Senator Tom Cotton Introduces Bill That Would Renew Section 702 Forever With Zero Changes
from the shut-up,-they-legislated dept
The debate over the renewal of Section 702 surveillance continues, but a group of legislators is looking to short-circuit the discussion. Senator Tom Cotton and a whole bunch of Republicans have introduced a bill that would ensure this discussion is never raised again. [h/t Julian Sanchez]
Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) along with Senators Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), John Cornyn (R-Texas), John McCain (R-Arizona), Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), Pat Roberts (R-Kansas), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), John Thune (R-South Dakota), and David Perdue (R-Georgia) today introduced legislation making Section 702, and the entirety of Title VII, of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) permanent.
This followed Cotton's statements on the Senate floor, where he used recent attacks in the UK to make incoherent points about domestic security.
The attacks in London last weekend exposed in a matter of minutes just how vulnerable our free societies truly are. All it takes is a van or a knife and an unsuspecting bystander to turn a fun night out on the town into a horrific nightmare. Course, we shouldn't need any reminders, but let me give one yet again: We are at war with Islamic extremists. We have been for years, and, I'm sorry to say, there's no end in sight. It's easy to forget this as we go about our daily lives, but our enemies have not-and they will not. They've never taken their eyes off the ultimate target either: the United States.
Attacks in other countries are apparently just pre-game warmups for terrorists. The only way to prevent a domestic attack is to never ask questions about Section 702 again, apparently. If we don't trust our government to respect our privacy and civil liberties, it's not because the NSA constantly abused its Section 702 collection programs (and then hid these abuses from its oversight). No, the real villain here is the man who exposed this abuse to the general public.
Unfortunately, this and other programs were distorted in the public debate by a traitor, disgruntled ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who now sits in the warm embrace of Russian intelligence services. And ever since his very damaging leak of classified material a few years back, many Americans have grown doubtful of these programs-and section 702 in particular.
I love it when someone describes the dumping of internal documents as "distorting." It underlines the speaker's desire to have the Great Unwashed remain in the dark while the government expands its collection capabilities and surveillance powers.
Cotton's Senate statement goes on to make it clear that nothing but a "forever" renewal will do, while handwaving away NSA abuses with meaningless phrases about privacy protections.
It's true that this program occasionally does collect information about American citizens-and that will be true of any attempt to stop any kind of homegrown terrorism. But if you're concerned about protecting Americans' privacy rights, then you should support extending this program. It puts in place a host of privacy protections to scrub raw intelligence of any unnecessary identifying information. To allow this program to expire on December 31 would hurt both our national security and our privacy rights.
That's why today I'm introducing a bill that would reauthorize section 702 permanently, as is, with no changes.
If nothing changes, then the "host of privacy protections" simply don't exist. The NSA itself made the biggest step towards fixing its routine, decade-long run of privacy violations by dropping the "about" program. A clean re-auth adds nothing to anyone's privacy. A forever re-auth would ensure this status quo in perpetuity.
As astounding as Cotton's contradictory assertions are, they're topped by Sen. Lindsey Graham. Earlier in the day, Graham was reported to have stated he would not support the reauthorization of this surveillance program because it could be "politically manipulated." And yet his name appears in the list of legislators pushing this bill.
So here we are, with the debate just officially beginning in the Senate and already surveillance proponents are making it clear they're not interested in discussing Section 702. Ever.
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Filed Under: nsa, oversight, section 702, surveillance, tom cotton
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Soooo Good
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"... a bill that would ensure this discussion is never raised again."
And virtually every day, we get to watch the effects of legislation and rulemaking that is carved in stone, never to be revisited to accommodate new environments, shifting contexts or even radical changes in underlying technologies.
How's that been working out?
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From the Government to the Governed:
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The attacks in London last weekend exposed in a matter of minutes just how vulnerable our free societies truly are...
...To being destroyed by the actions of people like Tom Cotton.
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Distorted?
What's he talking about? There was no public debate about 702 before Edward Snowden.
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Re: Distorted?
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Re: Soooo Good
There are people out there who think very thing (except for the 'every' they hear 'most' or 'almost all')
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Re: Re: Distorted?
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Permanent?
