SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.