Senate leadership pushing a surveillance bill as Americans focused on Covid-19
politico.com
politico.com
The President of the United States wants the Senate bill to remove powers given to the executive branch, because he's convinced they were used against him. Yes, that's right, the president of the United States wants the Senate to amend the bill to reduce the power of the executive branch.
In other words, by characterizing this bill as something Senate republicans are trying to do to increase the power of the federal government, the article neglects to mention that (a) the bill has already passed the Democrat-led house (sponsored by Adam Schiff, BTW) and (b) that the head of the Republican party, the POTUS, wants more restrictions on the powers they're giving to him. That would certainly change the headline, but wouldn't satisfy people's republican bashing appetite.
https://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2020-03-16/u...
This is the second paragraph of the article.
Not especially. Their primary goal is government power, only then followed by fighting over who gets to wield it.
>Yet in the Senate, Majority Leader McConnell has prevented Sens. Steve Daines (R-MT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and others...
And "The act passed the house..." is the second sentence of the article.
Or how about last week's headline
>152 House Democrats Join GOP to Reauthorize 'Abusive Government Surveillance Powers
What are your expectations exactly?
Protecting (or eroding) privacy has always been a bipartisan issue.
In other words, all it would do is prevent the type of activities that Trump finds personally threatening, without restraining him at all.
Of course, all of this assumes that Trump actually thinks strategically and analytically. But all the evidence is to the contrary. Even conservative, pro-Trump supporters describe him euphemistically as a "transactional" president.
In other words, the president wants a check on the amount of power the executive branch can exercise. That is all I said. The sorts of activities it would prevent is irrelevant. If the set of activities allowed in the president's desired bill is a subset of those allowed previously, my statement would be true.
But the whole thing is a farce, neither is actually acting genuinely in the interests of the subject. That's the point.
If you are a Republican, Reps are the party of the real Americans, not the elitists trying to prevent you from succeeding. Democrats are a bunch of stuck up snobs that are too book smart to know how to effectively run a government.
Pick a side.
As for me - I'd say that Dems are the elitists trying to prevent the masses from getting what they need, and the GOP are their maniac friends tearing things down.
I will admit that I forgot all about it myself. This week is bananas. The distraction is real.
Some important context here, 126 Republicans voted for that bill, and 75 Democrats voted against the bill.
I'd be against any surveillance bill sponsored by Mr. "Russia is out to get us" Schiff, before even reading it.
It's interesting how Congress has in many ways come full circle since the 1950s.
I shared your first thought-- why is this article all about the wicked Republican Senate, with no mention of the previous hurdle of the Democrat House? Shameful.
Even decades after 9/11 many of those bad laws are still with us. Shockingly, the very broad authorization of military force from 2001 is still the law of the land:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit...
It's important to be diligent and not get distracted by a crisis. All emergency measures should have sunset clauses.
I wonder if all laws should have sunset clauses. Even with as simple as murder there are needs for the legislature to discuss if the penalty is appropriate based on current science of rehabilitation and the edge cases like vehicular homicide handled in the correct fashion.
The debt ceiling is a functional sunset clause on the ability of the US government to pay its bills.
Hello Senator _________.
I'm writing you today to ask you to oppose the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act of 2020. I have written in the past to ask you to oppose other extraordinary security measures that have been maintained since the aftermath of Sept. 11 2001. I repeatedly write and request this because it is my opinion that these programs are contrary to the 4th amendment protections that are unalienable to all Americans. And these programs are administered in secret. Any program maintained in secret runs the risk of operating contrary to the public interest. This is because a citizen's most significant recourse is to vote for or against representatives who authorize government action. Any secret government action is therefore unable to be valued by a voter and therefor operates entirely outside public opinion.
I understand that some programs need to be shielded from public opinion for security reasons. But that need for security must be weighed against the need for a republican form of government to be transparent with its citizens. With each passing year that the public entrusts that government with secrecy the burden to justify it should become heavier.
So I ask you to oppose this measure. At the very least I would ask that as our representatives to government you will require that these programs justify their need by releasing some specific information to the public about the benefit they have had. I know that our intelligence agencies have opposed giving specifics examples of benefit. They claim to do so would reveal important sources or techniques. But with all due respect, we have given them the benefit of the doubt for nearly two decades now. Surely there is something significant they can share from years gone by that will not be too damaging to their operations.
Thank you.
Look what happened this week in Israel. At 1:00AM when citizens were sleeping: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/03/14/coronavir...
Edit: I would also want to point out the prime minister trial supposed to begin today(!) and was delayed to May because the courts were closed as "non crucial" service. He has been indicted for bribe, fraud and breach of trust.
US government could just order Google / Apple push an update to their OSes thereby making location data always on then gather the data and do contact tracing.
A lot of people would actually self-subscribe to a Google Contact Tracing app if they are instantly notified about crossing paths with an infected person.
> Totalitarianism is a political system or a form of government that prohibits opposition parties, restricts individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism.
Israelis are being mind-blowingly disobedient to instructions. Usually it's funny or mildly annoying. This time - deadly.
I embrace this temporary dent in our fragile democracy with no hesitation.
Unfortunately, it's temporary exemptions like these that allow the government to chip away at democracy.
This was enacted using legislation from the time of the British colonial occupation of Palestine, which goes against every constitutional principle and assumes basic hostility between the government and the subject populace.
The Israeli parliament actually decides, every year, that Israel is in "a state of emergency" (never ending, of course) to prevent some of these powers from expiring. This has been happening mainly for suppressing the Palestinian population and limiting the freedom of the press.
