Key sections of the USA PATRIOT Act expired
According to the AP, reporting at exactly midnight June 1, the sunset clause of sections 215 et al. has gone into effect, causing those sections to expire.
This link has the rest:
NSA Bulk Phone Records Collection Expires
Phoenix666 writes:
The Senate failed to pass legislation late Sunday to extend three Patriot Act surveillance measures ahead of their midnight expiration. The National Security Agency's bulk telephone metadata collection program—first exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013—is the most high-profile of the three spy tools whose legal authorization expired.
[...] "Are we willing to trade liberty for security?" asked Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), perhaps the most vocal opponent of the legislation. Despite an apparent victory, Paul had no illusions that this fight for privacy would end after these specific extension talks. "The Patriot Act will expire tonight, but it will only be temporary," he added.
Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) said it was time to stand up to terrorists and make "sure that we're doing everything we can to protect Americans from threats of people and a lot of organizations that want to kill us all, that would like to see us—see our heads on the chopping block."
After news of the imminent expiration broke, the American Civil Liberties Union quickly weighed in. "Congress should take advantage of this sunset to pass far-reaching surveillance reform, instead of the weak bill currently under consideration," the group said.
Original Submission-1 Original Submission-2
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2015, @04:06PM
Yeah, you see, we never turned off collection because... err... we need to keep you safe...
Also, we knew that in a couple of days, they'd pass a law anyway that re-enables us to do all of this crap and that this law will be retro-active so ... yeah... There was never a reason to turn it off.
How do we know they will pass that law? Because these politicians are in *our pocket*! It's not that /we/ threaten them directly you see... it's much more subtle than that. We've created an environment where they threaten themselves by seeming 'soft' on terror. Basically they are self-censoring. Something we want you to do as well, citizen!
(Score: 4, Touché) by Nerdfest on Monday June 01 2015, @04:35PM
... also, isn't "three spy tools whose legal authorization expired" a bit off base? As far I (and many others) can tell it directly contravenes the Constitution.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Monday June 01 2015, @07:11PM
Further the press continues to phrase this as: "the Senate failed to pass legislation", like it was a mistake or an over-site.
It was nothing of the kind. It was a concerted effort to let it die, an intentional act, and the very purpose the bill contained a sunset clause.
The authors of the original legislation knew they were walking a constitutional tight rope when they wrote it. That's why it had a sunset clause.
Personally I think sunset clauses ought to be made more rigorous, maybe requiring a 90% vote, but I see no way to do that in the current world.
The administration has fought tooth and nail to prevent a straight up SCOTUS case from ever coming before the court, and they have lost on the few that managed to slip through the sieve.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday June 01 2015, @07:39PM
A complete list of terrorist plots stopped by NSA bulk data collection:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
"Lisa, I want to buy your rock." [blogsport.eu]
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 3, Funny) by el_oscuro on Monday June 01 2015, @11:44PM
ORA-01403: No data found.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Monday June 01 2015, @09:46PM
Which is more likely:
A) A sudden bipartisan outbreak of common sense where our politicians finally agreed the Patriot Act was a bad idea
or
B) The two parties have been fighting over how to renew it so as to give the most advantage to their own party
?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Monday June 01 2015, @11:49PM
And don't discount the possibility of some very public arrest being made to ward off an imminent terrorist attack, or allowing one one to happen that they already were warned about, just to make a point.
Look back over the years, and each time there was talk about repeal, there is another useful idiot captured by the FBI or ATF with a car load of (inert) explosives (provided by the government).
Part of me doesn't want to believe the would actually let anybody die to prove a point. The harder they fight for total surveillance provisions the smaller that part gets. Pass the Tinfoil!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Dale on Monday June 01 2015, @04:47PM
Exactly. I don't actually have any faith that they even let off the gas in their race to suck every scrap of information up. In some ways it is actually worse now. Since they can now point and say "we stopped when the law expired" even if they didn't. Now you have to have another leak to "prove" they are lying through their teeth (still). Ideally Congress could pass something specifically forbidding this with appropriate time-in-jail penalties for when they get caught doing it.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday June 01 2015, @09:42PM
WONDERFUL
The NSA also needs another leak, just to prove themselves as not being the lying pieces of shit that they are. Every single ounce of credibility they ever had with the American public was annihilated by Snowden. Unequivocal factual proof that they were indeed lying .
The shoe's on the other foot. Now when I speak to clients, friends, family, you people on the Internet, I'm *no longer assumed* to be a raving lunatic when I say the NSA is collecting those dick & tit pics, and much worse. It's just assumed now that I'm more than likely right, instead of the government more than likely being benign. I could care less about the NSA at this point as they just created a nearly endless market, based purely on just how much you can't trust them.
