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Invoking Orlando, Senate Republicans Set Up Vote To Expand FBI Spying (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set up a vote late on Monday to expand the FBI's authority to use a secretive surveillance order without a warrant to include email metadata and some browsing history information. The move, made via an amendment to a criminal justice appropriations bill, is an effort by Senate Republicans to respond to last week's mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub after a series of measures to restrict guns offered by both parties failed on Monday. Privacy advocates denounced the effort, saying it seeks to exploit a mass shooting in order to expand the government's digital spying powers. The amendment would broaden the FBI's authority to use so-called National Security Letters to include electronic communications transaction records such as time stamps of emails and the emails' senders and recipients. NSLs do not require a warrant and are almost always accompanied by a gag order preventing the service provider from sharing the request with a targeted user. The amendment filed Monday would also make permanent a provision of the USA Patriot Act that allows the intelligence community to conduct surveillance on "lone wolf" suspects who do not have confirmed ties to a foreign terrorist group. A vote is expected no later than Wednesday, McConnell's office said. Last week, FBI Director James Comey said he is "highly confident that [the Orlando shooter] was radicalized at least in part through the internet."
The Democrats want to take our guns (totalitarianism); the Republicans want to spy on us (also totalitarianism). Can't one goddamn politician react appropriately (by recognizing that embracing totalitarianism means the terrorists WIN), for once?!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
If you are the silent type of guy and just go grab your gun and shoot people, how would all this surveillance help?
Counting the 50+ deaths in Orlando as the act of an Islamic terrorist, which is at least debatable, there have been fewer than 100 deaths in the US since 2001.
This is not exactly the sort of threat that sane men forfeit their liberty for.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
And call his office and call your own congress critters instead of just spouting off here.
Huh? How did they do nothing? The FBI checked him out multiple times but had no actionable cause.
Unless you want the FBI more flagrantly violating civil liverties there was nothing they can do. And these expanded powers will do fuck all either.
If I only have the choice to hand over my gun or my privacy, the choice is pretty easy.
And please, don't gimme that "but the gun can defend your privacy" bullshit. My assault rifle against the US army. Yeah. Sure. The only reason you still have your guns is that they know pretty well that it's not even offering the pretense of you being able to defend against your government's whims.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This should be obvious, but I guess politicians need to be seen doing something, and apparently reasonable gun control in a country that makes up a 1/3 of violent gun crimes just isn't going to fly.
The guy was nuts. He had a documented history of being nuts. His friends thought he was nuts. His family thought he was nuts. And yet, he could still get plenty of ammo and guns. The problem wasn't that there wasn't enough surveillance. The problem is that no one was paying attention to the information that was ALREADY AVAILABLE.
"Oh, I see you have a history of being bat shit insane. Here, let me get you a special discount on our Sandy Hook signature line of guns."
~X~
We can't possibly do anything to prevent (or even slow down) people from getting guns, because reasons. So instead we'll expand domestic spying, which we all know works so well and never has any negative consequences. That's the ticket, right there.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Did I miss the article on Democrats expanding gun control laws?
There is enough stupid going around that there is no need to make up new stupid to supplement what is already there.
The Democrats proposed 4 bills in the senate fully knowing that they would not go anywhere due to GOP opposition in both the house and senate. However, if you look at what the bills proposed, there really wasn't much "control" in them. One was universal background checks, which is a measure that over 80% of Americans - and a majority of gun owners - support. Another was to prevent purchases by people on the FBI no fly list, which also has broad support.
Glad to see you love using secret lists with no due process for controlling the population.
http://www.snopes.com/orlando-... 1. What has his political party got to do with anything? 2. Registering one time as a Democrat ten years ago had little to do with whatever his political views were two weeks ago. After all, Trump was a Democrat too. In my mind, when you tossed in the weak link to Democrats you immediately lost any and all credibility. Your further comment about "bleeding hearts" pegged you down as jJust another Rush Limbaugh listening, low info voting, Guns and Ammo reading while while stroking partisan shill.
I have to say, I'm not a gun nut by any possible stretch of the imagination, and I'm glad the bill that would restrict firearms purchases for people on the no-fly list got blocked.
It would have been declared unconstitutional so fast, it wouldn't even be funny. Mind you, the fact that a bill is clearly unconstitutional on it's face has never really stopped a fair number of Congresscritters (or state legislators) from trying to pass bills.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Second reply: Yes, a determined killer will kill. But easy access to guns makes it much more likely that an unhinged person will take down a whole bunch of others. It's exceedingly unlikely that a guy with a glass bottle or a knife would kill 49 people before being stopped.
Look at Australia's experience with gun control. In the 18 years prior to 1996, they had 13 mass shootings (defined as 4 or more victims.) Since 1996 when they brought in draconian gun laws, they have had zero mass shootings. Zero.
Not only have mass shootings been drastically reduced, but the firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent and the firearm suicide rate by 65 percent without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides. That's because a lot of homicides and suicides are not planned, but occur in the heat of the moment, and are much likely to take place if there's easy access to deadly weapons. Here's the reference (PDF).
Where I do agree, though, is that gun control probably will not work in the US. You have way too many guns in circulation, and you're poisoned by 200+ years of the Second Amendment. Fixing that is well-nigh impossible, but just ignoring the problem is not going to help.
