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House Introduces Bill to Repeal the Patriot Act

freedomworks.org

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Re: House Introduces Bill to Repeal the Patriot Act

#41

Post by bhayden »

timepiece wrote: post #32
bkurtz13 wrote: post #2

I really want to believe this could become reality. But the past surrounding this issue, as well as seemingly widespread apathy about our loss of civil liberties, leaves me cynical. Nearly every time I fly, I hear someone in the security line (which to me resembles a cattle chute) remarking that they're in fact glad for the inconvenience, as they somehow feel safer. Nearly every family member or friend with whom I di…

I hear someone in the security line (which to me resembles a cattle chute) remarking that they're in fact glad for the inconvenience They could be govt stooges (field agents) implanted to distort public opinion and create a false narrative that the general public is happy with these draconian procedures and that they're very popular (peer pressure) to advance their agenda and support the status-quo.

This would have to be pretty massive in scale, and the people standing around doing this all day are probably not well qualified or paid. If this was happening there would be people talking about it.

Re: House Introduces Bill to Repeal the Patriot Act

#42

Post by chrisparsons »

worklogin wrote: post #35
patrickmay wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Term limits really would make sense. Three terms in the House, two in the Senate. Eighteen years is more than enough time for anyone to hold that much power. A nice side effect would be more people working hard at the state level rather than seeing the state legislature as just a stepping stone to national office.

Two terms in the Senate is 12 years, two in the house is 4. So I don't know where you got 18 from!

Assuming one person would hit both term limits: 2 6-year terms in the Senate plus 3 2-year terms in the house would be 18.

Re: House Introduces Bill to Repeal the Patriot Act

#43

Post by timepiece »

bhayden wrote: post #41
timepiece wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear someone in the security line (which to me resembles a cattle chute) remarking that they're in fact glad for the inconvenience They could be govt stooges (field agents) implanted to distort public opinion and create a false narrative that the general public is happy with these draconian procedures and that they're very popular (peer pressure) to advance their agenda and support the status-quo.

This would have to be pretty massive in scale, and the people standing around doing this all day are probably not well qualified or paid. If this was happening there would be people talking about it.

It doesn't need to be on a massive scale or not pro-bono. It's enough to some people in the govt to volunteer and go on a disinformation field trip.

Re: House Introduces Bill to Repeal the Patriot Act

#44

Post by amyjess »

cmdkeen wrote: post #31
amyjess wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, everyone assumed the government knows anything anyway, long before Snowden. I remember after the Boston Bombings, people were complaining, saying things like "How could the government be so incompetent as to not stop this before it happened? They monitor everything on the Internet, so they should have known!". This was before Snowden. Years before that, I remember people were casually talking about Room 641A. Thi…

Hasn't the existence of Echelon been common knowledge for years? The concept was popularised in Enemy of the State in 1998. Before that you had Clinton and the Clipper chip which could easily lead the poorly technically informed to assume all their internet traffic was already capable of being monitored.

Yeah, that too.

And I heard about Carnivore in the '90s -- though most people vastly overstated what it was capable of (people tended to ascribe Echelon's capabilities to Carnivore).

Re: House Introduces Bill to Repeal the Patriot Act

#45

Post by amyjess »

A_COMPUTER wrote: post #27
twoodfin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember that Pollyanna public discourse. What would you consider the most shocking Snowden disclosure? None that I'm aware of were that surprising. It was an open secret at the phone companies that TLA folk of one sort or another have been (only sometimes with direct cooperation) plugging mysterious gear into the network for decades. Really astounding that their methods are now targeted at Gmail and Facebook…

There is a huge difference between "carnivore", a box the FBI could put on a single network somewhere, and room 641A, six rooms hooked directly into AT&T backbones sniffing all data. There is also a huge difference between passive monitoring at specific points with some sort of criminal investigation, and actively infiltrating US companies and breaking their security to be able to monitor its traffic unimpeded. It's…

Room 641A was well known, as fact, years before Snowden and nobody gave a shit.

I remember people talking about it circa 2006. It was in the context of "if the government wanted to ban something and actively enforce it, they have the ability to do that because they've got a room where they grab a beam off all of AT&T's fiber optics"

Everybody knew, nobody cared.

Re: House Introduces Bill to Repeal the Patriot Act

#46

Post by worklogin »

chrisparsons wrote: post #42
worklogin wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two terms in the Senate is 12 years, two in the house is 4. So I don't know where you got 18 from!

Assuming one person would hit both term limits: 2 6-year terms in the Senate plus 3 2-year terms in the house would be 18.

I saw two and two. My mistake.

Re: House Introduces Bill to Repeal the Patriot Act

#47

Post by astrodust »

adventured wrote: post #12
astrodust wrote: post #11

How ironic that FreedomWorks ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreedomWorks ) is the source for this reporting.

What's the irony? Here's their motto from the Wiki link of yours: "Lower Taxes. Less Government. More Freedom." Ending the Patriot Act would accomplish two of those. They're apparently in part a libertarian leaning group; libertarians are usually against the Patriot Act.

The same money that brought about the Bush government, which instituted most of this junk in the first place, is behind FreedomWorks.

"Freedom" for billionaires means something different than for you and me.

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