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Patriot Act Spy Powers To Expire As Rand Paul Blocks USA Freedom Act Vote
Saturday, we mentioned that three major spying powers that the U.S. government has exercised under the Patriot Act might be nixed, as the sections of the Act granting authority to use them expires. The Daily Dot reports that Senator (and presidential contender) Rand Paul today used Senate rules to block a bill which would have extended those powers, which means that as of midnight Sunday on the U.S. east coast, sections 206, 207 and 215 of the Patriot Act will have expired. Says the Daily Dot's article, linked by reader blottsie:
The reform bill, which the House passed before leaving town for a week-long recess, would end the government's bulk collection of Americans' phone records under the Patriot Act's controversial Section 215 but leaves the other two provisions intact. ... Sunday's procedural meltdown was the second narrow defeat for the USA Freedom Act. In a late-night session on Friday, May 22, the bill fell three votes short of an initial procedural step after [Senate Majority Leader] McConnell lobbied hard against it. The Senate's failure to meet its deadline was a blow to President Obama, who on Friday had warned lawmakers that the country would be vulnerable if the USA Freedom Act did not pass.
he's got my vote.
At least now the pretense will be gone.
So he did one thing you agree with. The rest of his profile is just bat shit crazy.
That's a useful technique - agreeing or conceding the immediate issue, while making nebulous unsupported statements about everything else. Look to see this for the next year or so. "I agree with him on this issue, but everything else is crazy".
...problem is, that "agreeing on this one issue" seems to happen a lot. Like, for most issues.
Who do you recommend as an alternative? (And did they, by any chance, support the Patriot act?)
This would have a lot more meaning if the NSA had anything to fear if they break the law.
In order to keep America safe, does anyone know where I can send my emails and phone records to until this whole misunderstanding is resolved? I'd hate for a terrorist to get me because my information was private.
Don't worry - they're almost certainly still doing it. They just won't be bothering with any FISA rubber stamps or procedural filings.
I mean, come on. They obviously weren't concerned even with the Constitution up to this point in time; why would they start worrying about more ephemeral congressional votes now?
#DeleteChrome
couldnt be any worse than the current "progressive" and previous neocon
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I have been an American citizen for over 30 years ever since I took my oath back in the 1980's
This is the day I can say that I feel proud as an American for at the very least the politicians in Washington D.C., for once, are doing something that the PEOPLE want them to do --- to kill that goddamn draconian bill that allows the government of the United States of America to act much like a totalitarian regime
I think I am not the only one in America who will keep note of who is voting to keep American under the dictatorship of Obama - and we will make sure that all the supporters of dictator Obama will get booted from the Capitol Hill
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Please spare me the history lesson, dude
I do need to ask you a question, tho ...
Who is the one coming out asking the Congress to extend the Patriot Act?
Was it Cheney Rumsfeld Bush and Co., or was it Obama?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Does anyone really think they, the NSA, is not going to spy, with or without approval? We have no way to control them, they hold all the cards!
The have always spied and that part will never cease. But it's time to shake them up a little.
1. If it can and will be abused, refrain from building it in the first place.
2. If it has been built, see that it is laid bare to the greatest extent possible and dismantled.
3. For egregious offenses, the offending Agency must be completely disbanded, its assets liquidated, and formed anew.
4. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. (only joking!)
The United States is presently under attack, by itself, in a way even Stalin was unable to achieve given the limited technology of his time. Due to a lack of transparency and believability, a technological renaissance with (apparently) no moral compass steered by Charter, the NSA has likely deployed assets and capabilities for domestic surveillance. The following attack vectors cannot be ruled out:
There is an unknown, possibly massive tapping of the backbone network occurring. Utah Data Center's central location is a clue. Thomas Drake, Bill Binney and Mark Klein have all come forward alleging domestic surveillance far exceeding 'telephone records'. Klein is of especial note, for it is he who revealed the existence of Room 641A in the lawsuit Heptig vs AT&T that EFF took almost to the Supreme Court, who declined to hear the case on the basis that the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 protected AT&T from liability for involvement with any illegal activities. A law passed after the lawsuit was filed. In response to it, even.
That should make you a bit angry. We're not talking about telephone records here. We're talking about fiber splitting with drop-in access to the whole slurp. To any future despot this means that the United States may be prepared to deliver real-time private communications and databases of activity for its citizens, cradle to grave. Why the fuck would anyone want to build this thing, unless they were insane? James Bamford hinted at the possibility that NSA was 'going domestic' in his 1982 book Puzzle Palace as he suggests its interest in developing technology for bulk microwave gathering. That is to be expected as this technology was deployed worldwide. But the way they wished to go about it was a bit... peculiar:
Another indication of NSA's "broadband sweeping of multi-circuited domestic telecommunications trunk lines," David L. Watters told the Senate Intelligence Committee [in 1978!] lies in the Agency's request for an amendment to the wiretap law that would permit NSA to engage in warrantless wiretapping "for the sole purpose of determining the capability of equipment" when such "test period shall be limited... to... ninety days." Continuing, he warned: "Let there be no misunderstanding here. There is only one category of wiretapping equipment or system which requires up to ninety days for test and adjustment, and that system is broadband electronic eavesdropping equipment, the vacuum-cleaner approach to intelligence gathering, the general search of microwave trunk lines. I make this assertion on the strength of actual experience in the electronic intelligence trade and on the strength of over twenty-five years' experience in the telecommunications profession. An ordinary, single-line wire tap requires only five minutes to adjust and test."
NSA should not have wanted th
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Progressives in America are totalitarian, use whatever label you prefer. Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. No intrusion into daily life by government is forbidden, as long as it's for the common good.
"We're going to have to take things away from you for the common good"
"The problem with letting the people decide is that they often make the wrong choice."
"It should be illegal to broadcast false claims relating to a political debate."
"I'm all for free speech, but hate speech isn't protected."
"I don't want my neighbor to be able to own a firearm - he's more dangerous, if just by accident, than any criminals."
"It's not right to make a rape victim testify to the cops or a court, or to make her face her accuser - it's just too emotionally traumatizing"
More and more this is the stuff of the mainstream American left, not just the progressive extreme.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." - Thomas Jefferson - illustrates the proper attitude.
The act of owning slaves, on the other hand, not so much.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
are carefully selected by corporate money/the rich who own them then there is no real change since it's the same hand up the ass of both party puppets.
this won't stop the NSA and FBI, CIA, etc from continuing their unconstitutional surveillance state...
The act of owning slaves, on the other hand, not so much.
I stand open to correction here, but my understanding was that Jefferson inherited the vast majority of the slaves that he owned, and his only known purchases of slaves were in order to reunite family members who had been separated by sales to different masters. It's true that he didn't free many of his slaves, but that was (apparently) because life for an ex-slave in Virginia in the 18th century was arguably nastier than being nominally "owned" by a caring owner. He also attempted to pass laws through the Virginia state legislature that would have abolished slavery (his bill was defeated), and included an anti-slavery diatribe in the original Declaration of Independence, which was cut by the committee before it was published.
When you get right down to it, there is not a lot one man - even a President of the United States - can do when the culture of the time is against him. But he seems to have done about as much as he could in the circumstances, so criticising him from a perspective more than two centuries later seems a bit unfair.
-- Note to Mods: There is a good reason there's no "-1 Disagree" option. --