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The Patriot Act May Be Dead For Good
HughPickens.com points out Shane Harris's report at The Daily Beast that when powerful spying authorities under the Patriot Act expire at the stroke of midnight Monday, as currently appears likely, they may never return. "Senators have been negotiating over whether to pass a House bill that would renew and tweak existing provisions in the long-controversial law, but if the sunset comes and the provisions are off the books, lawmakers in both chambers would be facing a vote to reinstate controversial surveillance authorities, which is an entirely different political calculation. ...
Three major Patriot provisions are on the chopping block: so-called roving wiretaps, which let the government monitor one person's multiple electronic devices; the "lone-wolf" provision, which allows surveillance of someone who's not connected to a known terrorist group; and Section 215, which, among other things, the government uses to collect the records of all landline phone calls in the United States." Obama has been urging Congress to pass the Freedom Act, but not warning that the sky will fall if they don't. That may reflect a calculation on the president's part that the surveillance authorities aren't important enough to lose political capital fighting to keep them. Meanwhile with the Senate not slated to return to Washington until just hours before that deadline, opponents like Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) showing no signs of budging, and the House so far unwilling to bail out the upper chamber, the prospects for an eleventh-hour breakthrough look slim.
They'll come up with some sort of emergency measure or other. Not a snowflake's chance in Hell this will die.
If they don't pass it then the government will just do all those things anyway. It's not like they are subject to the law or the constitution or anything.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They were collecting data before the Patriot Act, they will collect it after. As technology allows they will collect more and more. They will lie to congress, the courts, and most certainly to the public. However this is all known to have ready been done with absolute certainty thanks to Snowden. It's a sign that they are getting bolder, more willing to act without even a shred of cover of law. They no longer need to pretend for permission due to the Patriot Act. Thus it can be allowed to expire.
Good riddance.
I remember that when the Patriot Act was first passed thinking that
- this was obviously on someone's wet dream wish list (it was not so much written as released from the vaults) and
- passing huge changes in security laws with little debate and less thought in the near panicked initial response to a terrorist attack is basically a good definition of what not to do in a crisis.
Of course, that was before the Bush Administration invaded Iraq and showed us that purposeful stupidity can be worse than mindless stupidity.
This is one of the best comments I've seen about the Patriot act (from the NY Times): 'Listening to the arguments for keeping the "Patriot Act" on the PBS News Hour tonight, they sound just like the same kind of arguments used by the NKVD, and the Gestapo, everyone needs watching to keep the American people safe. They are protecting us from subversives, terrorists, those who would threaten our society. The same arguments used by dictators and tyrants for all history. Just the term "Patriot Act" ("a person who loves and strongly supports or fights for his or her country") was coined to give the idea that anyone against it was not loyal to the country, and were a threat to the rest of the citizenry. It is also used to demean anyone who criticizes the government for actions such as going to war, to "protect Americans." There is nothing patriotic about the act, it is an act of repression, it is a scare tactic, made by people who have a strong desire to stay in power and make others behave withing their ideological framework. It is a means to keep watch on all of us, not just the miscreants. We got by for 239 years without it, we don ot need it now.' --David Underwood, Citrus Heights
It does not mean that the spying will stop.
Only that it will be moved to the private sector.
In place of the NSA, it will be Verizon, Comcast et al who will be doing the bulk data collection.
And instead of being financed by tax money that is collected anyway, the bulk collection will be financed by additional charges to the phone/cable bills.
President Obama clearly knows how to kill a bill that he wants dead. All he needs to do is some out in favor of it and it is going to be DOA.
If he had fought hard against the reinstatement of the Patriot Act it would pass with a veto-proof majority.
(In his book even former President Bush said The Patriot Act was poorly named. He felt, in recollection, that by naming it such, it made it hard for there to be meaningful discussion. . . after all, who wants to go on record as opposing patriotism?)
this is all because of one man who did a brave thing and was forced to flee his country for a hostile nation. history books will write of snowden as a hero.
