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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."
If you are the silent type of guy and just go grab your gun and shoot people, how would all this surveillance help?
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.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
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
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.
That is what gets me in all of these cases. In almost every one the government really screwed the pooch. We were told by the Russians to be on the look out for the Boston bombers but we fucked that one up. The mastermind of the Paris attacks was featured as pig fucker of the month in Daesh's monthly magazine. The Orlando shooter was investigated by the FBI a few times and supposedly was reported by a gun shop owner for suspicious behavior attempting to buy ammo in bulk and body armor. So instead of the government doing their fucking job and actively investigating these people that really seem to need a closer look they instead seek to take away rights from everyone else.
Time to offend someone
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.
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.
Federal law, specifically the Posse Comitatus Act, restricts the use of the United States Army and the United States Air Force in enforcing US Federal Government domestic policy in the US - it does not cover the US Navy, nor the US Marine Corp, and it does not apply to the National Guard (Army or Air) when invited to act in a law enforcement capacity by a state governor.
The Insurrection Act can be used to deploy US military capability within US borders against US citizens without violating the Posse Comitatus Act.
What's disingenuous is failing to acknowledge that in the 16th Century, "well-regulated" was synonymous with "well-trained." If you want to "regulate" guns by, for example, instituting marksmanship training as part of the public school curriculum, that'd be fine with me!
The context of the times was that the Second Amendment was written by a bunch of terrorists* who had just finished violently overthrowing their government.
(* If the revolution were happening today, that's certainly the term King George would be throwing around -- whether it accurately described the revolutionaries' tactics or not.)
The Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, is a remarkably terse document (as opposed to some of the later Amendments, which became more verbose). Therefore, I certainly agree with you that it must be understood in context with the Federalist Papers and other writings of the Framers! But from that context, it is abundantly clear that they envisioned the militia as a check against the power of the State (and against the threat to freedom posed by a professional standing army in particular).
Jefferson has been quoted to death, so I'll cite others instead. Here's Washington's thought on the subject:
If that's not advocating for the use of arms as a defense against (your own) tyrannical government, what is it?
Patrick Henry is even more explicit:
And here's Alexander Hamilton, writing in Federalist #28:
Elbridge Gerry is a relatively obscure figure, but he didn't mince words:
Finally, here's George Mason, who helped write the Second Amendment itself:
I could keep going, but that should be more than enough evidence to prove my point to all but the densest (or most disingenuous) debater.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz