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Senate Rejects FBI Bid For Warrantless Access To Internet Browsing Histories (zdnet.com)
Zack Whittaker, reporting for ZDNet:An amendment designed to allow the government warrantless access to internet browsing histories has been narrowly defeated in the Senate. The amendment fell two votes short of the required 60 votes to advance. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) switched his vote at the last minute. He submitted a motion to reconsider the vote following the defeat. A new vote may be set for later on Wednesday. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) introduced the amendment as an add-on to the commerce, justice, and science appropriations bill earlier this week. McCain said in a statement on Monday that the amendment would "track lone wolves" in the wake of the Orlando massacre, in which Omar Mateen, who authorities say radicalized himself online, killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in the Florida city. The amendment, which may be reconsidered in the near future, aims to broaden the rules governing national security letters, which don't require court approval. These letters allow the FBI to demand records associated with Americans' online communications -- so-called electronic communications transactional records.
Don't think for a second that they're done. The all out assault on our liberties by statists is non stop. The FBI failed to stop Omar Mateen after meeting with him twice, but somehow that is justification for asking for MORE spy powers? Orwellian move by the Oligarchs.
Please submit your phone, laptop and office computer browsing histories for public inspection before the vote. After all, you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, right?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Is there anyone in Washington who has forwarded a sensible proposal in response to this tragedy?
All you hear from the left is "take away freedom A" and all you hear from the right is "take away freedom B".
All the while, the government had all the information they needed to act on this, they just governmented the whole thing up.
For those not familiar with parliamentary rules, this is the archetypal dick move:
>Mitch McConnell (R-KY) switched his vote at the last minute. He submitted a motion to reconsider the vote following the defeat.
In generic rules of order, when a motion is voted down, only someone who voted against it is allowed to submit a motion to reconsider. So if it looks like you don't have enough votes to pass you motion, you vote against it and then file a motion to reconsider. The motion to reconsider has a lower vote threshold, so the failed motion is resurrected like a zombie.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I find it funny how when the FBI and the other letters always think that our losing our rights will stop future crimes. It won't. Because when something happens under their watch, they will just say once again, well, if we can access X without a warrant, we can keep this stuff from happening. Yet bad shit still happens anyways.
You want to stop terrorists? How about we stop making them and stop supplying them with weapons, stop giving them money for oil. Stop killing their family and friends with drones. How about we, the USA be the bigger fucking person and apologize for how we have treated the Middle East for that last 70 years. How about we stop fucking giving Saudi Arabia weapons and money.
And seriously, I'm not against guns at all, but we need smarter laws on purchasing them.
Be seeing you...
Here's the full list. Note that 4 didn't vote, so they may try again later - this thing isn't dead by any means. Also, McConnell switched his vote at the last minute so he can bring it up again, so the actual tally is 59.
https://www.govtrack.us/congre...
Party breakdown:
For: 46 R, 11D, 1I
Against: 7R, 30D, 1I
Not Voting: 1R, 3D
the sensible proposal is to do nothing in the immediate, gather as much information as possible, and use it within the bounds of the constitution
so no... unfortunately no one in washington has made that proposal
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
How is "killed 49 people at a gay nightclub" any more informative than "killed 49 people at a nightclub".
It's informative about his motivations. It wasn't random, he was deliberately attacking gay people. That is useful to know to understand that particular crime.
The question you probably should have asked is what does it being a gay night club have to do with enhancing government spying privileges. Either enhancing spying to stop mass murders is OK or it is not. It doesn't matter what particular aspect of the victims set him off, some other nut job will have some other criteria for the same result. Throwing "gay" into the mix in this case may dampen the crime for the majority of people who are not gay, because they are now less afraid.
Regardless, this is just a power grab, and it is shut down however narrowly, yay.
Sam Harris had a podcast which contains an audio clip of an imam teaching that it's OK to kill gays, that it was the compassionate thing to do. I got the impression from the 'cast that the clip was from an imam in the Orlando area, and that it was taken a week or so before the shooting.