Hint: the men guarding the Japanese internment camps containing both naturalized and natural born citizens during WW2 are not civilians.
The government obeys law when it's convenient.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
More importantly, carrying a gun on my person is so that I am not reliant on the police to solve my problems. I find myself in a bad situation where deadly force is required, I'd rather have my gun than wait on the police to come and save me.
The police have a saying for this "Better judged by twelve than carried by six."
Police forces are reactive, not proactive. Self defense is a basic right because of this simple fact.
So, laws don't generally deter criminals?
Yes, that is correct.
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Then why have drug laws? They don't work.
You're right, drug laws really work great, that's why there is no illegal drug use in this country,
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Why have laws against theft? Criminals aren't gonna obey them.
They exist to provide punishment and revenue, like almost any law. And to stop people from breaking that law again, by locking them up. Yes, a small percentage of people may decide not to do something because of a law, but in general they don't really change people's behavior all that much.
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Why have laws against murder? It won't generally deter criminals.
Tell me, do you refrain from murdering people because it's wrong, or because there's a law against it?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Those wars were not won or lost by fat accountant weekend warriors who've watched too much Red Dawn, lacking logistical support, training, and anything approaching a chain of command. The conflicts you named did use guns, true, but the real danger faced by those fighting were explosives - either IEDs, mortars, artillery, dropped/shot from aircraft, etc. Guns were used, but they were not even close to being the decisive weapon.
Ask someone who came back from Iraq or Afghanistan what their biggest fear was - rifles or IEDs?
The security had guns, but clearly one can't start shooting into a crowd and hope to only hit the perpetrator. Throw some more guns into the mix and you'd end up with people trying to be the "good guy with a gun" they hear so much about, and shooting the shit out of each other every time a car backfired or a champagne cork popped.
If you live in a place where you feel you need to carry a gun, it's too late for you. That's not civilization, it's pathetic.
Background checks are already done. Disallowing people on the FBI no-fly list allows the government to arbitrarily ban people from purchasing guns without due process in court and is massively open to abuse.
And while none of it would have directly outlawed firearms - that's because the democrats know they cannot get away with total and complete bans. Instead they try to chip away, bit by bit, until there are so many regulations and laws that you have to be rich or politically connected to own a firearm; an effective ban on 99% of us plebians.
The ultimate goal isn't making America more safe, either. It's about banning guns entirely. That has always been the end-goal of all the legislation the left continues to try and pass. Gun owners wised up years ago - when they see a liberal saying there needs to be a compromise what they see and hear is a liar who will make absolutely no compromise on his end, while demanding compromise on the other.
And very importantly, the statistical data does not actually back up the leftist viewpoint that firearms cause crime, violent crime, suicide, or homicide. In fact, the only "statistics" they're ever able to drum up are vague claims of "you're more likely to die from a firearm if you own a firearm!" and "more firearms means more firearm deaths!". They even just outright lie about mass shooting statistics.
Even better, the boogeyman of the anti-gun lobby: The deadly "assault weapons", are used in such a vanishingly small number of homicides that more people are murdered each year in the US from blunt weapons or fists.
Conservatives, Libertarians, and anyone else who values the second amendment and the right to self defense are quite frankly sick of the duplicity and hypocrisy surrounding this shit.
It was never about safety; it has always been about control.
But gun laws do work. It's not as if this is an untried experiment - there are many countries with strict gun laws, and they reap the benefits of not having stuff like this happen every other week. There are next to no mass shootings, people don't need guns for self defence (as those they need to defend themselves against are incredibly likely to not be armed with a gun), the police aren't on edge because every traffic stop or pat down might end up in a shoot-out, and so on and so on.
"He couldn't be stopped because he wasn't doing anything criminal, right up until the moment he did." is the folly of not having gun laws. If strict gun laws were in place he would have broken the law the very second he attempted to gain his weapon, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Making guns illegal =/= making guns unavailable/inaccessible, particularly in the case of people who pay no attention to laws in the first place, and plan on dying in the execution of their plans in any case.
Certain drugs have been illegal for many decades, and yet they are still widely and easily available for anyone that wants them and can pay the going rates.
You want a small sample of what banning guns in the US would look like? Just read up on the 1920's-era Prohibition effort to ban alcohol. Now ramp up the carnage and loss of life by orders of magnitude.
It won't result in fewer AR-15s. It will result in an all-out proliferation of fully-automatic AK-47s, M4 carbines, and other NFA and prohibited firearms. If all guns are illegal, might as well be a very well-armed criminal with a fully-auto weapon as opposed to currently-legal Glocks or AR-15 semi-automatic weapons.
Guns will never disappear in the US no matter what laws or Amendments are passed. Those horses left the barn over 2 centuries ago. It would require the genocide of the vast majority of people living in the US with the remainder put in prison camps. Not a viable option for anyone who is sane.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
To too many people in the US, it seems like all they care about (or know about) is the 2nd amendment. Just a quick look at the Bill of Rights (original 10 amendments)
Amendment 1 is pretty much toast.
3 is not really applicable any more.
4 is a joke now.
5, gone.
6, nope.
7 is very dated, not really applicable.
8 is up for interpretation
9 is a joke
10 is a blanket statement.
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/a/bill_of_rights.htm
But dammit, let us keep our 2nd amendment!
I'm going to start telling the gun lovers they should have used their firearms to protect the rest of our rights.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."