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Senate Blocks Patriot Act Extension
- sschueller 11y agoInstead they pass fast-track. [1] 1- http://rt.com/usa/261321-senate-trade-deal-authority-passes/ http://rt.com/usa/261321-senate-trade-deal-authority-passes/
- throwawayaway 11y agoFrom RT: Senate passes bill granting Obama ‘fast-track’ TPP authority This post you are replying to is about a Patriot Act extension, something very different.
- ck2 11y agoRT is a Russian propaganda company and should never be quoted or used for a source. added: to be fair, I fell for quoting/linking RT too when I first started seeing their articles - until I researched it a little
- alfiedotwtf 11y agoYet nobody has any issues with the New York Times, even though they are the US' propaganda machine?
- throwawayaway 11y agome and chomsky do, i bet you do too.
- ck2 11y agoNY Times is owned/funded by the US government?
- happyscrappy 11y agoThey are aligned with the capitalist pigdogs preventing our socialist utopia.
- skylan_q 11y agoNo, they aren't. But they don't need to be. Just because they aren't directly controlled on paper by the US gov't, it doesn't mean that they aren't just a tool for US gov't propaganda. Distrust of the media is more crucial than ever for independent thought.
- chc 11y agoThe New York Times is often far too deferent to the U.S. Government and a lot of people do knock them for it, but the difference between that and a state-run propaganda office like RT is pretty significant. See, for example, this: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/07/18/malaysia-airlines-russian-reporter-quits/12847251/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/07/18/malaysia... where a RT reporter resigned on the spot because she was being forced to report facts that everyone knew were blatantly false. It sucks in both cases, but this is a whole different level of suck.
- throwawayaway 11y agowould you say the difference quantitative or qualitative?
- sitkack 11y agoThat says more about the reporter than the news organization. edit: downvote. All news organizations should have journalists as principled. All news orgs demand the same things.
- CamperBob2 11y ago(Shrug) If you work for Fox News, you, too, are under orders to report things that are blatantly false. (Disagree? Then you need to explain why they felt it necessary to argue in court that they have the right to lie to their viewers and call it "News.")
- comex 11y agoIndeed, one should avoid quoting Fox News or using it as a source, too. (Although that name is an umbrella for a large number of 'products' - I would trust something written on foxnews.com more than whatever Hannity said in his daily primetime show.)
- chadzawistowski 11y agoI don't disagree, but Snopes debunked that Fox News argued for the right to lie. http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/foxlies.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/foxlies.asp
- sschueller 11y agoSource?
- throwawayaway 11y agoRT (founded as "Russia Today") is a Russian state-funded television network which runs cable and satellite television channels, as well as Internet content... Look it up!
- pessimizer 11y agoNot even for today's date, or for matters that can easily be verified from the public record, like this? That just sounds like counter-nationalism.
- cb18 11y agoThe Senate struggled to prevent an interruption in critical government surveillance programs early Saturday That is a very strange way to start this article. Consider to what type of government, activity of this sort(unencumbered spying on all of its citizens) would be 'critical.' Is that the type of government you believe the United States has or should have? Then after making this strange statement and providing no support for it, the article actually goes on to refute the claim. If nearly half of the senators are against it, then it is surely not very 'critical,' is it? Maybe instead of 'critical,' the author meant to say 'much criticized.'
- CHsurfer 11y agoAgree, the language was very conflicting throughout.
- higherpurpose 11y agoNot to mention that according to Chris Soghoian from ACLU, last year only 5 out of 180 FISA orders were authorized by 215 - the rest were authorized by other programs. So this "critical" program represents only like ~3% of the government's surveillance programs. After all we only are talking about "phone records" here. Most records would likely come from Internet communications these days and there are likely programs that include capturing the content as well. Also: "McConnell announced that the Senate would return from its break on Sunday, May 31, just a few hours before the midnight deadline. McConnell called it "one more opportunity to act responsibly." http://www.dailydot.com/politics/senate-usa-freedom-act-fails-section-215-patriot-act-expiration/ http://www.dailydot.com/politics/senate-usa-freedom-act-fail... So it's not over until the fat lady sings.
