You wouldn't mind if the Patriot act worked

[whitehall]

You wouldn't mind too much about the federal government's mining the internet for leads if they could do their freaking jobs on a normal day. There were a hundred indications that the Ft Hood shooter Major Nadal was communicating with terrorist organizations but when he went on a killing spree the feds dismissed it as a "workplace incident". How many tips did they need to monitor two Russian born terrorists in Boston when the Russians told them that these two brothers were dangerous? I used to admire General Patraeus when he was a Soldier but the A-hole apparently didn't have a clue about doing his job as CIA director when he giggled to a crowd of intelligence geeks that the CIA could monitor our dishwasher computers so they knew when we we were in the kitchen. Now we Americans have out phone calls and internet histories sealed in a warehouse in Utah until Big Brother might need them and we ain't got a thing to say about it.

 

[waltky]

EFF wants Patriot Act revised...

Patriot Act erodes privacy rights, advocates charge
June 10, 2013 > The Electronic Frontier Foundation is calling on Congress to establish a 21st-century version of the Church Committee to curtail the government's collection of ordinary Americans' credit card, telephone and Internet records.

"The parallels between the 1970s and today are unmistakable," said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney of the San Francisco-based, nonprofit foundation. "Then as now, we see a massive surveillance program of electronic communication. "Back then, you had telegrams and telephones. Today, you have cellphones and computers," he said. "The result has been the same -- the growth of a secret surveillance state that must be cut back."

Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat, chaired the select bipartisan committee that was developed as Washington recovered from the Watergate scandals that rocked President Nixon's administration. The committee's 1975 investigations uncovered a long list of federal spying and dirty tricks during the Cold War against the Soviet Union that raked in domestic civil rights groups, draft protesters, political parties and tens of thousands of ordinary Americans.

Armed with the findings, Congress passed laws during the next three years to rein in the power of federal law enforcement, military, tax collection and espionage agencies. Critics say those protections eroded after 9/11 and twin wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Case in point is the key law born from the Church Committee's findings, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or FISA. Designed to regulate how and when a federal agency could eavesdrop on American citizens communicating with foreign powers during the Cold War, FISA's court convened in secret but required agencies to obtain warrants from its judges before snooping.

The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and later amendments transformed FISA into a toothless tiger when it comes to protecting privacy, critics claim. They say its court rubber-stamps requests that other federal magistrates would toss out. No citizen can appear to challenge the court's decrees, and mandatory gag orders prevent discussions of rulings when they're issued. FISA judges approved all 1,856 warrants the Department of Justice requested in 2012, with the government withdrawing only one application. The judges modified 40 more, according to its annual report.

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See also:

US spy programs raise ire both home and abroad
Jun 10,`13 WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration faced fresh anger Monday at home and abroad over U.S. spy programs that track phone and Internet messages around the world in the hope of thwarting terrorist threats. But a senior intelligence official said there are no plans to end the secretive surveillance systems.

The programs causing the global uproar were revealed by Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old employee of government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden, whose identity was revealed at his own request, has fled to Hong Kong in hopes of escaping criminal charges. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee and supports the surveillance, accused Snowden of committing an "act of treason" and said he should be prosecuted.

Coolly but firmly, officials in Germany and the European Union issued complaints over two National Security Agency programs that target suspicious foreign messages - potentially including phone numbers, email, images, video and other online communications transmitted through U.S. providers. The chief British diplomat felt it necessary to try to assure Parliament that the spy programs do not encroach on U.K. privacy laws.

And in Washington, members of Congress said they would take a new look at potential ways to keep the U.S. safe from terror attacks without giving up privacy protections that critics charge are at risk with the government's current authority to broadly sweep up personal communications. "There's very little trust in the government, and that's for good reason," said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. "We're our own worst enemy."

Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was considering how Congress could limit the amount of data spy agencies seize from telephone and Internet companies - including restricting the information to be released only on an as-needed basis. "It's a little unsettling to have this massive data in the government's possession," King said.

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[Toronado3800]

You wouldn't mind too much about the federal government's mining the internet for leads if they could do their freaking jobs on a normal day. There were a hundred indications that the Ft Hood shooter Major Nadal was communicating with terrorist organizations but when he went on a killing spree the feds dismissed it as a "workplace incident". How many tips did they need to monitor two Russian born terrorists in Boston when the Russians told them that these two brothers were dangerous? I used to admire General Patraeus when he was a Soldier but the A-hole apparently didn't have a clue about doing his job as CIA director when he giggled to a crowd of intelligence geeks that the CIA could monitor our dishwasher computers so they knew when we we were in the kitchen. Now we Americans have out phone calls and internet histories sealed in a warehouse in Utah until Big Brother might need them and we ain't got a thing to say about it.

In some ways I bet what you are saying is true. Most Americans, the "most" of Americans who supported the Patriot Act in the first place, are not into non-tangible things like individual rights. The hippies and tea party libertarians maybe.

PERSONALLY, I think the Patriot Act goes too far and I opposed it from the get go. Perhaps them liberals made me read 1984 to well or something.

 

[S.J.]

The problem with the Patriot Act is that tyrants will use it against the American people. We're seeing that happen right now. Politicians can't be trusted, especially LIBERAL politicians.

 

[Toronado3800]

Lose the partisan yelling and you just might be able to accomplish something.

Then again if your goal is to walk into a group of people who are disgusted with the Patriot Act under Bush and Obama and try to divide that group yelling names and blaming one another is the best way to divide the movement.

 

[25Caliber]

Shut down the borders and stop being so politically correct and risking the safety of US citizens...do that and you wont need a Patriot Act. That and start calling Islam what it is, which is a type of government...not a religion.

You are free to practice your own religion not make your own laws because of it.

 

[whitehall]

You wouldn't mind too much about the federal government's mining the internet for leads if they could do their freaking jobs on a normal day. There were a hundred indications that the Ft Hood shooter Major Nadal was communicating with terrorist organizations but when he went on a killing spree the feds dismissed it as a "workplace incident". How many tips did they need to monitor two Russian born terrorists in Boston when the Russians told them that these two brothers were dangerous? I used to admire General Patraeus when he was a Soldier but the A-hole apparently didn't have a clue about doing his job as CIA director when he giggled to a crowd of intelligence geeks that the CIA could monitor our dishwasher computers so they knew when we we were in the kitchen. Now we Americans have out phone calls and internet histories sealed in a warehouse in Utah until Big Brother might need them and we ain't got a thing to say about it.

In some ways I bet what you are saying is true. Most Americans, the "most" of Americans who supported the Patriot Act in the first place, are not into non-tangible things like individual rights. The hippies and tea party libertarians maybe.

PERSONALLY, I think the Patriot Act goes too far and I opposed it from the get go. Perhaps them liberals made me read 1984 to well or something.

You could say that the "patriot act" was a response to the Clinton years when "intelligence" organizations were kept from sharing information under threat of arrest. The PA forced the intelligence agencies to share information or so we thought. Nobody ever thought it would go as far as the a-hole CIA chief bragging that he could monitor our dishwasher computers and Americans becoming afraid of Big Brother listening in on phone conversations.