I'd say the "manual duplex" one is also a really bad example: "Manual duplex" usually means "Print every other page on one side of paper so that the user can, when that is done, go to the printer, take the stack of printouts, put it back in the paper tray, and then press a button on either the the printer or computer to make the remaining pages print on the backs of the pages already printed".
"Automatic duplex" usually means "Print on both sides of paper".
I would argue that, where a printer or driver has built-in support for manual duplex printing (i.e., the whole job is sent, and the driver or printer manages the printing of one set, and then waits for user action to print the other set), "Manual duplex" is a reasonable description that could be accompanied by an appropriate tooltip, though "Print on both sides of paper" also with an appropriate tooltip wouldn't necessarily be too bad. Getting this right is especially is an issue in a heterogenous environment, where the options presented for a particular printer may be an important reminder for the user of what features the printer selected actually supports (in an environment where all the printers are the same or the user only has access to one printer, clearly this is less critical.)
What is boring about a consistent, intuitive interface?
Well, "consistent" when the choices are bad is boring and tedious, "conssitent" when the standard is well designed is not boring. The MS UI guidelines are not, in many cases, intuitive: for example, the "safest option" default (rather than defaulting to the most natural choice except where the purpose of an option is to protect against a critical safety problem, such as a security confirmation) is the antithesis of "intuitive", and quite a effective way to add tedium to routine use.
Error log files should be provided for these cases. The single line of rapidly flashing text will either be ignored by most users or be cause for alarm (because a lot of very important/cryptic stuff is happening rapidly.) IT pros are already used to log files.
In the case of a failure (which often stalls the progress display, both text and bar), the text displayed when the failure occurs is much easier for a user to note and refer to if they are doing self-help by accessing a knowledgebase than the content of a log file. This can prevent "IT pros" from having to get directly involved in fixing problems except when it is a genuinely newly identified problem.
So, I agree with MSFT that additional information shouldn't be provided unless there is a reasonable scenario in which it would be useful, but for almost every case where you'd be tempted to put, say, a text display of the current operation with a progress bar in a dialog box, there is, in fact, a resonable scenario in which it might be useful.
I have, in fact, noticed more and more applications are providing logs of what occurred during lengthy operations and these have the capacity to provide much more useful information than a status bar.
Having a log file doesn't preclude having a status dialog that conveys useful information, and vice versa. They aren't exclusive choices.
I agree that from a helpdesk perspective, this is going to cause issues, but from a 'can the user get themselves through the first hour without reaching for a book of computer terminology' perspective it's probably more of a win.
Judicious use of context-sensitive help can improve this: there is no single most effective, short way to communicate the same idea to every user. Imprecise "common language" may be the best way to address novices, domain-specific clear technical terms may be the best way to address application domain experts, and implementation-technology based technical terms may be the best way to address technical experts, for instance. You can make a reasonable default choice among these and provide additional explanatory text (say, with the "What's this?" feature Microsoft used to use with everything, but seems to have abandoned a while back.) In general, this rule (and other developments in Microsoft practices) seem to suggest that Microsoft's idea of a well-designed application is one that is extremely narrowly focussed in its target audience. Given Microsoft's own trend of having the same essential product packaged a dozen different ways for different target markets, that's not hard to understand, but I don't think its a good basis for UI guidelines for anyone not interested in following that business model.
Also, the "label the shortcut using the program name" rule I find to be a very bad rule, particularly when a program is designed so that multiple versions can peacefully coexist (which, sure, requires breaking, somewhat, the idiom of accessing programs through their associated files, given the methods Windows uses to identify the associated program for a file.) Further, it instantly makes people aware when third-party content requires a particular version whether they have the requirements.
This isn't so much "screwing up technology" as economy of screen time and moving the story along; movies do it with pretty much everything, technology or not.
It is very common for part of the premise of a film to be that the particular characters are extraordinary in some way. This particular character was an extraordinary computer geek. Therefore, its perfectly reasonable for her to have knowledge about computers that is technically possible but rather uncommon for someone of her age.
If people buy them and buy NO games, NO blu-ray discs, and NO accessories (extra controllers, etc.) then Sony will be in quite a bit of trouble.