- ChrisAntaki 11y ago> After all we only are talking about "phone records" here Phone records are the most publicized example of Section 215 in use, but the section is worded to apply to any "tangible thing."
- throwawayaway 11y agoYour story checks out, how depressing: FISC 5/180[0] [0] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/05/why_the_current.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/05/why_the_curre...
- ck2 11y agoYay for the do nothing congress. Finally turns out useful.
- tsotha 11y agoIf the option is do nothing or do things I don't like, I'll take the former.
- Trektillian 11y agoThe sad fact is, they are watching inventors and freedom-activists. They watched MLK and Einstein. Poe and Hemmingway. They watched Bruce Lee and Jimmy Hendrix. They watched 2pac and native american leaders. They watch the people oppose the IRS and animal rights activists. They watch Ron Paul and Alex Jones. They watched Bill Cooper. They watch mothers who complain about autistic children and vaccines They watch people who post about alternative treatments for cancer on forums They watch me because I made a 9/11 DVD
- Trektillian 11y agoAlso just confirmed on google: Orson Welles Charlie Chaplin John Lennon Marilyn Monroe Albert Einstein Helen Keller Jesse Jackson Steve Jobs probably bill gates as well...
- tubbs 11y agoI'm sorry, what are you saying?
- CamperBob2 11y agoHe has 90% of a very valid point, which he then dilutes with 10% irrelevant kookery. The Federal government has, indeed, used their (read: our) vast resources to maintain extensive files on many, if not all, of the people he mentioned. In some cases, like MLK's, they went well beyond simply "maintaining files." Oddly, nobody who defends NSA spying ever seems to get around to defending these specific examples of the surveillance state gone berserk.
- PhantomGremlin 11y agoYour have a very valid point about "the surveillance state gone berserk". However, for the names mentioned we should be casting aspersions on the FBI rather than the NSA. The FBI (mostly) are the ones responsible for spying on all those Americans. Believe it or not, compared to the FBI the NSA are "the good guys"!
- late2part 11y agoThey block it until they stop blocking it. Often these things are media feeding highlights, with the dirty approvals done quietly at the 11th hour, when the press won't report. I hope fervently it DOES get stopped, but watch this play out.
- jMyles 11y agoYou're right that this will probably happen, however now it will be very, very difficult to do it without an amendment process which forces Senators to go on record vis a vis some very specific proposals.
- sounds 11y agoPhone surveillance doesn't have to be un-blocked in this bill. It can be quietly un-blocked as a rider/addendum to some "must-pass" bill right before a long break -- de rigueur for the Senate.
- jeremyt 11y agoThis is in large part thanks to Rand Paul. It's the only thing on his homepage. http://randpaul.com/ http://randpaul.com/
- webXL 11y agoToo bad the electorate (whose opinions are primarily shaped by the government-friendly/hysteria-driven mass media) will dismiss him as an anti-american fringe kook, even though that label couldn't be further from the truth. Freedom implies we must tolerate some of his views and actually help him enact some of his policies.
- asadotzler 11y agoTolerating some of his views, yes. Electing him President of the United States of America, not a fucking chance.
- webXL 11y agoI'll take this comment and my comment score (which I admit is probably due to lack of eloquence) as evidence to support my claim. People really like their freedoms. Others', not so much.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoI'm a staunch social democrat, and I could not sing Rand Paul's praises enough right now. I wholeheartedly appreciate him standing up for our rights. I don't agree with the vast majority of his platform, but on this issue we violently agree.
- Frondo 11y agoI haven't heard him say anything like "I hate America" or "I'm opposed to America" so anti-American, no. Fringe, oh yes. Kook, I don't need to apply such a vague pejorative. Fortunately, most Americans recognize that most of his policies, if enacted, would only make life worse for the vast majority of us--the stopped clock is right twice a day, but we don't rely on it the rest of the time.
- everettForth 11y agoAll the Democrat Senators voted in favor. Why do the Democrats want NSA bulk spying?http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/114/senate/1/194 http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/114/senate/1/194
- e40 11y agoHey, everyone that voted for one of these Democratic bozos... you should take a moment to email your senator.
