Senate May Try To Sneak A Clean Reauth Of Surveillance Powers Into A Must-Pass Coronovirus Bill
from the conspiracy-theorists-v.-surveillance-apologists dept
The USA Freedom Act is up for renewal, bringing with it the usual arguments for preserving the surveillance status quo. But this administration is a little bit different. President Trump remains convinced a Deep State conspiracy exists that is actively trying to unseat him. The FBI added some fuel to the conspiratorial fire by intentionally misleading the FISA court during its investigation of former Trump adviser, Carter Page. The FBI's omission of evidence it had indicating Page wasn't acting as an agent of a foreign power allowed it to continue its surveillance without legal justification.
This has made Trump wary of writing a blank surveillance check. Pervasive surveillance is fine, as long as it doesn't target Trump or his staff. But Trump also firmly believes in sacrificing rights and freedoms on the altar of national security, so there's a new tension on display here.
Attorney General Bill Barr is telling Republicans to listen to Barr's heart and just shove this thing through, no matter what Trump's personal preferences might be.
Attorney General William Barr urged Senate Republicans on Tuesday to renew expiring provisions of a controversial surveillance law that has come under fire from President Donald Trump after its use in investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
And it appears senators are listening… or at least their frontmouth is. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says it's too important to let expire, much less discuss.
“These tools have been overwhelmingly useful, according to our intelligence advisers, and I hope that when the Senate deals with these expiring provisions in a couple weeks, we’ll be able to continue to have them in law, which will of course provide maximum protection for the American people,” McConnell said.
Maybe some of the tools have been "overwhelmingly useful." But one definitely hasn't. The remodeled Section 215 program -- operating under alterations codified with the USA Freedom Act -- has been a bust. When the NSA wasn't overcollecting records (despite having to request them from telcos specifically and directly), it wasn't doing anything useful with the records it did have. The five years under the USA Freedom Act produced a total of two leads, of which only one led to an actual investigation.
Other Republicans seem willing to push the re-up through with little discussion, promising to fix it in post. Senator Lindsey Graham wants to reauthorize it completely, despite being concerned about the issues raised in the Inspector General's report. Procrastinating on fixing problems first observed more than two decades ago is a pretty lazy take from a party that claims intelligence agencies illegally targeted their president.
A few Republicans are leaning the other way, though, suggesting some more reform of surveillance programs could be on the way.
Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rand Paul have both signaled a desire for some type of reform, with Paul tweeting that he “spoke with Trump,” and that the FISA Court — the secret court which approves certain types of surveillance requests from the intelligence community — should be “forbidden from ever spying on or investigating Americans.”
That's a nice thought, but there's no way the FBI (or DOJ, or any of the other fifteen Intelligence Community components) will agree to stop spying on or investigating Americans. The NSA collections are their goldmine of domestic data/communications that can be searched through handy backdoors marked "foreign surveillance only." Cutting them out of this surreptitious intel supply just isn't going to fly, no matter how many legislators back this curtailment of their surveillance powers.
More tension. With the Coronavirus almost literally hanging over the proceedings, there's a chance a clear reauthorization will be tacked onto legislation addressing this issue to ensure it passes without amendments to the USA Freedom Act or the IC's surveillance powers.
The Trump administration’s request for $2.5 billion to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic is likely to become an unstoppable legislative vehicle — as must-pass legislation that congressional leaders of both parties could use to ram through a reauthorization of the FBI’s call detail records program. Such a move would sidestep the House’s reform effort and instead push through a clean reauthorization of the program.
The Senate, said a Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is “threatening to put that clean reauthorization into something like coronavirus funding which would make it impossible to defeat if we don’t come up with a bill here. Pelosi and Schiff will never allow it to expire.”
Some Republican senators want to do some editing of the reauth, mainly for political reasons. Others want zero discussion on the reauthorization and likely would do exactly this to bypass surveillance opponents. It all depends on who gets there first and how much they can add to the Trojan bill before it lands on the president's desk. Given the urgent need to pass a bill to address the spread of the virus, those wanting zero discussion will probably prevail and it will be five more years of business as usual before the next conversation about surveillance programs and powers.
