Senate Renews Warrantless Eavesdropping Act 218
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by
Soulskill
from the you-can-trust-us dept.
from the you-can-trust-us dept.
New submitter electron sponge writes "On Friday morning, the Senate renewed the FISA Amendments Act (PDF), which allows for warrantless electronic eavesdropping, for an additional five years. The act, which was originally passed by Congress in 2008, allows law enforcement agencies to access private communications as long as one participant in the communications could reasonably be believed to be outside the United States. This law has been the subject of a federal lawsuit, and was argued before the Supreme Court recently. 'The legislation does not require the government to identify the target or facility to be monitored. It can begin surveillance a week before making the request, and the surveillance can continue during the appeals process if, in a rare case, the secret FISA court rejects the surveillance application. The court’s rulings are not public.'"
The EFF points out that the Senate was finally forced to debate the bill, but the proposed amendments that would have improved it were rejected.
Shows you where their priorities are (Score:4, Interesting)
They have time to debate and pass secret warrantless wiretapping, but not to keep the price of milk from going up to $7.
Re:Perpetual war (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. Harry Reid and gang can pass crap like this but not a single budget in going on 5 years. Our Congress and executive branches are treasonous.
Putin: Bring Back The Wall! (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously -- things were so much better when we had the Red Scare to keep our Government busy.
Ever since the Berlin Wall fell, it's been a constant War On The People.
Can the US and Russia please just go back to hating each other?
I've had it with my government truing to come up with new and improved ways to infringe my rights.