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."

Comments

And yet...

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

despite ALL the evidence gathered prior to the shooting, no one (gov't agency-wise) did anything.
It's almost like they knew, but waited, so they could use it as an excuse to get more power... ...things that make you go "hmmmmm"

Re:Orlando Shooter was a rent-a-cop

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN article: http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/1...

For what it's worth, this has been down-played in media (haven't seen it blasting twitter and stuff much)

So basically NONE OF THE PROPOSALS would have prevented him from getting a gun.

As a voter, I'm sick of intelligent and informed voters being sidelined by media and legal cowboy politicians.

He was denied a sale at a gun shop who also reported him to the FBI as they had a really bad feeling about the guy, they felt really uncomfortable with some of the questions he was asking and his general behavior. It wasn't the first time he had been report either but look what good that ended up doing.

I suppose if you can't ban assault rifles

[rsilvergun]

Like Australia did then this is the next best thing. I don't think mental health services would have helped the shooter. It's been suggested he was a repressed homosexual taking it out on the night club attendees. That was likely due to his religious upbringing so It'd be hard to insert mental health services into that without at least the appearance of attacking his religion. America is big on hard-line religion. Basically take gun control and the prospect of mellowing out religion away and I can't think of any other tools. And when you're only tool's a hammer...

This is called the Shock Doctrine

[turp182]

There's a good book of the same title by Naomi Klein.

It's a simple concept,. and the summary summarizes it for this situation: exploit a mass shooting in order to expand the government's digital spying powers.

Here's what we know:
1. Born in the US, thus a US citizen (child of immigrants, but most all of us are)
2. Had two wives (and one divorce) and a small child
3. Worked in security (where they carry guns)
4. Was investigated twice by the FBI (someone he attended religious things with had reported him)
5. Was legally able to purchase firearms

I'm sorry government of the United States, you weren't going to stop this guy. Except, he had been investigated and vetted as not a threat. THAT IS WHERE THE SYSTEM FAILED!

Could the system have been successful? We will probably never know. But:
* Him researching guns wouldn't have raised any eyes (it shouldn't have anyway).
* is father was rather wordy and seemed supportive of some "bad" groups (him searching for such things could have easily been painted as "know thy enemy" or simple curiosity).

He's basically Timothy McVeigh but against the gay community rather than the Federal government (and also no where near as deadly as Timothy).

Re:expanded

[Shortguy881]

It's not a choice. We are losing on both fronts.

Re:expanded

[cayenne8]

Keeping and bearing arms is a right. They aren't "for" any one purpose. You don't need a reason. That's what a right is.

So is (or should be) privacy....

Remember, the US Constitution does not "grant" rights....its purpose is to enumerate the supposedly LIMITED powers and responsibilities of the Federal Govt.

The bill of rights is an odd duck...in that it does actually list some rights...there was a lot of argument on that at the time, as that the founding fathers didn't want there to be the misconception that it granted rights.

But I would argue that privacy, is a right, not for any one purpose and that for privacy, you also "don't need a reason"....

Re:expanded

[bobbied]

How much of your guns helped out in Orlando?

Now that's a question we cannot answer because the bar was a "gun free zone" legally. Meaning that law abiding folks who enter the establishment where not able to bring their weapons along. Concealed Carry Permits in FL do not allow you to carry in establishments where adult drinks are sold. The only one with a gun inside was the shooter until the police entered the building a couple of hours later.

Now I'm not saying that having a bunch of drinking folks carrying guns is a good idea, but I am saying that a couple of armed individuals inside the club would have a good chance of disrupting the carnage and lowering the death toll. However, we will never know the answer to all these "what if" questions.

But we DO know that putting guns into law abiding hands LOWERS violent crime rates (such as shootings) not the other way around. The statistics don't lie, and they tell a totally different story than what you think, especially if you tend to be on the left side politically. We also know that mass shooters seek out gun free zones to ply their trade. According to his diary, Adam Landza passed up shooting up the Denver airport and instead decided on a movie theatre which explicitly prohibited guns because he understood it was unlikely he'd encounter armed resistance and could kill more people.

So, let's be honest, you need to disarm the bad guys, not the good guys. Suggest laws that do that for a change and I'll bet you find there is a lot of support for your suggestions... However, this "assault weapon" ban garbage or the attack on the AR-15 in particular is a non-starter as is most of the "gun control" legislation coming from the lefties. But I'm beginning to think that this is really about political posturing and not really about doing anything, it's about blaming the other side for saying "no" to them on a topic that garners them emotional support from the sob stories, and not anything else...

Re:Fuck ALL those assholes!

[AntronArgaiv]

I am sick and tired of our elected representatives passing laws like this and the USA PATRIOT ACT, claiming they "make us safer".

It's easy to pass these, hard to repeal them. We as a country are going to be living with this erosion of our rights for years to come.

