Trump Signs Surveillance Extension Into Law (thehill.com) 94
President Trump took to Twitter this afternoon to announce that he has signed a six-year renewal of a powerful government surveillance tool. "Just signed 702 Bill to authorize foreign intelligence collection," Trump tweeted. "This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first!" The Hill reports: Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which the Senate voted to renew with a few small tweaks this week, allows the U.S. to spy on foreigners overseas. The intelligence community says the program is a critical tool in identifying and disrupting terror plots. But the broader surveillance law, which governs U.S. spying on foreigners, has become politically entangled with the controversy over the federal investigation into Trump's campaign and Russia. Some Republicans have claimed that the FBI inappropriately obtained a politically motivated FISA warrant to spy on Trump during the transition and on Friday, Capitol Hill was consumed with speculation about a four-page memo produced by House Intelligence Committee Republicans that some GOP lawmakers hinted contained evidence of such wrongdoing.
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About as well as Pelosi voting to grant the supposedly evil Trump additional powers. But no, the parties are very different.
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I love how the Republicans are trying to have it both ways. "OMG, there's FISA abuse and thus Trump is totally innocent of any collusion with the Russians... Oh yeah, and we just extended the whole Bush-era surveillance apparatus!"
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You're being sarcastic, but the fact that many of the Dems that have been screaming the loudest that Trump is a Putin Puppet just voted to give him god-like surveillance powers. Which means they either want Putin to be able to spy on Americans, or they've been completely and utterly full of shit on Russiagate from the beginning.
Pick one. [theonion.com]
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Maybe the real problem here is that when it comes to national security, it isn't really Republicans versus Democrats, but rather Hawks versus Doves. When it comes to the three letter agencies, the Hawks aren't really interested in liberal versus conservative, but rather, interested in making those agencies as powerful and emboldened as possible.
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Not much of a contest. Even Bernie Sanders said he would have continued the drone murder program, and has voted to support Israel when they commence their biannual slaughter of a few thousand Palestinians.
Re: Protip (Score:2)
Procaveat: *everyone* is 5 hops from a spy or mobster.
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Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just signed 702 Bill to authorize foreign intelligence collection," Trump tweeted. "This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election.
Are people really dumb enough to believe this? It’s just as bad as it ever was and still allows warrantless surveillance with pretty much non-existent oversight.
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
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What legal, practical, reasonable, and achievable action could an individual voter have taken in order to cause a highly desirable additional candidate to emerge?
I think I agree with you - there is no answer here, we're stuck with 2 parties for now. What should we do? I always say the same thing - vote for the better of the 2. Slowly but surely, you'll push both parties in the right direction. Sorry, but there is no magic wand. Politics has always been messy, will always be messy. People keep acting like we've never seen such craziness before, but politicians used to fight with duels - guns instead of words. And the words were just as harsh back then too.
I al
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I forgot to mention regularly support and donate to bipartisan causes trying to reduce money in politics (example) [represent.us]. If I found a cause that tried to get rid of Gerrymandering, I'd support that too. I haven't found a sexy quick fix for these two problems, but if it were easy it would have been done already.
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this comes down to whether you believed the car dealer with a suicide vest and blasting caps when he swore that he didn't have any dynamite, and none of his cars had any dynamite on them, and in fact he had never seen dynamite and, oh, also doesn't even know what the word "dynamite" means!
if you actually believed him, you're an irredeemable fucktard. otoh, if you didn't believe him but just wanted to see what would happen, that's a relatively respectable position.
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Project SHAMROCK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Project MINARET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The only time the security services got questioned over their nation wide illegal domestic collection was doing the 1970's Church Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The result was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Want to collect it all domestically?
Show a do
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Just signed 702 Bill to authorize foreign intelligence collection," Trump tweeted. "This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election.
Are people really dumb enough to believe this?
Well, considering that those same people are dumb enough to not only believe that R and D are their only choices when it comes to politics, but that they are the best possible choices at all times... I'd give it a resoundingly emphatic Jawohl
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just signed 702 Bill to authorize foreign intelligence collection," Trump tweeted. "This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election.
Are people really dumb enough to believe this? It’s just as bad as it ever was and still allows warrantless surveillance with pretty much non-existent oversight.
Of course it isn't the same. It may be not quite as bad, though according to this summary [lawfareblog.com]... But if you are against warrant-less intelligence collection in general, well, it's nothing new in that area, so from that point of view, it is basically the same.
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Just signed 702 Bill to authorize foreign intelligence collection," Trump tweeted. "This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election.
Are people really dumb enough to believe this? It’s just as bad as it ever was and still allows warrantless surveillance with pretty much non-existent oversight.
But it's NOT the same! It's worse.
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Surveillance Extension? (Score:2)
UNINSTALL!
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Duh, and it will be used against all non-incumbent/appointed successor presidential candidates from now until it is revoked.
The only other option is a bunch of feds and Hillary campaign workers (same people) go to prison, even then...
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No evidence no charges, just bullshit conspiracy theories. Fucking hopeless Wumpus, you moron.
Plenty of evidence, with the FBI director publicly stating she got no charges because of who she is.
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QQ
Re: Oh FFS STFU, Trump! (Score:2)
Does the NGO really pay you for this kind of shoddy lazy trolling work? Put some effort into it, son!
I think about our water (Score:2)
Donald Dork admits colluding with the Russians (Score:1)
Donald Dork claims that Obama spied on him by using FISA to spy on the Russians.
Donald Dork claims that he was not colluding with the Russians.
If Donald Dork was not colluding with the Russians, how could Obama spy on him by spying on the Russians?
Donald Dork is admitting that he colluded with the Russians.
Just like Obama (Score:1)
... this isn't about Trump... this is now the status quo.
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If you're a conspiracy theorist you can even claim W let the WTC attacks happen
I don't need to be a conspiracy theorist.
I have 43's own word on that. [chron.com]
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There's no conspiracy... Bush passed it... Obama renewed it throughout his administration and now Trump is doing the same thing.
Its the status quo now.
Wow, surprise. (Score:1)