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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.
Bulk data collection provides *very* useful information for people in a position to do market manipulation on wall street.
Like, you know, politicians, who are allowed to do insider trading as per special laws that protect them.
That's all Obama is after.
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.
Obama has promised again and again to safeguard our liberties. Now he has morphed into George Bush. What did I miss?
You missed the meeting he had with the NSA the day he took officer where they showed him their file on him.
A free society can not exist in conjunction with a government that has unfettered power. That's what the NSA has done, unchained itself from the restrictions of the constitution. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If the NSA isn't blackmailing the president, they will eventually. It is quite literally inevitable.
He did? Funny I don't see it that way at all.
What I see is him pledging to implement a technical loophole. How is making someone else do the collection and storage (with far less security than their own current collection) really any real change? Do you honestly think the people who were complaining about this are just policy wonks who want the letter of the law followed but who don't actually care about the real privacy implications?
This is not progress, its window dressing.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Um, someone WAS trying to do something about it - Congress actually tried to sneak in an extension - there was a provision in the USA FREEDOM Act that extended section 215 until 2019 (originally it was 2017, and Rand Paul especially objected to tacking on another 2 years). That was passed by the House but defeated in the Senate. Incidentally, Obama was pro USA FREEDOM Act as well (and yes, all those caps are necessary - FREEDOM is a backronym, though I don't remember what it means).
You did read the summary of the article...
"Obama criticized the Senate for not acting on that legislation, saying they have necessitated a renewal of the Patriot Act provisions."
It is the failure of the gop controlled Senate to pass the new rules form the House that has kept the Patriot Act in place
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Not exactly. What the 2nd Circuit rules was that the bulk collection of phone records was "not authorized" by section 215 of the Patriot Act. They did not rule on the constitutionality of the program. So not "what you're doing is wrong" but "what you're doing is something nobody told you to do." Whether or not it would be constitutional to implement the program they did is left open. And with good reason...you can't rule on the constitutionality of a law that isn't written.
Consider your work at a company which has an employee agreement that the company will "respect your privacy." Lately there have been some problems with unauthorized people entering the company building, and perhaps doing nefarious things. So the leadership creates a new "Whatcha Doin'?" program, in which security guards are authorized to ask people who come through the door two questions:
1) What is your name?
2) What is your quest?
The security department takes this program and implements it. But the security chief adds another question, "What is your favorite color?"
The employees are livid and go to HR, objecting to the intrusive nature of the question. Okay, maybe it's fine to ask people coming through the door their name and their quest, but "what is your favorite color" is deeply personal information, and asking it violates the "respect your privacy" clause of the employee agreement. The security department disagrees, that asking for favorite colors is not too personal a question, and they want to keep doing it.
HR doesn't really want to get into the mess of deciding whether your favorite color is information too private for the company to ask, but they do notice, "um, hey guys...the Whatcha Doin' program doesn't authorize you to ask for favorite colors anyway, so just knock that off and we're all cool, right?"
That's basically what happened. Now, if they pass the USA Freedom Act or something else that DOES specifically authorize bulk call collection, THEN the court will be in a position to rule on whether or not bulk phone collection is constitutional.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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"
Actually they made no ruling to the constitutionality of section 215. What they did determine is that the Obama Administration was exercising authority not granted to it by section 215, therefor the practice of bulk collection was ruled illegal.