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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 ::
Obama has promised again and again to safeguard our liberties. Now he has morphed into George Bush. What did I miss?
"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.
> In 2008 I seriously thougt that this man would mean change.
If I were you, I'd do some serious soul-seaching regarding this child-like gullibility problem you have. It's dangerous.
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.
> In 2008 I seriously thougt that this man would mean change.
If I were you, I'd do some serious soul-seaching regarding this child-like gullibility problem you have. It's dangerous.
In his defense, the alternative wasn't much better. So, in the end, the result's the same, no matter who you elect. Obama, at least, *could* have been the better choice.
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.
[_] Because drugs
[X] Because terrorists
[_] Because think of the children
[_] Because infringement
Obama has probably put civil rights back a few decades.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
It's probably the best way to get conservatives to let go of the Patriot act...
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.
I maintain that democracy only works for small city states.
Then thank god we aren't a democracy! We're a republic.
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*)
"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.
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.
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.
A much "simpler" change (in terms of concept, not ease of execution) would be to go re-learn the concept of Federalism and take a bunch of power away from the Federal government and give it to state and local ones. The less the Federal government has responsibility over, the less harm unaccountable Congresscritters can do.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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"
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."
found, something.
The second thing I want to just mention very quickly -- last week, Congress obviously was busy. It left town without finishing necessary work on FISA and some of the reforms that are necessary to the Patriot Act.
I said over a year ago that it was important for us to properly balance our needs for security with civil liberties. And this administration engaged on a bipartisan, bicameral basis, talking to Republicans and Democrats about how we could preserve necessary authorities but provide the public greater assurance that those authorities were not being abused.
The House of Representatives did its work and came up with what they’ve called the USA Freedom Act, which strikes an appropriate balance. Our intelligence communities are confident that they can work with the authorities that are provided in that act. It passed on a bipartisan basis and overwhelmingly. It was then sent to the Senate. The Senate did not act. And the problem we have now is that those authorities run out at midnight on Sunday.
So I strongly urge the Senate to work through this recess and make sure that they identify a way to get this done. Keep in mind that the most controversial provision in there, which had to do with the gathering of telephone exchanges in a single government database -- that has been reformed in the USA Freedom Act. But you have a whole range of authorities that are also embodied in the Patriot Act that are non-controversial, that everybody agrees are necessary to keep us safe and secure. Those also are at risk of lapsing.
So this needs to get done. And I would urge folks to just work through whatever issues can still exist, make sure we don't have, on midnight Sunday night, this task still undone, because it's necessary to keep the American people safe and secure.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the...
You may be right, but it seems that he has adhered so closely to Bush's policies that it seems like a no brainer that a Democrat president would have overthrown right away. Why would he do that? I have to wonder if he planned to make changes, but then got into office and learned things that only Bush and other higher ups were privy to previously and that forced him to continue Bush's policies. That is, maybe Bush wasn't actually the total idiot he seems, but maybe knowing X forced him to do Y, even though Y was deeply unpopular. Obama came in with a promise to undo Y, but then learned X which forced him to continue Bush's seemingly insane policies. Or maybe you are right and Obama is secretly a Republican masquerading as a Democrat.