Yeah, but who is going to buy a $500-600 entertainment console and then not buy any of the newer content that it can play that notionally justifies the additional expense beyond an older console like the PS2? There's not a whole lot of sense to anyone doing that.
At best computer monitors have a resolution of 1600x1200, so without significantly zooming out, you can never display the entire picture on the screen. Printing is the only area where more Mpixels are needed, but even there, at 8.5x11 8-16 Mpixel images are crisp enough.
8.5x11 is hardly the largest size print people might want to make, though.
There ARE areas where extremely high resolutions are needed, but they're definitely not consumer level.
Sure, but one could argue that they only are not at the consumer lever because historically the necessary equipment (the equipment or service for doing the processing and printing as well as high-quality cameras) have been prohibitively expensive and complex to use for consumer use. If making, for instance, your own posters was cheap and easy, it'd be popular with consumers as well.
Wrong. Any surveillance program still needs regular approval from the legislative judiciary and intelligence committees and FISA.
Um, no. This is so completely wrong as to be baffling:
First: surveillance now doesn't, in certain cases specified in FISA, require approval of any the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). There is no case in current law where surveillance requires approval of any legislative committees (notification is not approval; I suppose that surveillance prohibited by FISA could be said to require approval of the whole Congress, in advance, to be done legally, since that's what changing FISA would be.) FISA is a law governing surveillance, not a body that approves things.
Second: The proposed bill expands the categories of surveillance that do not require FISC approval. See, particularly, the expansion of the definitions of "surveillance" and "agent of foreign power" in Section 2 and the changes to the standards directly applicable to surveillance without a court order in Section 3.
Third: The proposed bill replaces the more limited provisions triggered by a declaration of war in current law with two broader authorizations (the latter with no fixed duration) triggered by, in the first case, an armed attack against the territory of the United States and, in the second, a terrorist attack against the United States. In neither of these cases is approval of any party outside the executive branch required (notification is required, but no approval requirement exists in the proposal.)
Fourth: Where review and is required (where a court order is required, IOW) by the proposed law, the proposal deletes the requirements for much specific information (such as the nature of the information being sought or the mechanism by which it will be sought) from the application and the order, rendering any review perfunctory and meaningless. Further, it removes the limitation on the validity of the warrant for surveillance to the shorter of the time necessary to gather the information sought or 90 days, whichever is shorter, expanding warrants to a one year lifespan with no necessity restriction, making the review actually done of the application, even if it was meaningful, less relevant to the authority is actually used for.
If at any time these organizations do not think the program is still justified they can block it.
Neither any Congressional committee nor any court is given any authority to block surveillance under either FISA or the EMSA proposal except the FISC's ability to block court orders where they are required—a power the EMSA proposal greatly reduces by reducing the range of surveillance that requires a warrant, reducing the scope of information required in warrant applications, reducing what needs to be demonstrated to secure a warrant, and reducing the specificity of the warrants and the limitations requiring surveillance conducted under them to actually conform to the purposes for which they were requested.
The only instance where surveillance is allowed without any review is in the 60 days immediately following an armed attack on the country, or in the 45 days immediately following a terrorist attack on the country,
False, again. Those aren't the only instances, and even they aren't accurately described.
First: The proposed law also expands the unreviewed "surveillance" already allowed by FISA greatly.
Second: The proposed law narrows the definition of "surveillance" so that many actions which are currently regulated by FISA are now entirely outside its bounds and may be done without restriction.
Third: The 60-day period is as you describe, the 45-day period is indefinitely renewable in 45-day increments, so your characterization is wrong. Since the 90-day limit (which isn't an approval step, but a notification) applies only to surveillance of a par
All I'm saying is that our government policy of spying, monitoring, etc. is becoming more and more similar to the Soviet Union's, however, we don't have any of the (few) benefits that the USSR had such as safe & secure streets.
The "absence" of crime (and things that would be crime, except they claimed not to need laws because it officially never happened in the USSR—ISTR that prostitution was like this) in the USSR was, as I under stand it, in large part a product of outright propaganda. It wasn't that crime didn't happen, its that nonfictional information about crime wasn't distributed.