It works for me that they can no longer defend themselves, specifically their honor, ever again. Plus, they have sincerely pushed forward the impetus to create truly secure and decentralized platforms for the rest of us to communicate.
(The next President of the USA should just pardon Snowden and get it over with)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 02 2015, @02:12AM
For me it's gone even further to secure and decentralized platforms for everything, hardware, software, networks, energy, everything.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday June 02 2015, @07:17PM
:D
Yep. It's an amazing thing when you fully realize you can't trust the government or any corporation to act like human beings. So you need to get together with a group of them left you can find.... to decentralize and secure communications... so we can act like human beings again to each other without interference from those refusing to not act like sociopaths.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 5, Funny) by bob_super on Monday June 01 2015, @04:14PM
I just checked, the Terrorists have not blown me up yet.
nope.
Still not..
Maybe now?
I guess not.
I'll keep you posted as we near the end of the world.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by opinionated_science on Monday June 01 2015, @04:19PM
can we please have a higher limit on Score like Ars sort of does? Sometimes Funny doesn't cover it and a "Hilarious" tag would be nice ;-)
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday June 01 2015, @06:25PM
How about "SMP funny" which gives a karma bonus?
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday June 01 2015, @09:30PM
Symmetric Multi-Processing funny?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday June 02 2015, @10:37AM
I was going for "Shit My Pants"
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2015, @04:38PM
Silence! I Kill You!
In all seriousness, I am about as scared of terrorist activities here in the states as anyone should be of Achmed.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Monday June 01 2015, @06:20PM
Actually the terrorists have blown you up. I mean, they let the PATRIOT act expire? That cannot be the real world! Clearly the terrorists blew you up, and you're now in afterlife. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Monday June 01 2015, @05:06PM
If they hate us for our freedom, this is a step towards getting them to hate us even more. #Murica
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by K_benzoate on Monday June 01 2015, @05:16PM
Even if they could make a convincing case that these activities, which are unconstitutional, actually made us safe (they can't), it still wouldn't matter. I don't want to be safe if it comes at the cost of my privacy, and anyone who thinks it through comes to the same conclusion. It might be easier for police to catch terrorists if they can track every phone call with their NSA panopticon. It would also be easier for them to catch criminals if they could walk into any house at any time and have a look around. There are any number of things we could do to "make their job easier" but we don't do them because privacy is valuable. There is no freedom of expression without privacy and anonymity, and all other freedoms fade and decay without free expression.
Living in a free society means you have to take your licks some times. There will be bombs and attacks now and again. People will die. It might be you next time, or me. While you're alive though, you get to live as a free man and not as a slave or a serf or a mere "subject" of a government who sees all you do and knows all you say. Being afraid is fine, but being a coward is un-American. And at bottom that's what the PATRIOT Act is; the desperate pleading of a coward to some authority to make the world safe. The world isn't safe, and when you think through the consequences of trying to make it so, you realize you don't even want it to be.
Find your backbone, and be willing to risk death for the chance to live the way you know you ought: as free people, and not cowards. And in reality, the threat was never even that great to begin with.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 01 2015, @05:28PM
Dayum! Great post! I came here to say much the same thing, and to say that I'll be voting for Paul unless something crazy happens between now and time to vote. Great job. Mod +500 insightful.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Monday June 01 2015, @06:42PM
Yep, I'm a Libertarian, but I might have to "cross party lines" to vote for RP as he's the closest realistic chance we have of getting someone in close to Libertarian.
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday June 03 2015, @01:57AM
I really wish I could, but how do you feel about the fact Rand Paul is a religious fucking nutter [randpaul.com]?
While he says great, great, things about freedom [randpaul.com], he will in the same breath tell you about God, conception, and how his Libertarian ideals don't apply to vaginas. I have a real issue with somebody who apparently can't reconcile their own concepts of freedom, civil rights, Libertarianism in general, and how all of that equally applies to a woman and her vagina. It makes me think he has real issues upstairs.
It's for this reason, that I cannot possibly be comfortable with him in a position of real power. He can deeply contradict himself to control women's bodies, purely over religious views, so why can't he decide during his tenure that other purely religious views deserve such notable exceptions to his own rules?
That, and regulation isn't the enemy of progress, free markets, or family businesses. In fact, in some cases, it's the only reason we still have progress, free markets, or family businesses surviving at all. Rand Paul, if he had his way, would essentially gut all environmental regulation in favor of industry self regulation. Yeah, he's a fucktard. You elect him President, and he makes changes, you can kiss goodbye to a clean America, and say hello to a dirty China.
What about all the protected species soon to go extinct? Once again, ol' Rand is doubling down on Libertarianism to save the day somehow. Except, we've never seen any evidence that free markets spontaneously do the right things when it's unprofitable.
He is such a half and half. One half I want to be President, and the other half belongs on public television ranting about God's will and the unbelievers soon to burn in fire and brimstone, rabble, rabble, rabble....
