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Congress Is About To Vote On Expanding the Warrantless Surveillance of Americans (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: On Tuesday afternoon, a handful of U.S. Representatives will convene to review an amendment that would reauthorize warrantless foreign surveillance and expand the law so that it could include American citizens. It would, in effect, legalize a surveillance practice abandoned by the NSA in 2017 in order to appease the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which found the NSA to have abused its collection capacity several times. If it passes Tuesday's review, the bill may be voted on by the U.S. House of Representatives as early as Thursday. Drafted by the House Intelligence Committee last December, the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 is an amendment to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It is one of six different FISA-related bills under consideration by Congress at the moment, but by far the most damaging to the privacy rights of American citizens.
FISA was enacted in 1978, but Section 702, referred to by former FBI Director James Comey as the "crown jewels of the intelligence community," wasn't added until 2008. This section allows intelligence agencies to surveil any foreigner outside the U.S. without a warrant that the agency considers a target. The problem is that this often resulted in the warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens as well due to two loopholes known as "backdoor searches" and "about collection." Backdoor search refers to a roundabout way of monitoring Americans' communications. Since intelligence agencies are able to designate any foreigner's communications as a target for surveillance, if this foreigner has communicated with an American this means this American's communications are then also considered fair game for surveillance by the agency.
FISA was enacted in 1978, but Section 702, referred to by former FBI Director James Comey as the "crown jewels of the intelligence community," wasn't added until 2008. This section allows intelligence agencies to surveil any foreigner outside the U.S. without a warrant that the agency considers a target. The problem is that this often resulted in the warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens as well due to two loopholes known as "backdoor searches" and "about collection." Backdoor search refers to a roundabout way of monitoring Americans' communications. Since intelligence agencies are able to designate any foreigner's communications as a target for surveillance, if this foreigner has communicated with an American this means this American's communications are then also considered fair game for surveillance by the agency.
The government absolutely needs to the legal ability to keep the 99% under constant surveillance in order to ensure that they don't rise up against the 1%, after all.
You're going to be surveilled, whether it's legal or not, so you might as well just legalise it and give up the pretence that you live in a free country.
It would, in effect, legalize a surveillance practice abandoned by the NSA in 2017...
AND hey, this is what we do in the United State of America: sling on agenda measures on to bills that are either completely 180 to what it's being appended to, ambiguous loopholes to get around the bill up for question or, in cases like this, just Texas Hold'em all-in.
Don't care if there is some piece of paper that 'says what they do', it's happening now, and hasn't ceased just because Snowdon.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Stupid little thing called the 4th Amendment... Any conflicts?
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Bring it on.
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Well, I tried.
I used to work with a few Syrian expatriates who were nominally Muslim. They were shocked at the level of Saudi influence in the mosques in our region and had to really bounce around to find one that was not on the take. That's their word, not mine. They could not believe that we'd spend so much time and money on "surveillance," but allow what would be the equivalent of open KGB recruitment (as in uniformed Soviet officers at career fairs) on college campuses during the Cold War.
I have a much simpler and less constitutionally dangerous solution:
1. Pass a law forbidding the funding of any domestic organization by a foreign government except the Vatican.
2. Authorize the use the corporate death penalty and full asset forfeiture for any organization convicted of intentionally accepting that funding.
3. Pass a law that amends immigration law to provide for the banishment of any foreigner who is convicted of espionage or sedition.
4. Prosecute all extremist preachers (like Wahabis and Salafists) under the Sedition Act.
5. Pass a law providing the courts with the discretionary power to remove the citizenship of any foreign-born person who is convicted of sedition or espionage
I think it's hilarious that they don't realize that it's their own insatiable desire to spy on everyone that is the primary driving force behind the spread of encrypted communications. That they don't realize this truth makes it all the more funny.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". Benjamin Franklin.
Donald Trump is not Hussein Obama
Donald Trump isn't interested in knowing everything every American does every second of every single day
Donald Trump did not ask for those draconian measures
It was the *DEMONCRAPS* who tagged on all those draconian stuffs
The bill is sponsored by Devin Nunes, a Republican
All you can do is watch it fail.
How cute. You actually think autocratic, authoritarian Trump would veto this. Do they have unicorns in the world you inhabit?