We're working on getting that "benefit" here with government sponsored propaganda packaged and delivered as news.
At least in the USSR there were no gang problems. They would simply be eliminated.
Sure, right, and almost immediately on the fall of the Soviet Union and its propaganda power, enormous, well-organized criminal enterprises appeared almost overnight. Either the Soviet Union was "gifted" with a vast supply of the world's greatest natural criminal organizational geniuses that were just biding their time until the USSR fell to get going, or the USSR had well developed criminal organizations, at least some which interpenetrated with the government bureaucracies, well before it fell that just stopped being hidden when it fell.
Personally, I think the latter is a lot more credible.
Perhaps if they were the subjects of the electronic spying they were authorizing, they might think twice.
Since members of the Congress' intelligence committees are very clearly persons who would be reasonably expected to send or receive foreign intelligence information, under this proposal, the executive branch (under this or any subsequent administration) would be free to monitor any of their communications with any other persons at any time, without a court order, even without invoking any of the "after an attack" special provisions. Indeed, because they meet that description they would be defined, under this proposal, as "agents of a foreign power".
Well, more like it is unlikely to happen because of the structural incentives in the electoral system which punish movement away from the major parties and thereby inhibit growth of alternative movements, and the fact that changing those structural incentives would require the cooperation of the people who benefit from the status quo system and are well aware of the benefits they gain from it.
Americans aren't so much less intrinsically capable than citizens of other democracies that they couldn't deal with more than two choices. But they've lived in a system which doesn't reward considering alternatives.
Some court decisions have said that ex post facto laws only apply to not punishing criminals for things that were made illegal after the acts took place. I'd be willings to wager that the same courts would say you can't stop someone from being punished for something that was illegal at the time, either.
You'd lose, then; its pretty well established that the ex post facto clause does not prevent lots of retroactive application of laws, including passing laws reducing the available punishment after an act has been committed, and passing laws making something not criminal after the act has been committed. The Supreme Court's fairly consistent view on the issue is articulated, among other places, in Beazell v. State of Ohio, 269 U.S. 167 (1925):
It is settled, by decisions of this court so well known that their citation may be dispensed with, that any statute which punishes as a crime an act previously committed, which was innocent when done, which makes more burdensome the punishment for a crime, after its commission, or which deprives one charged with crime of any defense available according to law at the time when the act was committed, is prohibited as ex post facto. The constitutional prohibition and the judicial interpretation of it rest upon the notion that laws, whatever their form, which purport to make innocent acts criminal after the event, or to aggravate an offense, are harsh and oppressive, and that the criminal quality attributable to an act, either by the legal definition of the offense or by the nature or amount of the punishment imposed for its commission, should not be altered by legislative enactment, after the fact, to the disadvantage of the accused.
Reducing punishment or decriminalizing activity after the fact obviously does not raise the kind of unfairness to the accused that the the Court finds as the focus of the prohibition of the ex post facto clause.
Fuck the Republicans on this one. They've forgotten the reason we had those laws in the first place.
Actually, Dick Cheney has specifically said that laws like FISA and the War Powers Act and passed in response to the War in Vietnam and the excesses of the Nixon Administration were an overreaction that went to far in limiting the power of the executive, and that the Administration was specifically taking action aimed at building support for restoring the executive to its proper power.
Actually, Lieberman votes near the far left of the Democratic Party; his high ratings based purely on mathematical formulae applied to voting records from various liberal advocacy groups tend to reflect this.
What has driven Democrats away from Lieberman (and what has made him a favorite Democrat of many Republicans) is not a general "conservativeness" in his voting record, but a confluence of a lot of things that require looking at more detail than positions on the political spectrum to understand; his relish in his role as go-to guy for bashing other Democrats in the media, validation of right-wing talking points is media appearances, his position on the war in Iraq, and, heck, just the general polarization of the country. It's worth remembering that Lieberman is largely in the Senate because conservative Republicans backed him to defeat a Republican perceived as too liberal, and has usually, even long before this election season, had unusually strong support from Republicans and soft support from Democrats for a Democratic Senator; the increasing general polarization of the nation made that an untenable position.
