Hacker News Reader

Comment by verdverm | Hacker News Reader

I think you have things a bit backwards. Without FISA, the intelligence agencies have less oversight and fewer restrictions.

> The FISA resulted from extensive investigations by Senate Committees into the legality of domestic intelligence activities. These investigations were led separately by Sam Ervin and Frank Church in 1978 as a response to President Richard Nixon's usage of federal resources, including law enforcement agencies, to spy on political and activist groups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...

View on HN

> Without FISA, the intelligence agencies have less oversight and fewer restrictions.

What restrictions are you talking about? Constitutional warrant requirement was sidestepped using this law and you are still cheering here.

Well, before FISA, constitutional warrant requirements were not sidestepped, they were simply ignored. So now we're acknowledging that the constitutional requirements are still there, but now we use this weird dodge to get around it. So is that better or worse?

Are you really asking if being unconstitutional is worse than being codified and legal?

I’m not the one here cheering for demise of constitutional republic…

Neither am I cheering for it. Don't put words in my mouth.

I am seriously asking whether being flat-out unconstitutional is worse than building a (legislated and approved) backdoor around the constitution, yes.

I mean, better than both would be to just follow the constitution, but that wasn't the question.

Well, you are asserting a binary choice here which is questionable and implies that unless we grant spooks legal OK for some violations of the constitution they are free to ignore the entire matter. If a government agency is acting in violation of constitution then there are legal and constitutional remedies to make sure the said agencies act according to the law of the land.

Please note that at no point I said that you specifically cheered, so no need to project. It’s a threaded topic.

As you noticed, following constitution is apparently not an option here. Being unconstitutional and ignored, there was at least some hope for improvement, but codification gave us a clear answer that elected representatives are, at best, only selectively interested in supporting constitution.

Unfortunately, that appears to be America these days. Do something illegal, and then write a law to legalize the illegal behavior.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com