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Congress Is Trying To Expand The Patriot Act (rare.us)
An anonymous reader writes: The house is scheduled to vote in an hour or so on expanding provisions of the patriot act, allowing massive financial information sharing to include dozens of new offenses ("specified unlawful activities"), including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The house bill is H.R. 5606. My quick read is that this essentially lets FEDGOV expand massive semi-secret databases of financial transactions without a warrant while protecting banks from liability for helping them. In 5 years from 2002-2007, for example, with a smaller ability this led to 35,000 suspects but there were only 21 search warrants. Call your representative. Rare.us reports: "The proposed bill, H.R. 5606, expands Section 314 of the Patriot Act to cover non-terrorism or money laundering related investigations. Critics claim that the bill is a threat to the privacy of innocent Americans and is being rammed through Congress without debate. Section 314 encourages law enforcement to share information with financial institutions on money laundering and terrorism. It also encourages financial institutions to share information with each other." The report says the House Liberty Caucus, led by Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.), opposes the bill, claiming that Treasury Department regulations will compromise the privacy of Americans as it will all but mandate financial institutions to share information with the government. The caucus also opposes the bill because it is being brought to the floor under a suspension of the rules, and is not being considered under "regular order." The bill's sponsor, Congressman Robert Pittenger (R-NC) described HR 5606 as an attempt "to stop the flow of illicit dollars to criminals and terror organizations."
"The House Liberty Caucus, led by Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.), has come out in opposition to the bill ..."
"Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) is the main co-sponsor of the legislation."
Unfortunately, in this case, Republicans and Democrats wear the same stripes.
What they're doing is called 'overcriminalization' - an effect of people NOT breaking the current laws enough to continue making a profit incarcerating law-abiding people.
More at the (I know... I know..) Heritage Foundation:
http://www.heritage.org/issues...
http://www.heritage.org/issues/legal/overcriminalization
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Will apple pullout if forced to unlock phones?
I can see under trump laws like that being passed.
Hillary is more of a "stay the course" candidate than Trump.
If you are betting the odds then Hillary is more likely to pass those types of laws than Trump.
Trump realizes that we have to fix things, and he wouldn't push businesses out of the US over something as ineffective as this.
Say what you want about Trump, but he knows business and isn't easily swayed by political spin.
And this won't be the main issue in the election anyway. Stability in ones lifestyle (meaning: the ability to make a living) is the big issue, which in practical terms means the economy and job availability.
That's what everyone's worried about: whether they'll have a job next year.
Other considerations are secondary to this one issue.
The bill failed to pass. It required a 2/3 vote and didn't get close: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/201...
The insurance companies WERE the death panels. What do you think happens when you have a critical medical problem and your "care" is a visit to the ER instead of the appropriate regimen of drugs and/or therapy and/or surgery?
I'll tell you what happens: they bill you, you can't pay, they turn you over to debt collection, they destroy your financial reputation (assuming you have one), and you go on being sicker and sicker. And then you DIE.
Single payer is the sane answer for the average person. For rich people, no, it's not needed. Rich people, however, are a tiny minority. But they do comprise congress -- every seat. The average worth of a congressperson is seven figures. And we wonder why the poor people constantly get the shaft. Christ on a crutch. This nation is insane.
They do. Here is an example. This family is under suspicion - note SUSPICION - of money laundering. There has been no trial. Nothing has been proven. Their name simply turned up in the "Panama papers" a few months ago, and the US Treasury department must have already had their eye on them so they simply issued a statement. Due to that statement, all the credit card companies immediately dropped their services to businesses owned by this family.
The result is a large, successful shopping mall is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy because they owned both the mall and half the stores in it. The mall cannot collect payment from its customers. The stores can no longer accept credit cards. Oh they still accept cash, but I doubt stores the likes of Gucci, Prada and Luis Vuitton are going to walk to the mall and pay their rent in cash. It is a very high end shopping mall.
Since the mall almost went bankrupt, the US Treasury department struck a deal to allow the suspected family to "wind down" operations in an orderly fashion, so the mall now accepts credit cards again. So do pay attention to this. The UNITED STATES TREASURY is applying US law in Panama, telling Panamanian banks what to do, giving authorizations and citing US law, etc. And again I repeat this is merely "suspicion" on the part of the US government. There has been no trial, no sentencing. I'm not saying the Waked family are nice guys or 100% legit. What I AM saying is due process is out the window. Make no mistake, you cannot run and hide from US law even in another country.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.