Is the ability for the government to watch people without a court order only a temporary safety?
No, its more of an illusory safety. Since the court orders are issued on a showing that there is actually a legitimate reason to do the search, and no one has even attempted to make the case that the standards used prevent searches with legitimate cause from being conducted, there is no rational reason to expect any safety at all from giving the government that power, even temporarily.
But I think that the temporary illusion of safety is perfectly within the intent of Franklin's statement (indeed, I'd say it applies even more strongly to the temporary illusion of safety than to actual temporary safety.)
Not true. Entering the US illegally is not a crime (though recent proposals on immigration "reform" would make it one.) "Illegal" and "criminal" mean different things; everything criminal is illegal but not everything illegal is criminal.
Laws can't be applied retroactively, so at least they get in trouble for stuff before it was passed. Ex Post Facto clause for the win.
The ex post facto clause only prohibits laws which make something criminal which was not criminal when done, or increase the punishment after the fact. There is no Constitutional limit on government making things legal, or reducing the punishment, retroactively.
This Bill would modernize and simplify the process of getting a FISA warrant
Sure it will. By removing all those messy details in the application process like requirements to specify what information is being sought and how it is to be secured, and by not restricting the validity of FISA warrants to the time necessary to gain the information but making them valid for a full year, by expanding the definition of "foreign agents" to include almost anyone who might happen to come in contact with information of interest as well as actual agents of foreign powers, and by removing the restriction on warrantless surveillance under FISA (even ignoring the "after a terrorist attack" provisions) to no longer be restricted to communications between agents of foreign powers, so there almost never any need for a FISA warrant in the first place.
And by creating an infinitely renewable period following any terrorist attack in which surveillance can be conducted without any approval by anyone outside of the executive branch, so that there will really never be any need for a FISA warrant.
There's a simple way for this to never EVER be applied to you... don't make/recieve calls overseas(out of the country).
Actually, this bill specifically removes limits which raise the bar higher for surveillance of purely domestic communication. So you are wrong.
Simply put, this is STILL ABOUT FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITES.
Only insofar as the justification that must be asserted to exercise the powers is that the subject matter is "foreign intelligence information". It is not restricted to foreign communication (it neither requires at least one non-US location as an endpoint, nor at least one non-US person as a party.)
However, if this is EVER used to tap two US citizens within the US and no overseas callers, everyone who participated in the action should be arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to jail for a long time.
Well, that's too bad, because this law makes that in many cases no longer criminal, so there would be no basis for arresting, trying, and convicting them.
You will note that this bill still requires regular legislative and judicial review
No, it doesn't. It requires executive notification of select members of the legislative and judicial branches, it removes most of the substance of judicial review where it remains part of the system, and create vast new areas where judicial review is entirely removed.
Notification is not review.
And the only "constitutional right" that this erodes is our right to communicate with known terrorists overseas without the Government listening in
False, the provisions of this bill are not restricted to authorizing surveillance targetting "known" (known to whom, anyway?) or even "suspected" terrorists.
The article and writeup claim that court-issued warrants will be easier to get this way,
which is true: most of the requirements for specifity in the application and warrant have been removed.
but the article goes on to say that no warrant is required within 90 days of a terrorist attack. Who wants to bet we'll see another minor incident every three months or so from now on?
The article is misleading. 90 days is the limit on surveillance of a particular individual without notifying (not getting approval from) specified members of Congress and a judge, if its done during the special period declared by the President after a terrorist attack and extending for up to 45-days, but renewable for additional 45-day periods by the President without limit.
So there's no need for periodic attacks, just one attack, once.
I believe the question that really needs to be asked, is what defines a terrorist attack against the United States?
Its worth noting that there is a separate provision relating to armed attack on the territory of the United States, language which is not used in the terrorist attack provision. This makes it fairly clear that the terrorist attack provision is intended to apply to attacks targetting the United States no matter where on the globe they occur.
There has never been an expectation of privacy on INTERNATIONAL calls. That is between the USA and a FOREIGN COUNTRY.