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 03 2015, @01:51PM
I suspect that you are seeing the president as having more power than he actually has. That could be the result of the current president, who routinely usurps the power of congress. But, congress is beginning to push back, I think. And, at least some courts are beginning to push back as well. O'bummer's amnesty program has been derailed for awhile, right?
If elected, Paul isn't going to change American society. Not unless the American public LIKES his style of leadership, and more people like him get elected to office.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Kromagv0 on Monday June 01 2015, @06:44PM
Well considering that the NSA's claim that the bulk spying and data collection on Americans had prevented over 50 attacks has proven to be an outright lie [theguardian.com], and that even the spying that has been done by the FBI hasn't helped to crack any terrorism cases [washingtontimes.com] I would rather have the imperceptible decrease in my personal safety from terror attacks and live in a freer country than give up constitutionally guaranteed rights to be safe from government searches and general warrants and have an infinitesimal greater chance of being taken out by Jihadi John. When put in perspective it shouldn't even be up for consideration but try to get the majority to realize that.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Monday June 01 2015, @08:52PM
It would also be easier for them to catch criminals if they could walk into any house at any time and have a look around. There are any number of things we could do to "make their job easier" but we don't do them because privacy is valuable.
There is no house in america (with the possible exception of a toy doll house) in which the police could not find some violation, infraction, or crime with which to cite you. There are bomb making materials in every house such as wires and timers and many innocent things that could be combined to go boom in some way or another.
You may laugh and insist this never happens in real life. But if they want to hold you, or they want time to obtain a search warrant, anything will suffice, even if the charges are all dropped in a few days.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 01 2015, @11:19PM
If the terrorists get an opportunity they may harm some people and then get caught. If the government get and opportunity they may harm everybody and you can only comply or get harmed even more. Thus there needs to be a balance such that no unregulated entity may get an power edge over others.
Some people got the clue early on: "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."
(said somewhere between 1706 – 1790)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dunbal on Monday June 01 2015, @05:40PM
Because somehow the government that is completely ignoring many laws is going to stop ignoring the laws now that some other law has sunset. Talk about a logic error.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by TestablePredictions on Monday June 01 2015, @06:01PM
Not everything can be a slam-dunk. The abolition of chattel slavery in America took a whole series of reforms leading up to it, and series of reconstruction afterwards. And several other examples of terrible things slowly righted over time.
Baby steps.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday June 01 2015, @06:08PM
You seriously think a government that feels it is no longer bound by the laws it enforces on its people is going to gradually get better all by itself in time? History shows otherwise.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SubiculumHammer on Monday June 01 2015, @06:38PM
I think that the courts will have something to say about that. I think congress would have something to say about that too. There is a lot of grease, true, but when one flagrantly defies the other, there is hell with two solutions: 1) The executive/secret service branch dissolves the rest of government, or 2)The executive/secret service branch complies to the law of the land. Balance of powers will resolve this to some degree, because those powers have little reason to cede their authority.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Tuesday June 02 2015, @12:39AM
Except the courts will never see any of it because whoops - national security.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Tuesday June 02 2015, @05:31PM
and congress can defund those programs, and all the ops will go home to be with their families.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Kromagv0 on Monday June 01 2015, @06:23PM
Unfortunately this is only a temporary victory. Even though the PATRIOT Act wasn't renewed the USA FREEDOM Act is looking like it will pass. It got a 77-17 up vote on a procedural measure that allows a full vote which sounds like it will be happening on Tuesday, aka enjoying broad bi-partisan support. If anyone cares you can see which of your senators supports the bill here [senate.gov]. I have already contacted my freedom hating Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken encouraging them to vote against it but both did support the procedural vote and likely will vote to pass it. I don't expect a response back from Franken, and on the remote chance I get one from Klobuchar it will be patronizing as hell thanking me for my support of her decision to vote for it.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2015, @07:47PM
WTF? Do other laws have timing slop written into them?
"These provisions will expire around the 31st"?
"plus-or-minus"?
"During the next Harvest Moon"?
(Score: 2) by mendax on Monday June 01 2015, @09:00PM
I am the love child of Osama bin Laden and I worship the ground he stood on.
Death to America.
Obama is the other Great Satan.
*waiting*
*waiting*
*waiting*
Well, no cruise missile has come through the window to blow me to atoms yet. I guess their not listening.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Monday June 01 2015, @10:56PM
Their waiting for the grammar nazis to get you first.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Monday June 01 2015, @11:59PM
Uh... yeah. Mea culpa. Actually, this is a mistake I make quite often but I usually catch it before it goes live. I know the difference, but my fingers sometimes don't get the message! But I think one grammar Nazi has already found me out! Also sieg heil, mein fartenfueher!
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.