The USA Patriot Act had provisions that had "sunset provisions." That is, they were to expire after a certain number of years, variously. In subsequent years, Congress has renewed most of them when they were about to go out-of-force.

You are right about "easy to pass; hard to repeal," but that isn't even the case for the USA Patriot Act. It's worse.

Oh, yeah. The people who passed it initially were smart enough to put the sunset provision in. Regardless of whether I think they should have passed it initially, the sunset provision was a very intelligent move. REMOVING it...not so much. I sometimes wonder if there shouldn't be an intelligence test for our elected representatives. Or, at least, a basic Civics class, with emphasis on governments and how they can, with the best of intentions, become Bad.

CSB: A friend of my daughter's works in the Sgt-at-Arms office on Capitol Hill. She has to explain, repeatedly, to Senators and Representatives, why her office can't arrest the President (for alleged crimes against America, but really, because he's black and they don't like him). Seriously.

Re:Fuck ALL those assholes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, the government does not care. The Elite in power is not touched by this. Whenever something like Orlando happens do you know what the Elite does? They masturbate. Yes, they masturbate. A lot. They cum all over the place. Every time it happens it gives them more leverage to shit upon us.

And it's not just the US. When the Paris attacks happened, the whole of the French government was jerking off like crazy. They had emergency power acts passed that allow them to curb protests with impunity. Don't like the new labor laws? Too bad, you're a terrorist. Boom headshot. And in the meantime they shit on the heads of the French.

Belgium? More of the same. This time the entire EU commission was masturbating furiously. Finally they could get some laws passed to curb this pesky "freedom of expression" nobody in power really likes. Don't like it? Terrorist. Arrest or kill. Possibly both. And down goes the rain of shit on the europeans.

Brexit? Kiss kiss bang bang OMG THEY KILLED A PRETTY MUTHA OF 2! Massive collective masturbation at Brussels. Juncker's dick was literally purple from all the bruising. And most of the EU institutions had their pants full of jizz. At this point there is a massive toilet over our heads so get ready for the inevitable shitting.

That's what happens: we die, they masturbate, then shit upon the living. They're fetishists, I tell ya.

Re:expanded

[swillden]

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.

There are lots of places in the country where there are several armed civilians in virtually every crowd. So if what you say is inevitable, shouldn't it have happened? I can provide links to several counterexamples, where people with concealed carry permits withheld their fire because they didn't have a clear shot. Concealed carry instructors (like me) stress to their students that they do not have the same level of protection from the system that police officers do, and that they are fully and completely responsible for every bullet they fire. What we see in practice is that people with permits do understand that and do behave responsibly -- far more responsibly than police officers, in fact. Which makes sense because cops know that they'll get the benefit of the doubt and have an organization to stand behind them and fund their legal defense, if needed.

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.

If you think you live in a place where there's no chance that you'll need a gun, you're delusional. No place is that safe.

Now, if what you believe is that the probability that you'll need a gun is very low, that other risks are greater, and that you, personally, wouldn't know what to do with a gun if you had one, that's a reasonable position. But it's not a counterargument for those of us who do know what we're doing. I agree that the probability that I'll ever need to draw my gun is very small, and I sincerely hope that it never happens. But I also believe that we're all safer if a significant fraction of law-abiding citizens is armed and prepared to respond to situations that may occur, because the police basically never arrive soon enough. They can't be everywhere.

Re:Fuck ALL those assholes!

[schnell]

The Second Amendment does not affirm our right to own guns for "personal defense;" it affirms our right to own guns for defense against tyranny.

Read the Second Amendment again and spot the word "tyranny" for me. Don't find it? Because the SA says that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." It's easy to ignore the first half of the sentence and just pay attention to the second, but that's disingenuous.

Furthermore, you have to take it in the context of the times in which it was written. The United States at this point had no standing army. (Historical aside: the US was very averse to keeping a standing army until after World War II. On the eve of the Civil War, the whole strength of the US Army was 15,000 men; just before World War II, in 1940, the US Army's size was smaller than that of Belgium.) Much of this aversion was due to the fact that it was Britain's desire to keep a standing professional army in the colonies that necessitated the Intolerable Acts which taxed the colonists to pay for said army.

At any rate, the presumption of the framers in 1791 would likely have been that the US needed to call on a citizen militia if it was invaded (or if it had to put down internal rebellions, such as the Whiskey Rebellion or Shays' Rebellion). Therefore, the citizens of the US should be prepared to take up arms as needed under the direction of the government (i.e. a well regulated militia), not against it. I know it's easy to have a romantic view of the Founding Fathers that they somehow encoded into the Constitution the seeds of the government's demise if it became too "tyrannical," but it's just not there in the text of the Second Amendment.

Personally, I like guns. I don't think there's anything wrong with responsible gun ownership. But please don't try to use the Second Amendment as a source for saying Americans should be armed and prepared to fight their own government with military-grade firearms.