It's unnecessary to address whether this is true since it is completely irrelevant to the bill at issue here (as this bill eliminates restrictions on government surveillance of completely domestic communication of US persons, where neither endpoint is outside of the United States.)
With this one, there doesn't seem to be a requirement for a warrant at all (as long as you don't exceed 90 days).
Actually, there is no requirement to get a warrant, where that 90-day provision applies, even if it goes longer. Its just that if the President authorizes surveillance targeting one particular individual longer than 90-days, a notification (not requiring any action or approval) must be given to certain members of Congress and a judge.
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I'd say the "manual duplex" one is also a really bad example: "Manual duplex" usually means "Print every other page on one side of paper so that the user can, when that is done, go to the printer, take the stack of printouts, put it back in the paper tray, and then press a button on either the the printer or computer to make the remaining pages print on the backs of the pages already printed". "Automatic duplex" usually means "Print on both sides of paper". I would argue that, where a printer or driver has built-in support for manual duplex printing (i.e., the whole job is sent, and the driver or printer manages the printing of one set, and then waits for user action to print the other set), "Manual duplex" is a reasonable description that could be accompanied by an appropriate tooltip, though "Print on both sides of paper" also with an appropriate tooltip wouldn't necessarily be too bad. Getting this right is especially is an issue in a heterogenous environment, where the options presented for a particular printer may be an important reminder for the user of what features the printer selected actually supports (in an environment where all the printers are the same or the user only has access to one printer, clearly this is less critical.)
In the case of a failure (which often stalls the progress display, both text and bar), the text displayed when the failure occurs is much easier for a user to note and refer to if they are doing self-help by accessing a knowledgebase than the content of a log file. This can prevent "IT pros" from having to get directly involved in fixing problems except when it is a genuinely newly identified problem.
So, I agree with MSFT that additional information shouldn't be provided unless there is a reasonable scenario in which it would be useful, but for almost every case where you'd be tempted to put, say, a text display of the current operation with a progress bar in a dialog box, there is, in fact, a resonable scenario in which it might be useful.
Having a log file doesn't preclude having a status dialog that conveys useful information, and vice versa. They aren't exclusive choices.
Judicious use of context-sensitive help can improve this: there is no single most effective, short way to communicate the same idea to every user. Imprecise "common language" may be the best way to address novices, domain-specific clear technical terms may be the best way to address application domain experts, and implementation-technology based technical terms may be the best way to address technical experts, for instance. You can make a reasonable default choice among these and provide additional explanatory text (say, with the "What's this?" feature Microsoft used to use with everything, but seems to have abandoned a while back.) In general, this rule (and other developments in Microsoft practices) seem to suggest that Microsoft's idea of a well-designed application is one that is extremely narrowly focussed in its target audience. Given Microsoft's own trend of having the same essential product packaged a dozen different ways for different target markets, that's not hard to understand, but I don't think its a good basis for UI guidelines for anyone not interested in following that business model.
Also, the "label the shortcut using the program name" rule I find to be a very bad rule, particularly when a program is designed so that multiple versions can peacefully coexist (which, sure, requires breaking, somewhat, the idiom of accessing programs through their associated files, given the methods Windows uses to identify the associated program for a file.) Further, it instantly makes people aware when third-party content requires a particular version whether they have the requirements.
This isn't so much "screwing up technology" as economy of screen time and moving the story along; movies do it with pretty much everything, technology or not.
It is very common for part of the premise of a film to be that the particular characters are extraordinary in some way. This particular character was an extraordinary computer geek. Therefore, its perfectly reasonable for her to have knowledge about computers that is technically possible but rather uncommon for someone of her age.
Yeah, but who is going to buy a $500-600 entertainment console and then not buy any of the newer content that it can play that notionally justifies the additional expense beyond an older console like the PS2? There's not a whole lot of sense to anyone doing that.
Um, no. This is so completely wrong as to be baffling:
First: surveillance now doesn't, in certain cases specified in FISA, require approval of any the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). There is no case in current law where surveillance requires approval of any legislative committees (notification is not approval; I suppose that surveillance prohibited by FISA could be said to require approval of the whole Congress, in advance, to be done legally, since that's what changing FISA would be.) FISA is a law governing surveillance, not a body that approves things.
