Last night, we noted that an amendment from Reps. Thomas Massie and Zoe Lofgren was on the docket that had two provisions to stop two different kinds of surveillance: the first, taking away funding from "backdoor searches" which are a hugely problematic "loophole" that the NSA uses to do warrantless surveillance of Americans. In many ways, this is much worse than the bulk collection programs that were just hindered by the USA Freedom Act. The second part of the amendment was barring funds from being used to mandate "backdoors" into technology products -- another hugely important move. Thankfully, the amendment passed by a wide margin earlier today: 255 - to 174.
The article goes on to mention that a similar amendment was proposed and passed with a much wider margin in previous debates last year, but was later dropped when passing the higher profile "CRomnibus bill" required it.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday June 15 2015, @02:05PM
The last time Congress tried to shut this thing down [eff.org] over 10 years ago, they simply renamed it, classified it more heavily, and continued on as if nothing had happened.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 15 2015, @02:33PM
When it comes to this kind of thing, there must be hangings and life sentences or none of the shutting down happened.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday June 15 2015, @02:42PM
There's this little constitutional clause called the "ex post facto" provision. Congress can't just arbitrarily punish people because they changed their mind about their own aggressively stupid legal language.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @02:44PM
There are many things in the constitution, and the government happily ignores so much of it. At the very least, there needs to be real punishments for politicians who vote for unconstitutional bills and people who violate the constitution.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by ikanreed on Monday June 15 2015, @02:59PM
"I'm totally for the constitution, except when it's moderately inconvenient to how I'd act as a dictator" isn't the compelling argument you think it is.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Geezer on Monday June 15 2015, @03:00PM
The last seven or so US presidents beg to differ.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @03:01PM
Straw man. That's not what I said. Maybe you should reread my post, as I was making fun of the idea that the government actually cares about what the constitution says.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @03:04PM
If you're talking about the latter part, then I'm really not seeing how punishing those who violate the highest law of the land is an issue, but that doesn't relate to ex post facto. I guess it's an issue if you don't really want the government to obey the constitution.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday June 15 2015, @03:06PM
It's totally what you meant, though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @03:14PM
No, it isn't, and you're a bad mind reader.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday June 15 2015, @03:22PM
Oh come the fuck on. You said congress ignores the constitution all the time, thus let's do it now. It's not "mind reading", it's you being a shitty fucking hypocrite,
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @03:34PM
You said congress ignores the constitution all the time, thus let's do it now.
The second part is incorrect. I never said that.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday June 15 2015, @03:37PM
Yeah, yeah, context is meaningless. I pointed out a constitutional reason not to do a thing, you went, "nuh uh we ignore the constitution all the time".
This is basic fucking conversational inference, and this is the dumbest meta-debate. Own your stupid opinion, please.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @03:44PM
Context isn't meaningless. I pointed out that the government clearly doesn't care about the constitution, so there's no reason that ex post facto would stop them. I did not say ignoring the constitution was a good idea; that's a straw man.
It's pretty arrogant to try to tell me what I intended.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Tuesday June 16 2015, @01:56AM
there is. the law covering violations of the oath of office [opm.gov] is Title 18 U.S. Code ยง 1918 [cornell.edu]. federal employees who violate the oath of office are to be fined or imprisoned for up to a year. its just never been enforced.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday June 16 2015, @02:12AM
Then that doesn't sound like there are real punishments. Not in practice, anyway.
And a year? For aiding in the violation of possibly nearly everyone's rights? That's too lenient.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 15 2015, @03:15PM
It is logically inconsistent to rely on a legal technicality to excuse the government from violating the 4th Amendment. In other words, it would be to excuse the criminals in DC from blatantly, egregiously breaking the bedrock laws meant to protect the American people from them, the criminals in DC, while binding the American people to a legal technicality meant to protect the criminals in DC from the American people. That gives the criminals in DC license to break any law the American people establish, with impunity. We can say, "Torturing people to death is a crime against humanity," but the criminals in DC mutter, "Mistakes were made," and, "We need to focus on the future, not dwell on the past," and none of them go to jail or to the gallows, as they must and shall.
Likewise the 4th Amendment is clear:
The provenance of that amendment is also clear. The "writs of assistance" the British used as general warrants were a prime driver for the creation of the 4th Amendment. Every American school kid who took civics and American history knows this. You don't need to be a legal scholar to have a firm grasp of that. So to expect the American people to believe and accept that criminals in DC get a free pass because they gave themselves an insipid, self-serving "judgement," unwinding that 250 years of precedent, is sophistry.
They broke the law, and they shall variously go to jail, and hang. If they face no penalty in this system for breaking our most sacred and inviolate laws, then there is no law and no further basis for this system; but that still doesn't mean they will escape jail and hanging. What it does mean is that in the former case, some in government get to live and continue because they have done the job of enforcing our laws as they were hired to do, while in the latter case it means they all go down. The former is preferable, the latter messy.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @04:04PM
American school kids that took civics tend to be in their 40's these days...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @04:40PM
I took civics over 30 years ago and it was taught as horribly as everything else. Fortunately I had the drive to educate myself, but not everyone does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @06:53PM
You would think if they wanted us plebs to understand the law and the laws they have written, they would be in English, or at the very least the teach Latin in the public schools.