(I can't link the specific podcast at the moment because the site that I read it at is temporarily offline.)
We have often thought that the right to practice religion is absolute, but I'm wondering now if it should be.
Does being a religion give you a license to say anything you like? We have laws against hate speech even though we have free speech in general, and we have laws against speech that encourage a specific crime.
We guarantee freedom of religion, but we also guarantee freedom of life.
Which one has priority?
Maybe it's time to prioritize freedom of life over the freedom of religion. Maybe we should say categorically that you *can't* preach that it's OK to kill people of a certain class, whatever the class might be.
This would apply to any religion, even Christian ones ("thou shall not suffer a witch to live"), and it would apply to all cases: people who leave the religion are free to go unmolested (Islam, Scientology), people that the religion dislikes would be free to go unmolested (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism), and so on.
So for example, I would cite The Westboro Baptist church claiming that gays should be put to death, or evangelists calling on their flock to assasinate abortion providers.
As a country, I think we might legitimately say "not in this country" to these extreme views, and in these specific cases maybe intervene and say "no, you can't preach that even if your religion believes it".
Personal safety should be absolute, and the right to religion isn't more important.
In the aftermath of the Orlando shooting, imams haven't stopped teaching that gays should be killed.
Perhaps they should.
You better be very careful.
All private sales in California must employ a licensed firearms dealer as middleman, and the dealer must perform a background check. Connecticut and Delaware require background checks on all private sales. Each county in Florida may or may not require a check. Hawaii requires anyone purchasing a firearm from anyone to acquire a permit involving a background check. In Illinois, anyone not a licensed firearms dealer must coordinate the transferee's Firearms Owner ID Card with the state, and await approval. Illinois does have a loophole for gifts to close relatives. In Iowa, anyone providing or acquiring a handgun without the transferee possessing a valid annual permit is a criminal. Private transfers of handguns and "assault weapons" in Maryland must be conducted through licensed dealers, with a background check. Massachusetts basically outlaws private transfers completely, but with a loophole for "not more than four" weapons in one year. Private sales must be reported by both sides to the "Department of Criminal Justice Information Services". In Michigan, when purchasing a handgun from other than a licensed firearms dealer, the buyer must have a handgun purchase license or a license to carry a concealed handgun. New York requires a National Instant Criminal Background Check by a licensed dealer before any private transfer other than to immediate family. Oregon requires private sellers to perform a background check. And so on.
TL;DR: it's a hodgepodge of state laws. Plenty of states require background checks, and just about all of them make it an illegal act to knowingly transfer to an unsavory party. And there are a significant number of states where it is almost impossible for an ordinary person to legally even POSSESS a firearm, let alone carry it.
I hate rider bills totally unrelated to the primary bill just to get some nasty thing passed that can't get passed on its own.
Perhaps they should focus on the factors causing society's violence rather than specifically how it is violent. If society has a violence problem (historically, we're as peaceful as we've ever been), then it must deal with those problems. Infantilizing the environment in order to bury the violent acts themselves without addressing the conflicts that cause them solves nothing and creates its own problems. Politicians have long histories of blaming specific things for the ills of society (music, movies, video games, guns) rather than doing some self-reflection on their ideological convictions. It's like arguing with westboro baptist church over gay rights. If liberal society is to survive, it must force politicians to do their jobs rather than let them use fear to knee jerk us until we have no liberty left.
What this actually means is that slightly under 3/5 of the senate is totally fine with this invasion of privacy clearly guaranteed by the fourth amendment, to say nothing of these "national security letters" which are a perversion of our justice system.
Police have been catching people for a long time, even while following the Fourth Amendment. It may make law enforcement less efficient, but that's a reasonable tradeoff.
Besides, what were the police and FBI going to do about the guy? Assuming they conclude he's likely to turn violent in the near future, what can they do? If it's due to mental illness they can request involuntary commitment, but the ability to hold someone indefinitely without a conviction is a civil rights nightmare.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes