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United States Government

US Passes Bill Reauthorizing 'FISA' Surveillance for Two More Years (theverge.com) 45

Late Friday night the U.S. Senate "reauthorized the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a key. U.S. surveillance authority," reports Axios, "shortly after it expired in the early hours Saturday morning." The president then signed the bill into law. The reauthorization came despite bipartisan concerns about Section 702, which allows the government to collect communications from non-U.S. citizens overseas without a warrant. The legislation passed the Senate 60 to 34, with 17 Democrats, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 16 Republicans voting "nay." It extends the controversial Section 702 for two more years.
The bill had already passed last week in the U.S. House of Representatives, explains CNN: Under FISA's Section 702, the government hoovers up massive amounts of internet and cell phone data on foreign targets. Hundreds of thousands of Americans' information is incidentally collected during that process and then accessed each year without a warrant — down from millions of such queries the US government ran in past years. Critics refer to these queries as "backdoor" searches...

According to one assessment, it forms the basis of most of the intelligence the president views each morning and it has helped the U.S. keep tabs on Russia's intentions in Ukraine, identify foreign efforts to access US infrastructure, uncover foreign terror networks and thwart terror attacks in the U.S.

An interesting detail from The Verge: Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced an amendment that would have struck language in the House bill that expanded the definition of "electronic communications service provider." Under the House's new provision, anyone "who has access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications." The expansion, Wyden has claimed, would force "ordinary Americans and small businesses to conduct secret, warrantless spying." The Wyden-Hawley amendment failed 34-58, meaning that the next iteration of the FISA surveillance program will be more expansive than before.
Saturday morning the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill banning TikTok if its Chinese owner doesn't sell the app.
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US Passes Bill Reauthorizing 'FISA' Surveillance for Two More Years

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  • by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Saturday April 20, 2024 @04:39PM (#64410906)
    ... because everyone knows how beloved the GDR government was by the people, especially because of its "Hauptabteilung IV" aka "Stasi", which eavesdropped on everyone's life... with about 1/10 of the technical intensity that data is siphoned from everyone these days.
    • with about 1/10 of the technical intensity that data is siphoned from everyone these days.

      Which is why I occasionally will slip in the words bomb, kill, and explode into a post to help poison the well.

      Hans Kristian Graebener = StoneToss

    • There is a certain impact to the Stasi letter opening assembly line depicted in the 2006 film "The Lives of Others". What besides waste heat in a desert, is produced by the Utah Data Center?
      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        There is a certain impact to the Stasi letter opening assembly line depicted in the 2006 film "The Lives of Others". What besides waste heat in a desert, is produced by the Utah Data Center?

        The Utah Data Center is the preparation for a totalitarian takeover. Anybody that thinks this is not targeted at surveillance of US citizens as well is kidding themselves. If it were just producing heat, it would be relatively harmless. It is not.

  • I'm not a supporter of MTG, but here I am on this issue. Kick that SoB so hard he flies out of the senate. What a complete joke. This guy went on about how he didn't support FISA, and now this.

    While we're at it, I don't like Omar much either, but I support her right to speech as much as anyone else. Same with Trump, and his election interference trial that I think robs people of their votes (I'm not voting for Trump so don't even think I'm going ther, but peopel have their right to vote who they want to)
  • Can congress really pass laws that selectively apply to specific corporations and individuals? If corporations are people then doesn't the 14th also apply to corporations? Why just TikTok?

    • Can congress really pass laws that selectively apply to specific corporations and individuals? If corporations are people then doesn't the 14th also apply to corporations? Why just TikTok?

      Corporations are people. TikTok is a Chinese person.

    • For US citizens no. But this isn't a matter of a US citizen this is a foreign corporation so anything that's not in a treaty is fair game. If however tick tock was owned by a US citizen with Chinese investors they wouldn't be able to do this. But the entire point of the law is the fourth China to divest and sell it to a US citizen.
      • For US citizens no. But this isn't a matter of a US citizen this is a foreign corporation so anything that's not in a treaty is fair game. If however tick tock was owned by a US citizen with Chinese investors they wouldn't be able to do this. But the entire point of the law is the fourth China to divest and sell it to a US citizen.

        TikTok has a "nexus" to the US with offices in several US states and is therefore subject to US jurisdiction. That nexus presumably enjoys constitutional rights of its own yet is being singled out with special directives in ways no other company is subject.

        • by christoban ( 3028573 ) on Sunday April 21, 2024 @03:56AM (#64411696)

          No it's not. The law applies to ALL foreign companies owned by foreign countries on a list of hostile nations.

          • No it's not. The law applies to ALL foreign companies owned by foreign countries on a list of hostile nations.

            The text of the bill literally singles out ByteDance, Ltd and TikTok by name as foreign adversary controlled applications.

            "FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATION.--The term "foreign adversary controlled application" means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by--

            (A) any of--
            (i) ByteDance, Ltd.;
            (ii) TikTok;
            "

            The only other way provided for i

            • What is it about any "foreign adversary controlled application" that you don't understand? That some companies are on the list to begin with is not unusual, and the president can add or remove companies to and from the list.

              • What is it about any "foreign adversary controlled application" that you don't understand?

                You tell me, the term is defined in the text of the bill. What don't I understand?

                (3) FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATION.--The term "foreign adversary controlled application" means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by-

                (A) any of--
                (i) ByteDance, Ltd.;
                (ii) TikTok;

                (iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity iden

                • You might be right about their inclusion initially. And yeah, the president doesn't have the ability to remove; I misread that.