(Score: 1) by penguinoid on Monday June 15 2015, @04:18PM
Ignorance of the law does not excuse breaking it. Too bad there doesn't seem to be any punishment for violating the Constitution...
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @02:01AM
Unless you're a cop, a politician, or millionaire.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @02:28PM
The NSA has a scope issue.
They are both directed to protect our communication resources and undermine them.
Considering the sorry state our web resources are in at a federal level I would say they are failing at one of their jobs. Instead of spending so much time scooping up 'intel' perhaps they should devote some time to fixing things?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 15 2015, @02:44PM
Perhaps the sound of approaching thunder and the word "revolution" carrying on the wind has begun to reach Congress. Good, so. They ought now to be mortally afraid of not doing the job they were hired to do, of enforcing the laws of our country and defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, of which the NSA and CIA are two. But Congress's pardon will rest on their future conduct, and a non-negotiable condition of that pardon is that the NSA and CIA must go to prison for the rest of their lives, at the very least.
If Congress does not hang the NSA and CIA, then the American people will hang them all.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Kilo110 on Monday June 15 2015, @03:01PM
"Perhaps the sound of approaching thunder and the word "revolution" carrying on the wind has begun to reach Congress"
too bad it's being drowned out by the sound of The Kardashians and the thousand other trivialities that have taken over national discourse
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 15 2015, @03:20PM
The people whose world revolves around the magazines in the checkout line are not those who change the world. They never have been, and they never will be. That job falls to others for whom freedom is indispensable.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 16 2015, @01:22AM
Unfortunately those folks in the checkout lane get old and then show up every other November to give a vote to their team. I don't think they've ever critically considered the underpinnings of a healthy democratic republic.
Gay rights! Abortion! Other women's health topics! Creationism in schools! They're outlawing Christmas! Dearborn, MI is under Sharia law!
*rolls eyes*
Ok, I have strong opinions about most of those, and most of you folks know what those opinions are or could probably guess. What do we need to do to make the case to the general public that those things are meaningless compared to the government panopticon?
Cannabis prohibition is finally ending. Once that comes to pass at a national level, suddenly we have a lot of spooks, kooks, and thugs with badges that don't have anything to do. I won't believe for a second that they're going to go quietly off to unemployment lines.
Portent for the future? First they came for the jihadis, and I did not speak out because I was not a jihadi. Then they came for people who used unauthorized encryption, and I did not speak out because I did not use unauthorized encryption.* Then they came for BSD users, and I did not speak out because I did not use BSD. Then they came for the athiests and Muslims, and I did not speak out because I was not an athiest or Muslim. Then they came for the socialists and trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist or trade unionist. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
* I would hope I would begin speaking out here personally, but will the everyman, especially as long as he has bread, circuses, and weed?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 16 2015, @04:16AM
They do, for a variety of reasons, and still nothing changes. Flipping the federal government from Republicans to Democrats and back again within a decade and the narrative wears quite thin. I read the partisan blogs from both. People are fed up. On the left, the base really believed Obama would do something different. When he kept Geithner on, they reasoned it was some 11th dimensional chess he was playing, that they had convinced themselves he was a master of for beating Hillary in the primaries. But it signaled status quo. On the right, they've seen Boehner and McConnell getting in bed with Obama, whom they've hated, and been baited to hate, as the anti-Christ. Both sides' partisans are a long way from singing kumbaya, but it has sunk in that the two parties are the two sides of the same coin and that everyone is deceived. I see that narrative everywhere. I also see both sides talking about revolution in sober tones.
If I was a guardian of the status quo, that would make me nervous. When people move from disbelief to acceptance, action isn't long to follow. And reports are that the keepers of the status quo do begin to feel it, too, because the construction of panic rooms in the big houses is up. (Of course that doesn't help much in a revolutionary condition, because panic rooms can be burned out with thermite, encased in concrete to form a tomb, or yanked out of the superstructure and dropped in the ocean) I've read half a dozen editorials in major publications in the last year from some of those wealthy cautioning their peers not to push it too far. They're signs that they're reading the tea leaves the same way we are.
All of it could be avoided if the government and its superiors in corporate America were to radically change how they do business, and move everything back to a more equitable footing, but they really can't. They're committed. They're heavily overrepresented for sociopathy. They surround themselves with people who keep them in a bubble, telling them constantly how wonderful and smart and important they are. If they have any native talent, it withers because really talented people throw themselves at them for pay or prestige and it becomes easy for the masters to slide into indolence, petulance, and autocracy. Round that off with a healthy dose of social darwinism and its attendant dehumanization of the masses of humans who don't have a billion dollars, and they will careen their crazy car right off the cliff.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Monday June 15 2015, @03:05PM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 15 2015, @03:17PM
You are right, and that is backed up by historical fact. The average American has always done nothing, no matter what was happening. But it is the Americans who are not average that count.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Monday June 15 2015, @02:47PM
A certain other C1A organization fought whole wars in secret. So why should this organization be hindered by that pesky government?