10 ms·

Freedom Act Passes: What We Celebrate, What We Mourn, and Where We Go from Here

207 points by snowpanda 11y ago

getsat 11y ago
>we have every reason to believe that President Obama will sign USA Freedom into law His official Twitter account said he'll be signing it: https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/605841647193030657 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/605841647193030657
fleitz 11y ago
Isn't this a step backwards from yesterday?
- kijin 11y ago
  It is. Still, we're slightly ahead of where we were the day before yesterday. If you're a cup-is-half-full type of person, that would be enough reason to celebrate a bit.
  - shard972 11y ago
    What if your a cup half empty person who looks as this as a failure as now all the people on the fence will have reason to ignore this issue for the next few years baring some kind of new revelations. Seriously, who in congress is going to be supporting a bill in the next 3 years to cut more powers from the spying apparatus when they can just say "We just did that, it's time to talk about X instead".
    - fleitz 11y ago
      I think we'll have to see how the campaigns play out, it might just get resonance with voters.
peteretep 11y ago
I think people forget that Congress are people — with their own secrets — too.
- themartorana 11y ago
  I imagined that once Congress found out the CIA was spying on them [0] they would shut the program down faster than I can think of a decent analogy. They didn't. Which I had a hard time believing. But you're ever so correct. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spying-senate-staffers http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spyi...
  - mbca 11y ago
    They will find a way to opt-out instead. One set of rules for them, and another set of rules for everyone else.
    - uptown 11y ago
      Like they did with insider trading! http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/04/15/congress-quietly-repeals-congressional-insider-trading-ban/ http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/04/15/congress-quietly-rep...
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    There's a reason ex-spooks work in political campaigns.
    - irishcoffee 11y ago
      There is a reason that there are a lot more 'spooks' than there are political campaigns right now. There is also a reason there are a lot more mothers who were 'spooks' than there are political campaigns right now. You basically said.. nothing.
  - peteretep 11y ago
    I think there's a real difference in emotional impact between finding out your actions at work have been monitored (pretty much expected) and that your calls and emails to friends, family, and donors can be dredged up at will. I think we're starting to see a reaction to the second.
TerryADavis 11y ago
Trust me. They are not spying. If they spied on me I would be king by now.
coldtea 11y ago
One good step would be to prohibit laws to be named with nice words and acronyms ("Freedom", "Patriot", etc). Those are advertising and only serve to confuse discussion of the actual content ("you are opposed to the Patriot act? Aren't you a patriot?" etc.).
- tertius 11y ago
  I've never gotten this comment from anyone. Do you actually have friends that ask these types of questions?
  - bmelton 11y ago
    I can't say that I've heard those exact comments either, but in context, it's really hard to voice an opinion that criticizes something named "The Civil Rights Act" or "The Clean Air Act", because a lot of America takes their cue from the political rhetoric of their party. Using neutral bill names, e.g., HR 625 or SB 1780 would be an upgrade from what we have now.
    - irishcoffee 11y ago
      This goes both ways. People were all about 'the affordable care act' and were not at all about 'obamacare.' Even if a bill is given letter-letter-#### names, it'll get labeled and spun.
    - chimeracoder 11y ago
      > Using neutral bill names, e.g., HR 625 or SB 1780 would be an upgrade from what we have now. In theory, but the names catch on because they're easy to remember and use in conversation. People responded to Heartbleed because it was catchy and easy to remember. CVE-2014-0160 was not. Asking people to remember what SB1780 is and whether they support it is about as likely to happen as them remembering the CNAME or A record corresponding to a DNS request[0]. Even if we forbade these names from bills, the media would invent them. "Obamacare" was not even the real name for the Affordable Care Act, and was originally a pejorative term, but the media started using it because it was much more distinctive and evocative. It became so widely used that it's now lost much of it's pejorative connotation (you'll even hear Democrats referring to it non-pejoratively). [0] Remember that the same bill has multiple such numbers (one each for the House and Senate, plus a new one if it's reintroduced in subsequent years, etc., which is not uncommon for many pieces of legislation).
kweinber 11y ago
Hat tip to the eff... Don't forget to support them, they've got your back on stuff like this....
ChrisAntaki 11y ago
