That Was Fast: Leahy Drops Warrantless E-mail Surveillance Bill 107
Presto Vivace writes "Under the right conditions, online activism can be very effective. U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy has already abandoned his warrantless e-mail surveillance bill we discussed this morning. 'The Vermont Democrat said today on Twitter that he would "not support such an exception" for warrantless access. ... A vote on the proposal in the Senate Judiciary committee, which Leahy chairs, is scheduled for next Thursday. The amendments were due to be glued onto a substitute (PDF) to H.R. 2471, which the House of Representatives already has approved. Leahy's about-face comes in response to a deluge of criticism today, including the ACLU saying that warrants should be required, and the conservative group FreedomWorks launching a petition to Congress -- with over 2,300 messages sent so far -- titled: "Tell Congress: Stay Out of My Email!""
Re:No time like the present... (Score:4, Interesting)
try convincing nongeeks and nontinfoilhaters to use double public key encryption for all of their communication be it email chat or voip. they will fight it tooth and nail because it "more complicated" translated requires one additional click per message maybe a couple keystrokes for your password.
Re:Oops, somebody noticed (Score:2, Interesting)
With the selection of third parties we have, they are not much better.
The Greens:
Where I live, they have managed to get public land closed, saying it was for the environment. Said land? Well, the local county "leased" it for a 50+ year term, and now sports a golf course. What once was an area for hiking and mountain biking is for golf carts, and the surrounding area is "blessed" by the runoff from fertilizer.
They live in a world where they want to deprive people of enjoyment. Usually they end up as pawns of big business. The greens get an area closed off, then the loggers move in. They also have zero empathy for anyone not leading their lifestyles. Vandalizing a family's minivan just because it isn't a hybrid car promotes little other than resentment.
Then, there are are the Libertarians:
The average Libertarian is essentially a loud Republican. Their cries are similar: remove regulation, business uber alles, golden showers from trickle down economics are the way to go, "small" government, let us return to the Gilded Age where tycoons were tycoons, and average Americans slept in shit, and "The Jungle" demonstrated the right way to make sausage. Almost no Libertarians have any grasp of basic macroeconomics, civics, and concepts like balances of power. They moan and groan about how hellish taxes were, however, they were almost triple when their hero, Reagan, was in office. On one hand, they want the people who make their products only making minimum wage, on the other hand, they whine about US jobs going overseas. Of course, this party is a God-send for big business. For example, when I see posts about any significant advance from NASA on Slashdot, there is the Libertarian posting about "why should our tax dollars go for this?"
Of course, we have Occupy:
Occupy had a message, but claiming parks as campgrounds and having to have coordinated police remove them has made any politician deaf to anything coming out of Occupy. The only thing that movement has done has been to sharpen the skills of riot police. Had Occupy mimiced the same strategy as the Tea Party (come into a city, stage an organized protest with proper permits given, then fscking LEAVE and not have to be thrown out of parks), they would have a voice at some place other than the defendant's chair.
So, we have three sub parties. Two as puppets for big business, one that nobody will pay attention to because it is easy to confuse an Occupy event with a re-enactment of Woodstock.
Once the US gets a party that actually represents the middle class (regulate business, put in reasonable fair trade laws, etc.) appears, then maybe it would be an alternative. Otherwise, there isn't anything to be taken seriously.
Re:Oops, somebody noticed (Score:5, Interesting)
Now that's representative-based democratic oversight, lol.