From all over the media, political commentators have been slamming Rand Paul since the 'filibuster'. Not just competitive republicans running for office or stumping for their guy either. Fox news left him off the latest poll, Scarboro (former republican analyst) mocks him, Bill Kristol (ancient neocon acolyte) mocks him. Several editorial columns describe his maneuvering of the vote for renewing the patriot act as betrayal. Huffpo implied Rand's 'act' is so tedious that other senators roll their eyes.
Amazing how this man is so derided for actually acting on one of the biggest issues of our time instead of just going along
No. It does not all die.
First, please remember that the NSA is a spy agency. So long that their targets are legitimate (more on that in a second), they are expected to do everything within their powers to get to it.
Subverting the standards was a low blow, but as the ol' Tennessee saying goes "fool me once.... shame on... you?". Of course, by the time those standards were drafted, the standards body should have already known better (selling Enigma based encryption devices to foreign countries well into the 70's, anyone?). I'm hopeful, however, that we'll get spared "third time a fool".
As for the other activities, well, this is how spying gets done. That is how you spy on people in this day and age. With all of the justified criticism of the NSA, it would still be bad if they couldn't spy at all. They do, in fact, have a function to fulfill, and it is a function that needs fulfilling.
Circling back to who the targets should be. Spying against friendly foreign country leaders is not against the the law, or even, as far as I understand it, against the NSA's charter. It is an extremely foolish thing to do, but I don't think changing the law is the way to handle it.
Shachar
If a terrorist truly wanted to harm us, the best way they could do it would be to mount a showy but essentially superficial attack some place Monday morning right after this expired.
The actual damage and injuries and deaths from the attack itself would probably be minuscule, but the self-inflicted damage and injuries and deaths caused by the U.S. doubling down on even tighter surveillance, more war on terror, and the loss of our freedoms that we say we're trying protect would gladden the hearts of many a terrorist. It is a strategy that has worked well for them since well before 9/11.
Terrorists can't destroy us directly, but they're happy to let us do it to ourselves voluntarily.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
"... it looks like the Patriot Act will be gone by Monday morning."
Correction: key provisions of the Patriot Act. What most people call "the Patriot Act" was actually a collection of bills and laws, only some of which were part of the Patriot Act itself.
So yes, technically most if not all of the Patriot Act would expire... but there are other sibling laws that need to go down in flames, too, before the damage done will really be repaired.
Why don't you unpack that statement a little bit? What is the domestic function of the NSA?
If you said anything besides, "It doesn't have a domestic function" then you are wrong. The US government is not supposed to be spying on US citizens. If there's some foreign government or organization that's communicating with an American citizen or permanent resident in order to commit a crime, just get a goddamned warrant.
You are welcome on my lawn.
A single senator can filibuster a bill. Senator Rand Paul said he'd prevent it from passing before the Senate went on break, and he did so. Rand Paul is now saying he'll make sure it isn't passed on Sunday, and there's every reason to think he'll do so again, just like he did before.
I'll be considering him carefully when I choose my presidential vote.
He'll never get the Republican nomination. Not a chance in hell. The old guard in the party would rather have Hillary Clinton than Rand Paul. She's less of a threat to them.
Hillary would be the best republican since Eisenhower.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I can certainly see why he runs as a Republican- the current fight is between the libertarian side of the party and the remnants of the Moral Majority faction and the establishment power base. The unfortunate fact is that libertarian party candidates don't get elected to the presidency and the senate, republicans do. He therefore can accomplish a lot more by getting elected as a Republican than he could by losing a Libertarian. President Reagan largely redefined the republican party in his own image, so there's no reason Rand Paul couldn't do the same.
Of course Reagan also developed an alliance with the Moral Majority crowd in order to get elected, and that alliance affected the party platform. Moral Majority officially shut down many years ago and people are fed up with the establishment power base, so the party is ripe to be redefined again.