How bad can the new spying legislation be? Exhibit 1: it's called the USA Liberty Act The US Senate Judiciary Committee has unveiled its answer to a controversial spying program run by the NSA and used by the FBI to fish for crime leads. Unsurprisingly, the proposed legislation [PDF] reauthorizes Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) – which allows American snoops to scour …
-That is very, very far from what FISA was intended to do: the clue being in the "F" for "Foreign" in FISA.-
Well, if your net worth is less than a billion, or hold an office to induce the billionaires to 'donate' 'campaign funding' for favors, you're in a whole 'nother country as far as they're concerned.
Which part of "the equal protection of the laws" do people not understand?
If there is a law that says "US citizens enjoy these protections, and foreigners in the same situation don't" - that law is already unconstitutional. The lawmakers who voted for it, and the president who signed it, all deserve impeachment on those grounds alone.
If the 4th amendment collides with the 14th, something's gotta give. And that "something" will be determined by whoever is making the judgment call that day. Guess how that's going to go?
You can campaign for a third party until you're black in the face. It won't happen. If voting changed anything, it would be illegal. And if campaigning for a third party changed anything...
Look at what happened when Ross Perot and Ralph Nader tried to run as independents. They were both far better men and candidates than the party candidates, but they got buried. The story is always that a vote for anyone other than the good ol' Republican or Democrat is a vote wasted.
If Congress requests the number of American citizens in their database, and the NSA gives them the runaround, then Congress needs to shut down the NSA and/or cut off all their funding. The NSA needs to know who their bosses are. Why is that so hard for Congress to understand?
And lose the next election as their opponents paints them as exposing Americans to danger and personally responsible for the next terrorist attack?
The people are afraid. They demand that something highly visible be done to reassure them that they are safe. Not easy to do, when the media are constantly pushing people into a ratings-raising panic.
Does anyone wonder why Apple goes as far as they do to encrypt things in a way that even they can't access it? Not only on the iPhone itself, but also with parts of (eventually working towards all of) your iCloud data using Hardware Security Modules that after they program they shred the keycards for so that even they don't have access to the encryption keys they hold.
They know the only way to protect people's privacy is not only to make it so the government can't access your data, but also so that THEY can't access it. Laws like these show the government's true intent is to have access to everything and they'll stop at nothing to get it - even trying to force cooperation from US corporations. The "protections" here are just window dressing to fool the gullible and give congresscritters who vote for it cover, so they can claim "there is citizen oversight".
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"
If you can't hide anything at all, no matter what, you aren't free. People have tried to turn this one back on the Gov. to see how they like - they just clam up and start re-defining terrorist.
We've been in an invisible cage for a while now, most people aren't aware of it at all. The only way you could tell in the past was when you accidentally hit the walls without realising it. Now the walls are closing in a more people are bumping into them, but too many people still don't see it.
As the great prophet once said: "We be fucked!"
All discussion of such topics is really a waste of breath. The only practical rule you need to know, and keep in mind, is that government is always right, and has the right to do absolutely anything (that it has the physical power to do).
Admittedly there are layers and layers of impressive-looking laws, treaties, constitutions and precedents forbidding governments to be naughty. But those are never enforced - they are purely ornamental.
If you should be in doubt, pick a law, treaty, constitution or precedent and just try getting it enforced against a government that is cheerfully ignoring it.
"[Y]ou know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”...
Not that I don't approve of the sentiment, but you are aware that unless you plan to visit the US of A (or do something sufficiently naughty to get them to want to extradite you) you should have much more reason to fear your own GCHQ [or insert alternate domestic Big Brother as appropriate] than the NSA, right? Keeping your data this side of the pond will do nothing to protect you from your very own gubmint...
I have a little more control on my own government, and also I can sue it locally. Also, privacy laws here are quite stronger than in the "land of freedom".
That's why I'd like foreign companies in a state with a government which looks in full McCarthy mode, not to have my data. Also, I hope the same companies will think about lost business when they're going to spend money lobbying in the US....
I'm restraining myself. Haven't mentioned it for weeks, but this example is about as egregious as they come...
I can't imagine why anyone in the U.S. should be investigated for Foreign terrorist activities. The bad guys and gals are only in other countries, right?
For those who don't get it you have the manipulative media leading the gullible when it comes to attacking legitimate use of security data acquisition and analysis. Those so technically challenged as to not understand the legitimate reasons for authorities to examine all electronic communications data are doomed to be led like sheeple to an incorrect assessment of civil rights and national security.
“We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.
We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
George Orwell, 1984
it is all(ways) an act.
If one really wants to review the issue, lets start with weapons. Any weapon. And say, where was it made, where was it sold, and who used it last. I think it would astonish most folks to learn that weapons, parts of weapons, transport of weapons, sales of weapons marketing of weapons has been so utterly integral to the evolution of the US of A for the last ..... ooo ... 120 years or so .... perhaps -- much longer. Weapons, production, transport, sales, training, advise on deployment and use of are very valuable.
And strangely -- there are rather a lot of weapons manufacturers in the USA.
And strangely, if there are foreign rebels that needs supporting against a vile dictatorship there are weapons. To be sold, transported, sold on again, traded for, deployed and used.
Mind you sometime those rebels, well they manage to cook up ugly ugly ugly "democratic" republics, and that regime just might need changing while we're at it. And this requires weapons. And intelligence, and transport, and ammunition.
Yes, yes, yes, LIBERTY!!! we'll enact LIBERTY!!! for the FOX news listeners.
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