It's true that over time, a lot of this has been scaled back (e.g. you no longer need a permit to issue a newspaper). But instead, Israel has adopted new draconian anti-privacy legislation, like the "Big Brother law" of 2008 IIRC, which allows the executive branch to access phone and cellular geo-location records without a search warrant, etc.
Also, some of the measures now in place were introduced despite the relevant parliamentary committee for overseeing these matters _rejecting_ fast-track approval, demanding additional information. The government just went ahead and ignored them. It's also convenient that the government is preventing parliament from properly convening (no more than 10 people at a time), and most court sessions from occurring.
72 years later, they are still not allowed back onto their lands.
B) The closing order never included the Supreme court nor the PM's trial. Even the order's date did not apply. The trial was delayed because the judges didn't feel like dying because the opposition required a talking point.
C) The opposition's behaviour has been disgraceful - undermining necessary steps because of the intense political competition, e.g. the argument that the government can't tell people to stay in their homes.
Their election slogan was "Israel over anything". Apparently it's really "getting power over anything". The electorate will have a word with them in the 4th round - unless Gantz, who has been responsible, will prove himself to be a leader and manage to rein in his irresponsible comrades.
At a time when American's are staying home and not being paid, Trump is continuing to focus on the stock market. He will soon pass a nearly $1T bailout for businesses...American workers will be lucky to see a single check in the next 2-4 weeks.
And they will never mention those thousands of small businesses you reference that will go under, just like politicians never once spoke of American's who lost their homes and became homeless, instead mentioning only the banks problems.
There is so much to unpack in this sentence, this alone could be a book about the financial/housing collapse.
Yes, in Clinton's years the banks lobbied and successfully had regulations rolled back so they could underwrite loans on stated income from broker applications. For purposes of culpability/intent, look no further than these lobbying efforts (I am skipping the other deregulations they successfully lobbied for: 103% financing/nothing down/adjustable rate mortgages).
With these new rules its fair to say banks encouraged brokers to in turn encourage borrowers to make up numbers because now they would not be verified.
When it all blew up, the banks blamed the borrowers for lying on mortgage applications, making themselves out to be the victims.
Let me see if I understand the thought process by this propaganda. Extra loans for unemployed people isn’t really palatable so we use the word “bailout” to make it sound like free money so we can advocate for handouts. Is that right?
Does intent matter when the US leadership pardons convicted war criminals?
Because outside the little western bubble it might be understood more accurately along the lines of self defense, or a response to aggression and political interference motivated by any shady bullshit from proxy wars to controlling oil supply.
Because "weapons of mass destruction" definitely deserves the quotes and was used for a similar purpose.
But mostly because giving something scary a name that abstracts away everything except that it's scary not only makes it super easy to sell publicly, but also makes it super easy to aim the public response to said fear at whatever the label can be twisted into applying to.
The main tangible thing that gave the label it's public power.
And at the same time, did everyone expect an entire geopolitical region to just sit there and let themselves be curb-stomped by various international superpowers without at least trying to retaliate? And in lieu of making a dent on the military front, and noting the impact of curb-stomping on civilian life, where else would you expect the response to be aimed?
Similar incidents? I don't recall any similar incidents of ~20 Americans working together for years to hijack 4 planes and collapse multiple large buildings killing ~3000 people.
The patriot act may have been a bad idea but it was a response to a real, significant event and is not based on totally incoherent reasoning. We had surveillance capabilities that detected the 9/11 attackers ahead of time, but arguably due to the separation of foreign and domestic intelligence, that information was not acted on. You can argue the costs of breaking down that separation aren't worth it, but don't bullshit people with word games.
Nah mate, pushing past the knee-jerk reaction of fear takes too much effort, empathy is too hard, my life is easy and thinking about what my lifestyle costs other people is too unpleasant. Just slap a terrorism label (or maybe 'think of the children', or maybe 'war on drugs', or...) on it and call it a public license to go round fucking up cultures/demographics/human rights/geopolitical regions with impunity.
I'm not the one playing bullshit word games.
Americans demand this kind of action during emergencies. The widely accepted idea that the government is capable of protecting us from events like this is tacit acknowledgement of the government's right to closely monitor society.
To put it another way: as soon as you start blaming the government for a terrorist attack (or something), you are rather close to condoning government surveillance of the citizenry (or whatever extreme measure).
police powers (internally delegated coercive power) are largely the domain of states and localities, not the federal government (who's responsible for externally targeted force), along with an FBI that's limited to federal concerns, like interstate commerce and crimes against the federal government.
citizens need to be ever vigilant about maintaining those distinctions.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/andrewkaczynski/surveil...
If the headline is inapt, it's in implying that the bill is something new. And that this is happening now to hide it, rather than because the existing bill's sunset clauses are coming up.
The headline seems to imply congress is trying to sneak something by while everyone is distracted, rather than maintaining the status quo temporarily.
There's enough to be concerned with congress without being misleading. Framing everything Congress does as some conspiracy theory only dilutes the response when actually shady things are happening.
There are many who consider this bill shady regardless, since it's there to extend powers passed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Civil libertarians (of whom there are many on this site) always considered it dangerous, and two decades on even more so. So from that standpoint, the alarm in the headline is called for, even if not precisely for the reasons it says.
Also, are we really allowing articles from Common Dreams now?
Re: Common Dreams, HN guidelines don't limit sources by their political slant, as long as the article in question is interesting or relevant. Frankly I find this to be refreshing, since many places are dominated by articles from sources with a center-right slant.
Aren't they supposed to expire, otherwise why have it sunset? The status-quo is that they were limited powers.