Donald Trump is not Hussein Obama
Donald Trump isn't interested in knowing everything every American does every second of every single day
Donald Trump did not ask for those draconian measures
It was the *DEMONCRAPS* who tagged on all those draconian stuffs
This actually started under the Bush Administration. Just sayin'
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Donald Trump isn't interested in knowing everything every American does every second of every single day
Then I guess we can expect him to refuse to sign such a law and protect our freedoms and liberties. Which is, by the way, pretty much part of his job...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
WHAT! He SIGNED the bill. He's a GLOBAL TOO? Is there NO ONE that DIANE FEINSTEIN won't take to BED???
"The buck stops with my predecessor."
"The buck stops with my predecessor."
At this point.... Yes, it does....
Once the bill shows up on the Donald's desk, THEN the buck stops with him, but not before.
How about it boys and girls of the democrat caucus? You going to let this out of the Senate? I believe you can easily stop it from gaining cloture by just voting as a block. What are you going to do?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Do worry - a healthy majority of Democrats will also vote Yes on the Stasi bill. Tyranny has string bipartisan support.
The reason to bring up Obama in this context is the last President's willingness — nay eagerness — to unmask US Citizens tangled in the surveillance for political reasons. The former Administration officials remain evasive about the process and procedures — they really are to blame for the actual privacy deterioration that took place.
After all, the worry is not so much that the NSA will know, who said something. It is what the rest of the government may do, when they learn about it.
If we aren't willing to block NSA from surveilling the foreigners, we better codify how to treat the cases of US citizens getting recorded incidentally — and not simply leave it up to the Executive, who has and will continue to abuse this power himself or by delegating to low-level unelected flunkies.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Ok, let's be clear about this. This "debate" is about what we suspect is still going on and about what Congress refuses to even ask of what is being done under FISA or the Patriot Act.
Most Americans including myself don't give a damn whether or not the Federal government is spying on the communications in and out of the US if it were actually being targeted at communications with terrorists, certain foreign institutions and foreign governments as part of legitimate national security and international criminal investigations... However the understanding of people that follow how this has been evolving is that this is merely a pretext for mass surveillance of internal communications and sending it over a wire to ease dropping facilities outside the US. Which would be blatantly a violation of the US Constitution if it were ever fully revealed... which is exactly the type of program that has been long rumored and based on leaks seems to have been what has been developed by US spy agencies.
And there are absolutely NO PROTECTIONS for preventing that or for Congress to even know if that is happening as they rubber stamp levels of spending on infrastructure that could and has been rumored to be doing exactly that.
At the very least the reporting requirements could be required to say how many "incidental" collections there are of Americans communications originating or terminating inside the US... I suspect that pretty much that number would be tens of millions of Americans or hundreds of millions of Americans which is exactly why Congress is afraid to ask because they know they would need to shut down mass surveillance if it were ever revealed to them.
For all the talk about how spying on Americans communications with foreigners is wrong... maybe it is. And I think it would be great if the world got together and really worked out how to prohibit mass surveillance in the rest of the world. Ultimately we should hope for a world were civil rights are respected around the world... but at the very least, here at home we need to step back from the police state mass surveillance infrastructure that has been built ready made for mass abuse and then start worrying about how this could infringe on Americans rights abroad.
To do that we need Congress to start by asking the question about how many Americans are having their communications hoovered up by mass surveillance under FISA orders.
The United States and its people, are who is responsible for enforcing the limits of the US government's power in China, North Korea, North America, and on the planet Mars. If the US Congress tries to pass a law that abridges the freedom of the press on the moon, or a law that infringes the right to bear arms on Alpha Centauri colony 3, we are responsible for striking down or otherwise nullifying that law.
The purpose of the Bill of Rights is to protect people's freedom. But the mechanics of the Bill of Rights is to deny power to an entity considered particularly at risk of violating peoples' freedom. To enforce the Bill of Rights is to enforce the limits of US government power. You can do that to the US government, no matter where the victim happens to be. It's just a question of whether or not we want to, is a good idea, is practical, etc.
That last part is what it's really about: you can enforce the law which limits the US government's power to infringe peoples' rights in China, but doing so doesn't have a really practical effect on how freely Chinese citizens can exercise their rights. So of course, we all have reason to be lax about enforcing the law, despite our responsibility as US citizens.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
No no... we don't bail out every farmer that can't keep a crop alive. Only the big corporate farms that have failures get bailouts because they're too big to fail. Small farms run by actual families are actually pushed toward bankruptcy so that their land can be bought up cheaply by corporations.