I'm celebrating the only two Senators who voted against the "Freedom" Act [1] and supported net neutrality [2]. Both also voted against the "Patriot" Act in 2001, while they served in the House [3]: Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) & Bernie Sanders (I-VT). [1] http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=114&session=1&vote=00201 http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_c... [2] http://www.baldwin.senate.gov/press-releases/us-senator-tammy-baldwin-statement-on-net-neutrality http://www.baldwin.senate.gov/press-releases/us-senator-tamm... & http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/to-protect-net-neutrality-markey-leads-senate-dems-in-call-to-reclassify-broadband-as-a-utility http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/to-protect-... [3] http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml
- ahi 11y ago
  Sanders won't win, but it will be nice to be able to vote for someone I don't hate for once. In an ideal world it would be Rand Paul/Bernie Sanders race. Two people who actually believe what they are saying.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - notthemessiah 11y ago
    Keep on dreaming. Libertarians are notoriously hostile towards former Democrats, when Mike Gravel (famous for reading the Pentagon Papers on the Senate floor) tried to switch from Democratic party to Libertarian for the presidential race in 2008, he was ridiculed for being "too socialist", but when Gary Johnson (former NM governor) ran for president on the Libertarian ticket 4 years later on the exact same platform, he got the full support of the party.
    - literalusername 11y ago
MCRed 11y ago
We've been fighting this fight for 20 years. The lack of progress is unacceptable. The NSA and the government in general have only gotten more and more out of control, more and more aggressive in violating rights. That the result of Snowden is this pathetic attempt would convince me that government was useless in this current form and that it has totally failed- if I weren't already convinced of that seeing the past 20 years of legislation. (I've been watching more than 20 years, but the gloves really began to come off during the Clinton administration when he banned gay marriage for no good reason (he could have simply pocket vetoed the bill.) ) My how our standards are low, and that makes this country increasingly a joke- a parody of itself, commonly summed up with the phrase "MERICA". It's not funny, it's tragedy.
hackuser 11y ago
I follow this issue and read a lot about it, and I'm still not sure what powers the NSA has, other federal and state agencies have, under what laws, and which have been restricted. It would be a valuable public service -- more than all the newspaper articles and press releases -- if someone who knows all that could make a simple table: Agency | Power | Limits | Legal authority
- hackuser 11y ago
  I found the following, which is good but I suspect it's incomplete: http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/usa-freedom-act/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/usa-freedom-...
yodsanklai 11y ago
> We’ve gone from just killing bad bills to passing bills that protect people’s rights. By people, do they mean "american people"? I may be wrong but my understanding from Snowden revelations is that the NSA is listening and recording without restriction all conversations from non-US citizen (whereas it was restricted to meta-data for US citizens). I don't know if the freedom act is an improvement for the rest of the world, but I doubt so. It would be nice for our american friends to understand that we value our privacy too.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  >It would be nice for our american friends to understand that we value our privacy too. I love how everyone pretends that only the US has spies. Or they say "oh but my country sucks at it so it doesn't matter". The entire West shares intel and double checks each other by espionage. Of course you don't want to condemn the entire West, that would be stupid.
  - zamalek 11y ago
    Exactly. America simply got caught.
  - yodsanklai 11y ago
    > I love how everyone pretends that only the US has spies. We're not talking about spies here but about mass surveillance. And if that can reassure you, I wouldn't be any less upset knowing that Norway or Japan openly record all my conversations and stores them until the end of times. But the thing I find insulting and scary here is that there are no consideration at all in this debate for non-US citizens. Basically, the message there is "sorry guys, what we did was wrong... except when it's about everybody else in the world". And in the end, everybody suffers from that. What Snowden said in Citizenfour is that the NSA uses the British surveillance system because it has less restriction than their own concerning americans.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  yeah, it would be nice, but then they can close their surveillance agencies for good. a bit of hyperbole but let me try here - most american don't give a damn about rest of the world, do they (now this assumption is begging to be proven wrong)

