Senators Want Secret Warrantless Wiretap Renewal

An anonymous reader writes "A group of Senators are meeting in secret today, while most people are focused on the 'debt ceiling' issue, in order to try to rush through a renewal of the FISA Amendments Act, which expressly allowed warrantless wiretapping in the U.S. The law isn't set to expire until next year, but some feel that the debt ceiling crisis is a good distraction to pass the extension without having to debate the issue in public. The meeting is being held in secret, but it's not classified, so people can demand to know how their Senator voted."

Awful,

[Anonymous Coward]

warrantless anything is wrong and such acts should be punished for attempting, people should be burning with anger about this subject! Thanks for the info slashdot.

Re:That explains everything.

[TaoPhoenix]

I need some input from the Lawn Crowd, did it feel like this in the Watergate days? I'm getting the horrible feeling that after a nice quiet 90's with nothing but a fun little sex scandal we're seeing a whole different class of nastiness today.

Re:That explains everything.

[the eric conspiracy]

It was much worse in the Wategate days. You could tell Nixon was a meglomaniac who might start a nuclear war or conduct a coup d'etat to stay in power.

Congress pretty much rallied together to rid the country of this madman.

The current budget stuff is pretty sickening, but really is a throwback to earlier times in the republic when politics was pretty disgusting as a normal way of life. It isn't the same level of insanity as having a completely deranged President.

Re:LOL! American Freedom!

[aekafan]

Hell, I think we would be much better off if we were forced to default. What most call collapse would economically force us to pull our military c**k out of the worlds ass and take care of issues at home. I cheer the coming default, which will happen no matter what Washington does, and I hope those D.C. bastards burn for it.

Re:That explains everything.

[TheGratefulNet]

I disagree, I don't think it was worse in the watergate days.

the wholesale cut-out of personal freedoms - WORLD WIDE (yes, the US controls the intertubes. this is news to you? all core routers go thru US owned datacomm centers, dummy; and every one of them that is on the backbone has taps for (cough) calea use. and other things.

watergate only fucked over the US and not really citizens, but it was mostly politicians doing the hurting to each other.

this stuff we have now is them doing it to US.

far, far worse for us all. its the sell-out of privacy, in official terms!

and yes, I was around in the nixon days; as a child but still was very aware of the tv coverage and even what we were discussing in school. it was still ok to discuss current events in school, back then.

Re:ugh...

[TheGratefulNet]

sigh.

its not about ballot box; that obviously does not work.

its not about soap box; they don't listen to us.

its not about ammo box; their guns are bigger than ours

you know what its about? IGNORE THEIR SO-CALLED LAWS.

they ask for it and so we give it to them. they have ruined the respect of the rule of law; so we are not obligated to follow their made-up bullshit laws.

yes, you risk 'problems' in life; but so did so many patriots in our past. be patriotic and IGNORE CONGRESS' LAWS.

we already ignore the copyright bullshit. we copy things 'right', actually (lol), but we don't follow bullshit made-up laws.

civil disobedience: we have a long history of it. its needed, now, folks.

Re:Mod parent up

[redemtionboy]

If you believe Obama is actually trying to balance the budget, then all you need to do is look at what his plan actually entails to think otherwise. The same goes for Boener's plan. Both add over $7 Trillion in new debt over the next 10 years and spending levels continue to rise. If they were actually interested in balancing the budget, the would put us on a path to reduce spending and actually balance the budget, but all this is is a bunch of smoke and mirrors to make us think they're doing the right thing. In reality, all they're doing is continuing to expand the power of the federal government, the executive branch in particular. We need to return to Clinton administration levels of spending, adjusted for inflation of course. We can't keep the Obushma empire going.