Second: The proposed bill expands the categories of surveillance that do not require FISC approval. See, particularly, the expansion of the definitions of "surveillance" and "agent of foreign power" in Section 2 and the changes to the standards directly applicable to surveillance without a court order in Section 3.
Third: The proposed bill replaces the more limited provisions triggered by a declaration of war in current law with two broader authorizations (the latter with no fixed duration) triggered by, in the first case, an armed attack against the territory of the United States and, in the second, a terrorist attack against the United States. In neither of these cases is approval of any party outside the executive branch required (notification is required, but no approval requirement exists in the proposal.)
Fourth: Where review and is required (where a court order is required, IOW) by the proposed law, the proposal deletes the requirements for much specific information (such as the nature of the information being sought or the mechanism by which it will be sought) from the application and the order, rendering any review perfunctory and meaningless. Further, it removes the limitation on the validity of the warrant for surveillance to the shorter of the time necessary to gather the information sought or 90 days, whichever is shorter, expanding warrants to a one year lifespan with no necessity restriction, making the review actually done of the application, even if it was meaningful, less relevant to the authority is actually used for.
Neither any Congressional committee nor any court is given any authority to block surveillance under either FISA or the EMSA proposal except the FISC's ability to block court orders where they are required—a power the EMSA proposal greatly reduces by reducing the range of surveillance that requires a warrant, reducing the scope of information required in warrant applications, reducing what needs to be demonstrated to secure a warrant, and reducing the specificity of the warrants and the limitations requiring surveillance conducted under them to actually conform to the purposes for which they were requested.
False, again. Those aren't the only instances, and even they aren't accurately described.
First: The proposed law also expands the unreviewed "surveillance" already allowed by FISA greatly.
Second: The proposed law narrows the definition of "surveillance" so that many actions which are currently regulated by FISA are now entirely outside its bounds and may be done without restriction.
Third: The 60-day period is as you describe, the 45-day period is indefinitely renewable in 45-day increments, so your characterization is wrong. Since the 90-day limit (which isn't an approval step, but a notification) applies only to surveillance of a par
The "absence" of crime (and things that would be crime, except they claimed not to need laws because it officially never happened in the USSR—ISTR that prostitution was like this) in the USSR was, as I under stand it, in large part a product of outright propaganda. It wasn't that crime didn't happen, its that nonfictional information about crime wasn't distributed.
We're working on getting that "benefit" here with government sponsored propaganda packaged and delivered as news.
Sure, right, and almost immediately on the fall of the Soviet Union and its propaganda power, enormous, well-organized criminal enterprises appeared almost overnight. Either the Soviet Union was "gifted" with a vast supply of the world's greatest natural criminal organizational geniuses that were just biding their time until the USSR fell to get going, or the USSR had well developed criminal organizations, at least some which interpenetrated with the government bureaucracies, well before it fell that just stopped being hidden when it fell.
Personally, I think the latter is a lot more credible.
Since members of the Congress' intelligence committees are very clearly persons who would be reasonably expected to send or receive foreign intelligence information, under this proposal, the executive branch (under this or any subsequent administration) would be free to monitor any of their communications with any other persons at any time, without a court order, even without invoking any of the "after an attack" special provisions. Indeed, because they meet that description they would be defined, under this proposal, as "agents of a foreign power".
Well, more like it is unlikely to happen because of the structural incentives in the electoral system which punish movement away from the major parties and thereby inhibit growth of alternative movements, and the fact that changing those structural incentives would require the cooperation of the people who benefit from the status quo system and are well aware of the benefits they gain from it.
Americans aren't so much less intrinsically capable than citizens of other democracies that they couldn't deal with more than two choices. But they've lived in a system which doesn't reward considering alternatives.