Couldn't a new majority in Congress just pass a new law that invalidates the whole thing?
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Re: Re: Re: Distorted?
Markdown's fine, just takes some getting used to. It's a lot less verbose than HTML ("> " instead of "<blockquote></blockquote>") and it's based on plain-text formatting conventions that people have been using in e-mail for decades.
It's jarring the first couple of times you try to use HTML and it doesn't work, and it takes a little bit of time to pick up Markdown conventions, but it's not bad once you get the hang of it.
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Re: Permanent?
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Re:
I used to hear the claim "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it!"
Bruce Sterling gave the counterpoint: "The NSA interpreted privacy as damage and routed around it."
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Re: Permanent?
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Must make them real proud - go home and tell the kids about how you screwed them real good this time.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 7th, 2017 @ 9:46am
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Re: Re: Permanent?
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 7th, 2017 @ 9:46am
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"It's not my fault for trying to sneak a cookie, it's your fault for catching me."
And ever since his very damaging leak of classified material a few years back, many Americans have grown doubtful of these programs-and section 702 in particular.
This reminds me of the peeping tom defense I've seen raised in defense of such programs, the idea that the programs themselves aren't the problem, it's people knowing about them that's the problem, with nary a thought spent towards why people might not care for them and instead blaming the person who exposed the program(s).
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Where does ISIS get their money from? Hint: It's not from any of the West's official enemies/adversaries (Russia, China, Iran, North Korea).
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We won't mention all of the abuses of this program & the simple fact it did NOTHING to stop the alleged terror* attacks that actually happened.
We don't know if the program works, because those charged with oversight care more about soundbites than citizens. We keep everything super duper secret because even MENTIONING the name of a program will alert our enemies in the middle of deserts fighting on all fronts to figure out how the program works, go dark, and launch a new wave of terror upon us!!
These morons don't know what the programs actually do, who has access, and everything happening with the data. Hell the agencies can and do lie to their faces & work to derail any investigations into what they are doing. This is a very expensive tiger repelling rock, and we need to buy more rocks or more tigers might slip through.... or perhaps we should see if any tigers were actually repelled & at what cost.
Stop promising we can be 100% safe, its impossible.
Stop saying its to stop terrorism, when we can see its used in so many ways with no terrorism connections... because we don't dare question... because then people might think we WANT tigers to attack us.
* - alleged terror attacks
Some jackass does something, shouts a couple trendy Arabic phrases, Isis takes credit, the world quakes in fear. "In depth" investigation shows he watched a YT video that one time & that was what radicalized him... not the growing public sentiment that the only safe Muslim is a deported Muslim.
Some "preachers" claim that God sent the storm to punish us for not murdering all teh gays, if I decided to take credit for the storm would everyone fear me then? Am I suddenly the most powerful homo ever? Or am I just taking credit for a tragedy to increase my claims to fame?
Wait, do you hear that?? Was it thunder... or my anger that shook the sky?
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Well, kudos for coming out and saying it, rather than putting it as a rider on an unrelated bill hoping nobody notices.
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Re:
I've got GB's GE2017 on my mind; the Tories have got to go. Wish us luck.
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Re: "It's not my fault for trying to sneak a cookie, it's your fault for catching me."
your rights are not violated if you do not know about it.
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 7th, 2017 @ 9:46am
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Re: Re:
I don't know about the UK, but in the US it's due to them largely being overjoyed at the concept of controlling everything with impunity. So much so that we have their supporters making statements like: "I'm happy to see the liberals running around with their heads cut off, it's fun." They are ecstatic over the idea pushing through anything that they want, anyone else's concerns be damned. At this point, I'm just waiting for them to try messing with the one issue that will explode like a powder keg. They are apparently incapable of realizing that when the tables turn, not only will they be in the same position as those they are mocking, but it will be justified by their own actions. That they are creating a new normal, by lowering the bar for society yet again. Only now it's set to: "Might makes right." Which long term, is fatal for a society.
At this point I'm not sure whether or not they know that they are going to have set backs as a result of their behavior, or if they just plan to do away with elections when the time comes. (Or at least any form of election where they can actually loose power.) It's a sad state of affairs.
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