FISA Court Extends Section 215 Bulk Surveillance For 90 Days 83
Trailrunner7 notes that the bulk telephone collection program was just extended another 90 days. "The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has authorized a 90-day extension to the Section 215 bulk telephone collection program used by the National Security Agency, giving the agency through the end of February to run the program in the absence of legislation establishing a new authority.
On Monday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed that the administration had applied for a 90-day extension to the existing Section 215 authority, and that the FISC had approved the request, extending the authority through Feb. 27.
'The Administration welcomes the opportunity to work with the new Congress to implement the changes the President has called for. Given that legislation has not yet been enacted, and given the importance of maintaining the capabilities of the telephony metadata program, the government has sought a 90-day reauthorization of the existing program, as modified by the changes the President directed in January,' a statement from the Office of the DNI and the Office of the Attorney General said."
On Monday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed that the administration had applied for a 90-day extension to the existing Section 215 authority, and that the FISC had approved the request, extending the authority through Feb. 27.
'The Administration welcomes the opportunity to work with the new Congress to implement the changes the President has called for. Given that legislation has not yet been enacted, and given the importance of maintaining the capabilities of the telephony metadata program, the government has sought a 90-day reauthorization of the existing program, as modified by the changes the President directed in January,' a statement from the Office of the DNI and the Office of the Attorney General said."
Courts? (Score:3)
Isn't a court supposed to rule on the current law, rather than extending laws that have gone away?
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Isn't a court supposed to rule on the current law, rather than extending laws that have gone away?
They aren't a court.
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Isn't a court supposed to rule on the current law, rather than extending laws that have gone away?
They aren't a court.
Sorry, I misinterpreted the word "court" to mean "court" in "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court"
Re:Courts? (Score:4, Funny)
you probably also read the "foreign" incorrectly
Re:Courts? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe it's the 'Intelligence' part that's wrong, thus explaining the other two problems.
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The "Surveillance" part is right on target, though.
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one outta four, well i guess that's something.
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yes, but this is the kangaroo court extending kangaroo laws that were never actually voted for, they were just entered into the law books by the alphabet soup agencies without congress ever knowing they existed.
Every member of the NSA, CIA and the FISA court should be arrested and shot for treason.
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Really? Congress had no part? You're going with that, when TFA cites Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which was passed by Congress in October 2001? I mean, sure, rage against the machine, but don't flail about wildly because you're too stupid to read up on the issue. I'm pissed off about the dragnet spying too, but at least I understand that their power wasn't pulled out of thin air. The keys to their power: they don't need probably cause for a warrant, warrants can be extended indefinitely, and they ca
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I have altered our agreement. Pray I don't alter it again.
Illegal? (Score:1)
Isn't this grossly illegal?
Congress must change the legislation or the expiration date
stands.
What happened to the horror of 'legislating from the bench'?!
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The executive cannot change the start date of a law, but it can choose to be incredibly slack in enforcing it for a while.
Neither the courts nor the executive can just make up a new law from nothing. That includes continuing a law that no longer exists.
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened to the horror of 'legislating from the bench'?!
This is it.
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Funny how nobody in the GOP is up in arms about these "activist judges" from the FISA star chamber usurping their authority.
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They can extend legislation without legislation? (Score:2)
When are Americans going to wake up? (Score:3, Insightful)
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And I know what idols are.
Re:When are Americans going to wake up? (Score:4, Insightful)
And realize they now live in a police state?
Most don't know the difference.
We've been in a police state since the Civil war.
Once the feds take power... no matter how justified they are in that... they never give it up again.
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We've been in a police state since the Whiskey Rebellion.
FTFY
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Shay's Rebellion
FTFY. although much love to our peeps in the whiskey revolution as well.
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All they did was replace "papers, please" with tracking your cell phone, recording your calls, monitoring your internet use, tracking your flights and maintaining a "no fly" list, and on and on. Making the surveillance invisible doesn't make it any less insidious. A prison is a prison, whether you can see the bars or not.
Re:When are Americans going to wake up? (Score:4, Interesting)
I must be one of those asleep because I fail to see how the USA is a police state. Care to provide any evidence?