207 points by snowpanda 11y ago

>we have every reason to believe that President Obama will sign USA Freedom into law His official Twitter account said he'll be signing it: https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/605841647193030657 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/605841647193030657

fleitz 11y ago

Isn't this a step backwards from yesterday?

kijin 11y ago
It is. Still, we're slightly ahead of where we were the day before yesterday. If you're a cup-is-half-full type of person, that would be enough reason to celebrate a bit.
- shard972 11y ago
  What if your a cup half empty person who looks as this as a failure as now all the people on the fence will have reason to ignore this issue for the next few years baring some kind of new revelations. Seriously, who in congress is going to be supporting a bill in the next 3 years to cut more powers from the spying apparatus when they can just say "We just did that, it's time to talk about X instead".
  - fleitz 11y ago
    I think we'll have to see how the campaigns play out, it might just get resonance with voters.

peteretep 11y ago

I think people forget that Congress are people — with their own secrets — too.

themartorana 11y ago
I imagined that once Congress found out the CIA was spying on them [0] they would shut the program down faster than I can think of a decent analogy. They didn't. Which I had a hard time believing. But you're ever so correct. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spying-senate-staffers http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spyi...
- mbca 11y ago
  They will find a way to opt-out instead. One set of rules for them, and another set of rules for everyone else.
  - uptown 11y ago
    Like they did with insider trading! http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/04/15/congress-quietly-repeals-congressional-insider-trading-ban/ http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/04/15/congress-quietly-rep...
- Zigurd 11y ago
  There's a reason ex-spooks work in political campaigns.
  - irishcoffee 11y ago
    There is a reason that there are a lot more 'spooks' than there are political campaigns right now. There is also a reason there are a lot more mothers who were 'spooks' than there are political campaigns right now. You basically said.. nothing.
- peteretep 11y ago
  I think there's a real difference in emotional impact between finding out your actions at work have been monitored (pretty much expected) and that your calls and emails to friends, family, and donors can be dredged up at will. I think we're starting to see a reaction to the second.

TerryADavis 11y ago

Trust me. They are not spying. If they spied on me I would be king by now.

coldtea 11y ago

One good step would be to prohibit laws to be named with nice words and acronyms ("Freedom", "Patriot", etc). Those are advertising and only serve to confuse discussion of the actual content ("you are opposed to the Patriot act? Aren't you a patriot?" etc.).

tertius 11y ago
I've never gotten this comment from anyone. Do you actually have friends that ask these types of questions?
- bmelton 11y ago
  I can't say that I've heard those exact comments either, but in context, it's really hard to voice an opinion that criticizes something named "The Civil Rights Act" or "The Clean Air Act", because a lot of America takes their cue from the political rhetoric of their party. Using neutral bill names, e.g., HR 625 or SB 1780 would be an upgrade from what we have now.
  - irishcoffee 11y ago
    This goes both ways. People were all about 'the affordable care act' and were not at all about 'obamacare.' Even if a bill is given letter-letter-#### names, it'll get labeled and spun.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    > Using neutral bill names, e.g., HR 625 or SB 1780 would be an upgrade from what we have now. In theory, but the names catch on because they're easy to remember and use in conversation. People responded to Heartbleed because it was catchy and easy to remember. CVE-2014-0160 was not. Asking people to remember what SB1780 is and whether they support it is about as likely to happen as them remembering the CNAME or A record corresponding to a DNS request[0]. Even if we forbade these names from bills, the media would invent them. "Obamacare" was not even the real name for the Affordable Care Act, and was originally a pejorative term, but the media started using it because it was much more distinctive and evocative. It became so widely used that it's now lost much of it's pejorative connotation (you'll even hear Democrats referring to it non-pejoratively). [0] Remember that the same bill has multiple such numbers (one each for the House and Senate, plus a new one if it's reintroduced in subsequent years, etc., which is not uncommon for many pieces of legislation).

kweinber 11y ago

Hat tip to the eff... Don't forget to support them, they've got your back on stuff like this....

