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House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

nytimes.com

131–140 of 183 posts

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the clerk.house.gov link the right one? It has "BILL TITLE: Rapid DNA Act of 2017" on its header, doesn't sound like a surveillance law

I think so, it appears to be the primary bill that was discussed this morning: http://clerk.house.gov/floorsummary/floor.aspx?day=20180111&... The Amash amendment was also to this bill. Here is a pamphlet comparing S. 139 with the Amash/USA Rights Act Amendment: https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/ChartCompa... That same document refers to S. 139 as the FISA Reauthorization Amendments Act. More clarific…

As we are discussing elsewhere, this is the vote on the Amash amendment, which is what people here are talking about.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll014.xml

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#132
post #2

Privacy in the US is dead

Privacy in the world is dead (more precisely, dying), for all intents and purposes. The technological cat that enabled its demise can't be put back into the bag. Currently the problem is that certain classes of people have more access to "private" information than others, but once that goes away society will adapt to the new normal and look back with confusion at why we were so concerned about not being able to hide…

Agreed. But, we're missing the point quibbling about search histories and emails... That's nothing compared to what's coming. The data already exists to track your every move. It's just a matter of consolidating and organizing it. Right now, there is money to be made selling customer data for marketing and the like. This keeps the repositories of our data from sharing with one another.

But, soon, the economics will flip. And, there will be money to be made from selling privacy. For instance, assume all credit card, phone, cable companies, etc. pool their data. For a monthly subscription, this conglomerate will keep your info (or parts of it) hidden. The default will be everything is knowable about everyone, except for those who pay a fee to erase info from their records.

Far more money to be made selling privacy than selling info. 4th amendment and all the rest is moot. Our info is held by private international companies who, eventually, will begin charging you to keep things hidden from others.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#134
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time this comes up, I'm again surprised how many people expect that Democrats will somehow have better policy for privacy. Folks, it ain't so. The Democrats won't protect us in this regard any more than the Republicans will.

The parent comment literally shows that Democrats protect us for privacy more than Republicans do. 125 Democrats voted to add privacy protections, 55 did not. By Contrast 58 Republicans voted to add privacy protections, 178 did not. By definition, that means Democrats were better about privacy protections. Stop peddling this both-parties-are-the-same nonsense. Its amazing this can even be said with a straight face du…

Doesn't matter. US political system only has 2 parties.

If you don't like blacks, browns and gays but DO like privacy were do you go? Exactly. There is no alternative to the Republicans.

If the US had 15 parties in Congress the game would be a LOT more interesting. Half of America has no choice to support Trump because the alternative is literally Satan.

So here we are: the endless stalemate.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#135
post #134
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment literally shows that Democrats protect us for privacy more than Republicans do. 125 Democrats voted to add privacy protections, 55 did not. By Contrast 58 Republicans voted to add privacy protections, 178 did not. By definition, that means Democrats were better about privacy protections. Stop peddling this both-parties-are-the-same nonsense. Its amazing this can even be said with a straight face du…

Doesn't matter. US political system only has 2 parties. If you don't like blacks, browns and gays but DO like privacy were do you go? Exactly. There is no alternative to the Republicans. If the US had 15 parties in Congress the game would be a LOT more interesting. Half of America has no choice to support Trump because the alternative is literally Satan. So here we are: the endless stalemate.

> US political system only has 2 parties.

More accurately, the US electoral system supports only two competitive parties at a time; the US political system has several dozen political parties.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#136
post #127
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment literally shows that Democrats protect us for privacy more than Republicans do. 125 Democrats voted to add privacy protections, 55 did not. By Contrast 58 Republicans voted to add privacy protections, 178 did not. By definition, that means Democrats were better about privacy protections. Stop peddling this both-parties-are-the-same nonsense. Its amazing this can even be said with a straight face du…

The last President was a Democrat and he sure didn't care about American's Privacy even though he used it on his campaign trail to get elected... Please don't act like _only_ Republicans do this... From my comment down thread >Unfortunately Obama almost quadrupled funding to these agencies[1]. Throughout his administration he allowed the Alphabet boys to try and steal more american's data without warrants (See FBI v…

    Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers
    we all know what happened to Chelsea.
Obama commuted her sentence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning#Commutation

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation please, as far as I know there is zero evidence that this happened. But for the bigger issue, yes it is a thing that needs to be controlled.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/us/politics/carter-page-f...

The second sentence in the linked article is this: "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued the warrant, the official said, after investigators determined that Mr. Page was no longer part of the Trump campaign, which began distancing itself from him in early August."

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#138
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last President was a Democrat and he sure didn't care about American's Privacy even though he used it on his campaign trail to get elected... Please don't act like _only_ Republicans do this... From my comment down thread >Unfortunately Obama almost quadrupled funding to these agencies[1]. Throughout his administration he allowed the Alphabet boys to try and steal more american's data without warrants (See FBI v…

Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers we all know what happened to Chelsea. Obama commuted her sentence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning#Commutation

Do you remember how she was treated during her 7 year stay in prison?

I am sure it will be easy for her to explain "Violating the Espionage Act, stealing government property, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, multiple counts of disobeying orders" on her job application.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-mannin...

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just phase it this way: Imagine if the party in power used state surveillance to monitor their opponent and the people who support them. The whole infrastructure is turn-key authoritarian, there's literally nothing logistical stopping this, only a handshake agreement not to. This should concern people regardless of their political affiliation or party loyalty.

No need to imagine, it literally happened this election cycle: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/politics/paul-manafort-governm... Whether the renewal to continue spying into early 2017 was (figuratively) warranted is debatable, but with the official reasoning largely classified, the public may never know.

Manafort had been under investigation since 2014. The Trump campaign hired him while he was being surveilled. That could happen from a plain old court issuing a surveillance subpoena. I think FISA should always require court approval. No blanket approvals like were going through phone companies. But court approval on an individual basis is how we've always done legal investigations.

Re: House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits

#140
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump has not signed this yet. It's not even on his desk yet IIRC. And he's tweeted about, implying that he disapproves.

He also tweeted support.

he's a real genius, I'm sure he knows his mind, he claims to always be right
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