You'd lose, then; its pretty well established that the ex post facto clause does not prevent lots of retroactive application of laws, including passing laws reducing the available punishment after an act has been committed, and passing laws making something not criminal after the act has been committed. The Supreme Court's fairly consistent view on the issue is articulated, among other places, in Beazell v. State of Ohio, 269 U.S. 167 (1925):
It is settled, by decisions of this court so well known that their citation may be dispensed with, that any statute which punishes as a crime an act previously committed, which was innocent when done, which makes more burdensome the punishment for a crime, after its commission, or which deprives one charged with crime of any defense available according to law at the time when the act was committed, is prohibited as ex post facto. The constitutional prohibition and the judicial interpretation of it rest upon the notion that laws, whatever their form, which purport to make innocent acts criminal after the event, or to aggravate an offense, are harsh and oppressive, and that the criminal quality attributable to an act, either by the legal definition of the offense or by the nature or amount of the punishment imposed for its commission, should not be altered by legislative enactment, after the fact, to the disadvantage of the accused.
Reducing punishment or decriminalizing activity after the fact obviously does not raise the kind of unfairness to the accused that the the Court finds as the focus of the prohibition of the ex post facto clause.
Actually, Dick Cheney has specifically said that laws like FISA and the War Powers Act and passed in response to the War in Vietnam and the excesses of the Nixon Administration were an overreaction that went to far in limiting the power of the executive, and that the Administration was specifically taking action aimed at building support for restoring the executive to its proper power.
They didn't forget anything.
Actually, Lieberman votes near the far left of the Democratic Party; his high ratings based purely on mathematical formulae applied to voting records from various liberal advocacy groups tend to reflect this. What has driven Democrats away from Lieberman (and what has made him a favorite Democrat of many Republicans) is not a general "conservativeness" in his voting record, but a confluence of a lot of things that require looking at more detail than positions on the political spectrum to understand; his relish in his role as go-to guy for bashing other Democrats in the media, validation of right-wing talking points is media appearances, his position on the war in Iraq, and, heck, just the general polarization of the country. It's worth remembering that Lieberman is largely in the Senate because conservative Republicans backed him to defeat a Republican perceived as too liberal, and has usually, even long before this election season, had unusually strong support from Republicans and soft support from Democrats for a Democratic Senator; the increasing general polarization of the nation made that an untenable position.
No, its more of an illusory safety. Since the court orders are issued on a showing that there is actually a legitimate reason to do the search, and no one has even attempted to make the case that the standards used prevent searches with legitimate cause from being conducted, there is no rational reason to expect any safety at all from giving the government that power, even temporarily.
But I think that the temporary illusion of safety is perfectly within the intent of Franklin's statement (indeed, I'd say it applies even more strongly to the temporary illusion of safety than to actual temporary safety.)
Sure it will. By removing all those messy details in the application process like requirements to specify what information is being sought and how it is to be secured, and by not restricting the validity of FISA warrants to the time necessary to gain the information but making them valid for a full year, by expanding the definition of "foreign agents" to include almost anyone who might happen to come in contact with information of interest as well as actual agents of foreign powers, and by removing the restriction on warrantless surveillance under FISA (even ignoring the "after a terrorist attack" provisions) to no longer be restricted to communications between agents of foreign powers, so there almost never any need for a FISA warrant in the first place.
And by creating an infinitely renewable period following any terrorist attack in which surveillance can be conducted without any approval by anyone outside of the executive branch, so that there will really never be any need for a FISA warrant.
Actually, this bill specifically removes limits which raise the bar higher for surveillance of purely domestic communication. So you are wrong.
Only insofar as the justification that must be asserted to exercise the powers is that the subject matter is "foreign intelligence information". It is not restricted to foreign communication (it neither requires at least one non-US location as an endpoint, nor at least one non-US person as a party.)
Well, that's too bad, because this law makes that in many cases no longer criminal, so there would be no basis for arresting, trying, and convicting them.
which is true: most of the requirements for specifity in the application and warrant have been removed.
The article is misleading. 90 days is the limit on surveillance of a particular individual without notifying (not getting approval from) specified members of Congress and a judge, if its done during the special period declared by the President after a terrorist attack and extending for up to 45-days, but renewable for additional 45-day periods by the President without limit.
So there's no need for periodic attacks, just one attack, once.