                  It'll likely go to the SCOTUS, and if they decide ByteDance is merely 'on the list' and not treated materially differently, perhaps they can take them off the list and let the POTUS put them on using the normal method.

                  There is a way for them to get off the list, apparently, which would suggest it's not an "and," exactly.

    • Can congress really pass laws that selectively apply to specific corporations and individuals?

      I think they typically do it in a roundabout way, e.g. "Any entity registered federally as an employer, located within the state of Indiana, within an area bounded by the the state line, Interstate 70, the Village of Toad Hop, and that one weird cow with the splotch shaped like Texas that always stands out by the road, and engaged in the practice of steam-cleaning 'meat' from chicken bones..."

      And just to get my keyword in, let us never forget that the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a bo [texastribune.org]

  • Ah good. (Score:3, Funny)

    by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Saturday April 20, 2024 @06:18PM (#64411056)

    This should allow them to finally catch bin Laden.

    • Yep, I heard he's one tricky fish. Too bad we the public were not allowed to see him before he got a way last time.....
  • ... ordinary Americans and small businesses to conduct secret, warrant-less spying.

    Google stopped un-deleting data, so National Security Letter subpoenas no longer worked. This is to make Google un-delete data and make everyone give transport-level encryption keys (HTTPS/TLS) to the CIA/NSA/FBI.

  • Forget about warrents, courts, you know civil rights
  • by tiqui ( 1024021 ) on Sunday April 21, 2024 @12:59AM (#64411520)

    I'm personally offended by most politicians, no matter what they pretend to believe or stand for, but it still is useful to see who is most angry in DC about stuff like this.

    In this case, it's the most conservative Republicans, who cling to the plain text of the Constitution and cannot see how anybody thinks this is Constitutional, and the most liberal [in the classic sense] Democrats who still remember government being used against the anti-Vietnam-war left.

    The people eager to pass this abomination (oh, and very eager to add an amendment to it that shields CONGRESS from being spied upon) are the "establishment" Republicans and Democrats who are always so eager to drive-up the national debt, fund foreign wars, etc under the banner of "bipartisanship". Oh, and they also just happen to be the sort who arrive in congress relatively poor, spend millions of dollars getting elected and then repeatedly reelected, earn only about $170K a year from the job, and yet end up worth tens to hundreds of millions of dollars richer (even while complaining about the expenses of maintaining two homes - back home in the district and near DC).

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by DrMrLordX ( 559371 )

      Trump is mad. He's been anti-FISA since it came out that the Steele dossier was used to secure FISA warrants against his campaign staffers in 2026.

      • 2016 bleh

        • I could see Trump 2036. Even after the diabetes takes his limbs, he'll be Neuralinked directly into Twitter. After brain death occurs, they'll have to come up with a Trump AI to keep him in everyone's face.

          I think the beta version was called Vivek Ramaswamy.

          • I'm sure Musk can buy a Small Language Model to accurately run Trump's account on Twitter after he dies. Hell, I bet he could get his Neurolink company to brain scan Trumps brain and run that on a Pentium!
            MAGA forever.

            • On a serious note, I wonder who will end up taking the sick pleasure in monetizing his corpse. (And you know they will, by who he surrounds himself with, and how they feel about him.)

              How much can they manage to charge for tickets, and what the physical arrangement will be? Would they be more like visitors to the Shroud of Turin, or more like the Lenin Mausoleum?

              • More likely his body is a fake and the conspiracy nuts will leave clues on 8chan as to where he really is. Years of sightings, raiding basements of pizza shops for black ops prisons etc. tourist traps where his ghost haunts...

                Most of all, con men trying to win over his fanbases' support claiming Trump's blessing replacing the exploitation of Reagan we've had for 30 years.

    • FISA has always been severely flawed but do you really want to "reform" it with arguably the worst House in US history? Plus a racist and unconstitutional filibuster in the Senate?
      Until we get Rank Voting and toss out all the Republicans (wholly corrupt, any half decent ones were pushed out... or cowards who bend over when it matters.)

    • This. We no longer have genuine conservatives or classical liberals. Nuclear war now. Sterilize the northern hemisphere.
  • If the system was flooded with. Many gigabytes of AI generated texts peppered with keywords that trigger the system it would render it worthless, just like the government does on social media, (the gov censors people & topics and floods social media with misinformation)
    • Such a tactic is pointless. Not only will it help reinforce the proponent's desire for spying (Look at all this info, sheep!), it will help to justify even more abuse through even more automated means. (We need to filter out the garbage, minions!)

      The only way to stop this abuse is either: 1) Give up on the public internet. 2) Get rid of the abusers.

      I think we both know 1 isn't feasible in the current era. So 2 is the only remaining option. Regardless of how unrealistic it may seem, as 2 is more likely t
  • by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Sunday April 21, 2024 @08:08AM (#64411858) Journal

    ...at least we know in the hands of Uncle Sam, it won't be abused.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    TikTok represents a platform that the US gov't and intelligence agencies cannot control. If anyone hasn't realized, US media is controlled, moderated and slanted (has been for a long time). I think this is more dangerous for the US in terms of the narratives out there that the gov't and intelligence do not want you being exposed to, than China even giving a sh*t about your privacy or what's in your personal world. Always blame China LOL The US likely doing just as much.... probably worse... behind c

  • which will alter the training data for the AI models.
  • I see the Uniparty struck again. But, privacy experts are concerned.

Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve. - Anonymous

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