The answer has its own Wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
Re:When are Americans going to wake up? (Score:4, Insightful)
Go to the airport. See how close to a plane you can get (with ticket in hand) before someone demands to see your papers (and x-ray your bags and scan your body/pat you down). Crack a bomb joke and see how that goes for you. When they fondle your junk, be sure to tell them you expect a happy ending.
You may or may not have big trouble if you try to video record cops. Let us know when you get out.
We have a secret court that has decided to continue permitting a spy agency to spy on citizens in their homes in spite of an explicit expiration date on the law.
We have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Most of the people in prison were coerced into waiving their right to a trial.
Clarification: expires June 2015, law says court r (Score:5, Informative)
Let me clarify, as the two current posts indicate a misunderstanding. Currently, the law authorizing the snooping is set to expire in June 2015. Under that law, NSA must get court approval or any wiretaps, and those approvals can't last longer than 90 days. The court has been approving "spy on everyone" each 90 days.
Obama asked Congress to renew the law rather than letting it expire in June, but change it in a couple of ways:
Make the authorization permanent rather than requiring re-approval every 90 days
Add some smokescreen language to say the dragnet isn't allowed under section 215, it has to be done under a different section.
The Senate voted 58-42 to not extend the law as Obama asked, so currently the snooping must stop by June, when the law authorizing it expires.
Only the current 90-day "warrant" expired, renewing that is standard operating procedure. The big deadline is June, when the whole program will have to stop if Congress doesn't re-authorize it.
Democrats in Congress want to move the program around, so they can say they got rid of the section 215 authorization. Republicans have refused to do that, some like Paul want to let the whole thing expire. Others say the Democrat smokescreen plan only makes it harder to perform legitimate national security activities, without actually doing anything good for privacy.
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> Democrats in Congress want to move the program around, so they can say they got rid of the section 215
> authorization. Republicans have refused to do that, some like Paul want to let the whole thing expire. Others say
> the Democrat smokescreen plan only makes it harder to perform legitimate national security activities, without
> actually doing anything good for privacy.
This is what I have come to expect on matters of personal privacy. Republicans hate your privacy and don't know why you think
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and neither of them have any knowledge or clue as to what is actually happening and if it is actually worth keeping the program.
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Of course it's worth keeping the program. It's much better to capture everything and later realize that you don't need any of it. Or better yet you don't need it for the reason that you thought you would but found another use that is equally beneficial to them. Can you imagine if the Government didn't have it AND they needed it? They might not get re-elected and they just can't have that.
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I believe this refers to "metadata", i.e. who is calling who, rather than the strawman you just constructed to knock down.
There are plenty of reasonable arguments against this. But you should work harder at actually making them
So says Republican Senator Rand Paul (Score:2)
That's essentially the position of Republican Senator from Kentucky Rand Paul.
I mostly agree, except I'd nitpick one bit of wording. "It never did any good". I'm sure it did some good, but no way it was worth it. The cost (in freedom) is too damn high.
the reason I mention that (Score:2)
I mentioned that for one specific reason.
We are frequently told that government program X helped half a million people. We see something like "this program provided Driver's Ed for half a million high school students. Rarely is that statement measure paired with the cost, say $4 billion, and it replaced history class at school. The cost is reported separately, if at all. Looking at the benefit and the cost together, we can say that $8000 per student is far too high (commercial providers charge $200 pe
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"warrant"
I believe you mean "writ of assistance".
Next: name change - Soviet USA (Score:1)
Can't wait when comrad Putin arrives and two great nations become One.
I announce: The Great Sovietico USA_RUSSIA State. Envy of all dictators.
God Bless Soviet USA
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Politics are dated of course, but the message is still relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/playli... [youtube.com]
The power to spy is like any addictive substance (Score:3)
Once one start using, one needs to continue doing.
The same thing with those kangaroo courts. They will stick to whatever "their legal opinions" are, because the moment you stop all predecessors will be questioned. They have to remember that Nurnberg defense, "we just followed orders" does not work all the times. They KNOW what they are doing and, rest assured, they do not have clean conscience and do sleep well even if they say they do.
