging in HISTORY. Hillary makes Nixon look like a rank amateur, and yet the fools on the left who pretend to hate the Patriot Act will all eagerly line-up to vote for her. Oh, sure, she'll be "pro choice" and "pro gay marriage" (even though she was as solidly anti-gay-marriage as Santorum in 2008 and spent more effort on it than the guy who got booted at Mozilla for his related actions that same year) but this will all be bread and circuses. She'll happily support the party in your pants in exchange for you supporting all her evil and corruption just like a Roman emperor.
If you are gonna vote Hillary in 2016, then drop the phony anti-NSA outrage right now while you still have a shred of credibility. If you are TRULY opposed, try supporting Rand Paul. He's not my personal choice (for national security reasons) but he's the only person truly struggling to get rid of all the domestic spying and he is the one currently taking all the arrows in the back for his fillibuster that killed the Senate's schedule and with that de-railed the attempt to quickly and quietly renew the whole act.
Please tell me again about how Bush managed to secretly skew the ballot to get himself temporarily voted back into the presidency to renew this bill? Oh wait, that's impossible?
Then that means.... your hero Obama, the great savior of the oppressed, did it himself? It must be the republicans' fault somehow? Quick, make up something to cover for him!
And as well, there's the provision that allows the FBI to go into any library and demand to see the book checkout records of any patron. Because, you know, the government needs to know exactly what you're reading. Which is precisely why many libraries delete and scrub records once the book is returned - immediately. If it's not there, they can ask for it, but they can't get it. They can also ask about Internet search history on public terminals - oh wait, that's right, many libraries now reboot between every user and delete the histories and scrub everything. They infiltrated the Muslim Student Club of my former academic institution - and got to listen to a lot of arguing about who to invite as a guest speaker that year, and bickering about the crappy print system on campus.
....sorry yet?
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc