Senate Renews Warrantless Eavesdropping Act 218
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.
Terms of Usage (Score:4, Informative)
See which bastards voted for it (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the vote of each Senator [govtrack.us] on this bill. Only 23 voted Nay, only 3 of those Nays were Republicans, and 4 Senators didn't even show up to vote. And President Obama is quite ready to sign it into law.
This country is broken.
Re:Perpetual war (Score:4, Informative)
> Indeed. Harry Reid and gang can pass crap like this but not a single budget in going on 5 years.
That is because both parties support domestic spying, but the Republicans have been actively obstructing any economic legislation that the Democrats have introduced.
Um no. Harry Reid has never even put a budget up for a vote. He's never even created one for discussion. How can the Republicans obstruct something that doesn't even exist? Quit pointing fingers and start laying the blame on the majority holders that are running the show. You're not doing yourself or this country any favors giving assholes like Reid a free fucking pass.
Re:Got that "Fiscal Cliff" resolved then, did you? (Score:2, Informative)
The Senate has done everything that it can to resolve the upcoming sequestration. The problem is that some Republicans in the House of Representatives are deliberately trying to prevent a deal from happening. The Speaker of the House cannot even marshall enough votes from his own party to pass a piece of legislation that he introduced.
Re:Passed by a Democrat controlled congress in 200 (Score:5, Informative)
Glenn Greenwald has some great analysis on this vote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/28/fisa-feinstein-obama-democrats-eavesdropping [guardian.co.uk]
This is of course in contrast to his pre-election 2008 promise to oppose the original bill (which he didn't do, voting for it instead). Now he loves it so much, he won't countenance any modifications.
Democrats: The New GOP.
Re:Terms of Usage (Score:5, Informative)
Every company needs a "we can do whatever we want" clause in their terms of usage, why not the United States?
Because the contract [archives.gov] expressly forbids it
Re:Perpetual war (Score:5, Informative)
It is not the Senates job to introduce a budget. in fact it would be unconstitutional for the budget to be introduced by the Senate. It is the responsibility of the House to introduce budget, it can;t come from the Senate, it can't come from the President. So can we please drop this bullshit about how it's Harry Reid's fault for not coming up with a budget. The blame falls clearly on the House and thus on Boehner's lap.