ChrisAntaki 11y ago

I'm celebrating the only two Senators who voted against the "Freedom" Act [1] and supported net neutrality [2]. Both also voted against the "Patriot" Act in 2001, while they served in the House [3]: Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) & Bernie Sanders (I-VT). [1] http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=114&session=1&vote=00201 http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_c... [2] http://www.baldwin.senate.gov/press-releases/us-senator-tammy-baldwin-statement-on-net-neutrality http://www.baldwin.senate.gov/press-releases/us-senator-tamm... & http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/to-protect-net-neutrality-markey-leads-senate-dems-in-call-to-reclassify-broadband-as-a-utility http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/to-protect-... [3] http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml

ahi 11y ago
Sanders won't win, but it will be nice to be able to vote for someone I don't hate for once. In an ideal world it would be Rand Paul/Bernie Sanders race. Two people who actually believe what they are saying.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- notthemessiah 11y ago
  Keep on dreaming. Libertarians are notoriously hostile towards former Democrats, when Mike Gravel (famous for reading the Pentagon Papers on the Senate floor) tried to switch from Democratic party to Libertarian for the presidential race in 2008, he was ridiculed for being "too socialist", but when Gary Johnson (former NM governor) ran for president on the Libertarian ticket 4 years later on the exact same platform, he got the full support of the party.
  - literalusername 11y ago

MCRed 11y ago

We've been fighting this fight for 20 years. The lack of progress is unacceptable. The NSA and the government in general have only gotten more and more out of control, more and more aggressive in violating rights. That the result of Snowden is this pathetic attempt would convince me that government was useless in this current form and that it has totally failed- if I weren't already convinced of that seeing the past 20 years of legislation. (I've been watching more than 20 years, but the gloves really began to come off during the Clinton administration when he banned gay marriage for no good reason (he could have simply pocket vetoed the bill.) ) My how our standards are low, and that makes this country increasingly a joke- a parody of itself, commonly summed up with the phrase "MERICA". It's not funny, it's tragedy.

hackuser 11y ago

I follow this issue and read a lot about it, and I'm still not sure what powers the NSA has, other federal and state agencies have, under what laws, and which have been restricted. It would be a valuable public service -- more than all the newspaper articles and press releases -- if someone who knows all that could make a simple table: Agency | Power | Limits | Legal authority

hackuser 11y ago
I found the following, which is good but I suspect it's incomplete: http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/usa-freedom-act/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/usa-freedom-...

yodsanklai 11y ago

> We’ve gone from just killing bad bills to passing bills that protect people’s rights. By people, do they mean "american people"? I may be wrong but my understanding from Snowden revelations is that the NSA is listening and recording without restriction all conversations from non-US citizen (whereas it was restricted to meta-data for US citizens). I don't know if the freedom act is an improvement for the rest of the world, but I doubt so. It would be nice for our american friends to understand that we value our privacy too.

happyscrappy 11y ago
>It would be nice for our american friends to understand that we value our privacy too. I love how everyone pretends that only the US has spies. Or they say "oh but my country sucks at it so it doesn't matter". The entire West shares intel and double checks each other by espionage. Of course you don't want to condemn the entire West, that would be stupid.
- zamalek 11y ago
  Exactly. America simply got caught.
- yodsanklai 11y ago
  > I love how everyone pretends that only the US has spies. We're not talking about spies here but about mass surveillance. And if that can reassure you, I wouldn't be any less upset knowing that Norway or Japan openly record all my conversations and stores them until the end of times. But the thing I find insulting and scary here is that there are no consideration at all in this debate for non-US citizens. Basically, the message there is "sorry guys, what we did was wrong... except when it's about everybody else in the world". And in the end, everybody suffers from that. What Snowden said in Citizenfour is that the NSA uses the British surveillance system because it has less restriction than their own concerning americans.
saiya-jin 11y ago
yeah, it would be nice, but then they can close their surveillance agencies for good. a bit of hyperbole but let me try here - most american don't give a damn about rest of the world, do they (now this assumption is begging to be proven wrong)