Expect this to be election issue. Rand Paul's maximalistic approach will earn a lot of political capital, and Hillary Clinton will look like a big sister from 1984 Apple commercial. Perhaps this thing along will win former Obama's voters.
One would be a fool to believe that anything in substance will change even when Rand Paul will stop renewal, but at least there will be a debate.
Irrelevant (Score:1)
Does anyone actually think it matters whether this bill passed or not?
If they want to keep doing it, they're going to keep doing it. What the law says is irrelevant.
Re:Hope and change (Score:4, Insightful)
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a million citizens revolting against their government with hand guns and rifles isn't even going to make a dent
Don't forget the great lesson of the Soviet debacle: all governments ultimately depend on the consent of the people. When that consent is withdrawn, the government collapses.
The great lesson of Romania is that a government shouldn't count on its armed forces to violently suppress their own people.
-jcr
Quite so. And in both cases the possession of small arms was utterly irrelevant. They played no role at all in the collapse of tyranny. Why do Americans suppose that they are less capable of peaceful overthrow than Russians or Romanians?
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As you examine larger and larger groups of people, no matter the type of group, their similarity to the the average population approaches 1.0. A small group is brought together for some specific reason that may differentiate the group. At the other end, a sufficiently large group of people would is the entire population.
National armies and other armed forces will usually be some of the larger groups. So they will have a lot of similarities with the average population... including most of the political arggu
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...all governments ultimately depend on the consent of the people. When that consent is withdrawn, the government collapses.
I've always believed that if something like this did happen, the majority of the folks in the armed forces would defect and join the people, because they would otherwise be fighting their family and friends. I am hoping we never have to find out. That said, when the armed forces is a fleet of drones only the consent of the few that control them is needed.
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Then I guess it is a good thing that tanks, jets, drones, long range missiles, lasers, and rail guns cannot be elected to office.
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You Can't Vote Out the Gestapo. (Score:3)
As long as they can OK this for themselves, in Secret Courts, We, the People are Seriously Fucked.
I saw a major article today about how all the successful Supreme Court Cases are handled by an inner circle of DC Lawyers, who are personal friends of some of the Justices.
It's All Insiders at this point in the government in the parts that matter; the rest are Country Hicks that will do whatever the Fuck they're told. Yes, I mean Congress.
We are headed down a dark road my friends.
It's already Ugly, why do you think so much was left out of the CIA Torture Report, and they're Still Worried it will lead to uprisings?! :)
Note: they haven't said where they expect those to occur...
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The Executive and Legislative branches (D and/or R) long ago demonstrated that they don't give a shit about the People and the Constitution.
However, many had the naïve belief that a neutral Judiciacy, in particular the SCOTUS, acted as a bulwark against the tyrannical tendencies on the hill and in the White House.
Now the scales have fallen from our eyes, and it is blatantly clear that the judges have totally abdicated their responsibility to protect and keep the Republic. They are as rotten as the pol
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However, many had the naive belief that a neutral Judiciacy, in particular the SCOTUS, acted as a bulwark against the tyrannical tendencies on the hill and in the White House.
To be fair, I don't think anyone ever believed that FISA was anything other than a kangaroo court with which the CIA and NSA could bureaucratically cover their asses. It's certainly disappointing that SCOTUS has so frequently declined even to hear PATRIOT-related cases: we deserve to have them make a final judgement whether bulk data collection/archiving constitutes search, or whether you really can bypass the 4th Amendment by claiming that it's only a search if a human looks at it.
Section 215 red herrings (Score:3)
Recipient and contents of application:
(1) shall be made toâ"
(A) a judge of the court established by section 1803 (a) of this title; or
(B) a United States Magistrate Judge under chapter 43 of title 28, who is publicly designated by the Chief Justice of the United States to have the power to hear applications and grant orders for the production of tangible things under this section on behalf of a judge of that court; and
(2) shall includeâ" ...
(A) a statement of facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation
What "authorized investigation" can possibly necessitate COLLECTION of EVERYONES phone records?
If you can't answer the question then don't spew bullshit about section 215 red herrings.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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That would be why the 4th amendment got writtent in the first place - this kind of "writ of assistance" is an affront to the very ideas of "justice" and "rule of law".