Paul noted that "the information on foreigners is gathered in a less-than-Constitutional manner – and most of us are okay with that
And still it's claimed the Privacy Figleaf is "satisfactory".
A bipartisan group of US senators have lambasted an effort to force permanent authorization of a controversial warrantless American spying program through Congress by attaching it to an end-of-year spending bill, calling the effort "an end-run around the Constitution." At a press conference Tuesday morning, Senators Ron Wyden …
Congress critters need to be recalled and ejected from the Senate/House if they vote for unconstitutional legislation. If we did more of this, they wouldn't be passing this garbage willy-nilly, knowing their jobs and golden parachutes were at stake. (We probably need an amendment making them lose their golden parachute if they are recalled from office.)
They have ONE job -- to uphold and defend the Constitution. It's the only thing they have to swear to in order to take office. To pass unconstitutional garbage is simply a complete failure to perform the job they were hired to do. Fire them.
"Congress critters need to be recalled and ejected from the Senate/House if they vote for unconstitutional legislation"
Completely in agreement. The constitution is apparently only sacred if it upholds your own values, otherwise who cares? Many Republicans go literally up in arms if someone mentions gun control because, constitution*. Same for allowing corporations to have freedom of speech**, and a bunch of others.
*Never mind that the constitution only mentions citizenry freely possessing weapons in the context of militias not for private use
**Never mind that it's a stretch to equate a legal person to a natural person
I simple don't understand why the rules should allow tacking one (or more) distinct, unrelated items onto a bill.
I can see why, from the standpoint from expedience, it could help move things along in the limited time available but that benefit cannot out-weigh the IMMENSE potential for abuse.
This ability is used, time and again, everywhere it is allowed, to push through legislation that otherwise could not pass on its own. And, if a piece of legislation can't pass on its own, tacking it onto another bill like this is a deliberate attempt to circumvent democracy.
"I simple don't understand why the rules should allow tacking one (or more) distinct, unrelated items onto a bill."
It's got a long and not entirely shining reputation. In Westminster, back in the days when divorce required an Act of Parliament one way to do that was to tack on a clause to some other Act.
I simple don't understand why the rules should allow tacking one (or more) distinct, unrelated items onto a bill.
It's been around for a long, long time and used for attaching such things as "pork barrel projects", unpopular laws, and every popular "special interest tax rates" whereby a company's tax rate (or individual for that matter) are granted. For companies it's usually something like "a company that incorporated at 11:15 am on Feb. 20, 1975 in (city, state) is granted a tax rate of XX%. It's surprising to see the crap tucked into bills for "important stuff" by CongresCritters.
While most of us may be OK with that, I am not. The constitution requires behavior of the federal government whether the people involved are citizens or not. Foreigners have a reasonable expectation of privacy as well as citizens. Even if those foreigners are not actually in the US.
That's not actually true though. Legally this has already been adjudicated that constitutional protections apply to anyone in the jurisdiction or custody of the United States and its territories, or American citizens who are abroad. The rest of the world being protected by their own governments and various international treaties.
There aren't even any legal protections if they U.S. government gathers intel on you and hands it over to your home country, except again in treaties between nations, your domestic laws and whatever embarrassment the U.S. or your home country would gather from such a shady deal.
Basically, if you live outside the U.S., your in a largely free-fire zone as far as the U.S. constitution is concerned
"Basically, if you live outside the U.S., your in a largely free-fire zone as far as the U.S. constitution is concerned"
True, but non-US citizens on US soil are protected, and what the senator said is that in the case of foreigners (not further qualified, so I infer, all of them, even on US soil), US constitution is not being upheld and he (along with many other people) doesn't care
"But there has been no time for public debate on those bills."
That seems to be the modus operandi of the McConnell/Ryan Congress: Block public debate on important bills at any cost, vis. the soon-to-be-passed and never-to-be-sufficiently-cursed tax heist. I honestly suspect that it might be possible to draw a graph demonstrating that the more important the bill being considered, the shorter the allowed period for debate, and vice versa.
"Paul noted that "the information on foreigners is gathered in a less-than-Constitutional manner – and most of us are okay with that"
There are several thousand million people who are NOT okay with that.
European laws protect people and their rights, whatever country they happen to be citizens of. US laws protect only US citizens and regard non-citizens as not real people and having no rights.
> There are several thousand million people who are NOT okay with that.
> European laws protect people and their rights, whatever country they happen to be citizens of.
Oh, Really. Re-he-he-he-he-he-he-he-eally.
I believe in Santa Claus and The Fairy Godmother.
One word: Teufelsberg.
I chose this one very carefully. It is no longer operational. It was shut down after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While it was operational, it was affectionately referred to as Berlin's Balls.
You think it was the only one operating in Germany? Or in the EU, for that matter?
Why don't you ask Frau Kanzlerin how protected you really are by Germany's Privacy Laws and by the GDPR.
Please tell me that your government has absolutely no idea of what's going on with these radomes. They thought these were for studying bird migration patterns.
No offense intended, but: Pot. Kettle. Black.
Sincerely,
The Ugly 'Murican.
Mike, were you just born, or did you miss things like "we have to pass it to find out what's in it"?
This isn't partisan - it's big and powerful vs little.
What was of, by and for the people is now above the people - at least in their own eyes....
And while it's good when a government is afraid of its people, that's not true about this kind of afraid - the reason for this internal surveillance is obviously to avoid the pitchforks and lamp posts by nipping serious dissent in the bud.
This push has been going on for longer than a lot of Reg readers have been alive...I used to work for the community myself. It's just that now, they're not even trying to hide it.
The whole "tacking onto a spending bill" routine.
Classic.
Here's the thing.
This has been running 10 years and frankly the BS excuses used to justify it first time round have now been shown to be BS excuses.
My instinct is fail to get to get it re-authorized by year end then re-challenge that "It's still valid till April". If that goes then they have to formally shut it down.
However without effective oversight (and I don't think there has been effective oversight) how can you know if the TLA's have done as they have been told?
As suspected once data fetishists get this sort of capability you may have to pry it out of their cold dead hands to stop them using it.
"pretending that it is not really a search but a "query" of an existing database"
Wow, that's a stretch of syntactic logic if I ever saw one. If you want to be pedantic about it, a plain SELECT statement is a query. As soon as you add a WHERE clause (iterated through any ETL logic, views, SPs etc), it's a search.
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