- morbius 11y agoI'm not sure, but it remains a pretty strong indicator of why we need good multipartisan cooperation in any good society.
- amalcon 11y agoBecause that was the Democrat approach (USA FREEDOM Act) to doing this. Most of the Democrats naturally voted against the Republican approach: http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/114/senate/1/195 http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/114/senate/1/195 It's less about policy than politics, as you'd probably expect.
- efuquen 11y agoThat was simply a vote to extend the current program by two months: "That was immediately followed by rejection of a two-month extension to the existing programs. The vote was 45-54, again short of the 60-vote threshold." I think it's pretty clear the policy was they don't want an extension of the Patriot Act, which I think is a good thing. I also think there is a lot of confusion here, everything I've read about the USA Freedom Act seems pretty sensible and addresses privacy concerns. It completely changes how the NSA could gain access to phone records and bears no resemblance to the blanket powers the Patriot Act allowed.
- randomname2 11y agoEh... a federal appeals court ruled the Patriot Act illegal: http://www.wsj.com/articles/appeals-court-rules-nsa-phone-program-not-authorized-by-patriot-act-1431005482 http://www.wsj.com/articles/appeals-court-rules-nsa-phone-pr... Why is Congress even considering extending an illegal program?
- schoen 11y agoThat court decided that some of the surveillance that the government has been doing wasn't actually authorized by the Patriot Act. It didn't decide that no law could ever authorize that kind of surveillance. One challenge is that there is a great deal of other secret surveillance (beyond the collection of everyone's telephone calling records) that the government has also been doing under the Patriot Act. We still don't know what those programs are, but they may involve the collection of other complete databases about people's activity. Some of the efforts to extend this section of the Patriot Act might actually be inspired by those secret programs, without the proponents saying so (because the proponents don't want to talk about programs that haven't been disclosed). Congress has a lot of choices about how to respond to the court decision, particularly because it wasn't on constitutional grounds. In this case both the court decision and the expiry of section 215 mean that Congress could protect privacy against secret surveillance, including programs we don't even know about yet, quite a bit by simply doing nothing.
- efuquen 11y agoI think the headline here is misleading and focuses on the wrong vote. There were two votes here 1) to extend the Patriot Act by two months and 2) to pass the USA Freedom Act (which would supersede the Patriot Act). The extension vote was opposed by Democrats and supported by most Republicans while the USA Freedom Act was supported by all democrats and opposed by most Republicans. While it is indeed good that the Patriot Act wasn't extended this is the consolation prize of the actual worse news that the USA Freedom Act didn't pass. While the USA Freedom Act isn't perfect, and was weakened in the House [1], it is still far far better than the Patriot Act has meaningful reforms. It also still has the support of the EFF [1]. Overall, it's failure to pass is bad news and could lead to an even worse bill. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act#Reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act#Reaction
- tworcsu 11y agoIt's important to note that the opposition to the USA Freedom Act contains two distinct factions: The so called "defense hawks" led by Mitch McConnell, who want to renew section 215 Patriot Act (that is to say they want bulk collection to continue) and the Rand Paul camp, who say that the USA Freedom act doesn't go far enough and are happy to let section 215 lapse without any replacement.
- jdp23 11y agoActually, EFF (and ACLU) pulled their support from USA Freedom after the Second Circuit court ruling [1]: "In light of the Second Circuit’s decision, EFF asks Congress to strengthen its proposed reform of Section 215, the USA Freedom Act. Pending those improvements, EFF is withdrawing our support of the bill. We’re urging Congress to roll the draft back to the stronger and meaningful reforms included in the 2013 version of USA Freedom and affirmatively embrace the Second Circuit’s opinion on the limits of Section 215." And, your link [1] is to a discussion of last year's version of the USA Freedom Act.
- tsotha 11y agoBut this isn't a binary choice between the USA Freedom Act and the Patriot Act. From what I can see the best thing to do would be to let the Patriot Act expire and replace it with nothing. The government is very short on evidence the powers in that law have resulted in thwarted terrorist attacks. It's not like sans Patriot FBI agents will sit around making paper airplanes.