The good news is there seems to be enough people on both sides of the aisle who want to see some reforms enacted so this may end up being one of those rare "must-pass" bills that doesn't have a lot of self-serving garbage attached. We won't know until it's all hashed out, but this is already an anomaly: a bi-partisan agreement that surveillance powers are being abused and some actual oversight should be done by the surveillance state's overseers.
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Filed Under: congress, coronavirus, covid19, fbi, mass surveillance, mitch mcconnell, nsa, section 215, surveillance, usa freedom, william barr
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Trump has routinely annoyed the establishment of the Republican party, so mere party unity is not holding legislators in line behind him. Some Republican legislators may be acting in Trump's interest for various reasons, but we're not seeing blanket party loyalty to hold every Republican legislator in lockstep service to everything Trump wants.
Why only 5 years this time? Given an opportunity like this to ram through any pending legislative garbage on a must-pass bill, it wouldn't surprise me to see the reauthorization be for a longer term, maybe even indefinite.
I believe the correct phrasing is "We need to pass the bill so we can find out what's in it." :)
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What, they expect to hear a conversation between a gang of viruses konspiring to invade all the humans on planet earth? My guess is that it's more likely the tactic of "how can we twist this into a crisis that we can use to push through a surveillance bill with enough reactionary support to have it pass while people are still bickering about the constitution."
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Re:
You better believe that when the cops show up at your door wearing UN biochemical suits and armed with bullpups, they are going to have a dumb look on their faces when you start shouting about constitutional rights while they ransack your house and drag you off to a quarantine facility. This coronavirus was no act of nature.
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Re: Re:
So your theory is that the UN started the virus in China hoping it would spread to countries such as the US so that they could send in troops to the homes of people it would randomly infect and put them in a quarantine center?
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Re: Re: Re:
Well, I didn't accuse the UN of starting the virus, but these foreign UN troops have been in the US now for a couple years. I have been delving deep into other sources for 25 years online. A lot of what I read decades ago is coming to fruition. You take it for what it may be worth to you. I don't have a magic wand.
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Really? Questioning the existence of the Deep State?
Both Left and Right wing sources acknowledge the Deep State. Why do you resist or deride that simple phrase?
Left:
https://www.huffpost.com/topic/deep-state
And Right:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/06/exclusive-stephen-miller-exposes-the-deep-state -a-collection-of-permanent-bureaucrats-enmeshed-inside-the-federal-government/
Strange, what pundits do and say for clicks.
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Re: Really? Questioning the existence of the Deep State?
Because "deep state" implies an orchestrated conspiracy with some hidden agenda when it's more likely just different agencies each seeing the opportunity to grab a bit more power for themselves and not a grand scheme by some illuminati like secret society to take over. "Deep state" is just a good slogan to use on people who need to keep the idea simple and easy to remember so they don't get confused by any details.
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Re: Re: Really? Questioning the existence of the Deep State?
You are either one ignorant son of a bitch or you are full of disinformation covering your own or someone else's tracks. Nice try rookie. You are new?
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derp state
The illuminati and the lizard people have been watching you, better lay low for a bit. Have you bought your survival products yet?
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Re: derp state
Laugh now, but the last thing you'll your dumbass will remember when they do finally take you down is, "fuck, I should have prepared myself mentally and believed those dicks who tried to warn me."
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Re: Re: derp state
Laugh now
I am.
There are no Illuminati or lizard people - just a bunch of dicks trying to warn me about them.
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Re: Re: Re: derp state
You are a little late to the show to start trying to dissuade the unignorant about your agendaless ass.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: derp state
Let me be clear - I'm not trying to fix stupid people. I find them entertaining.
I'm simply saying you're stupid as all fuck if you believe in the illuminati or lizard people.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: derp state
LOL
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: derp state
Oh I don't believe in the Illuminati, but I damn sure know they exist and are running the show behind the scenes as the Council of Forein Relations and Tri-Lateral Commission. Don't try to convince someone about what you know nothing about.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: derp state
Hmmm
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: derp state
Yes. That comment was quite illuminating, wasn't it?
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Re: derp state
Oh the illumita didn't try to pass the first league of nations in the mid 1800s and have their ases spanked by the czar of Russia? Oh.
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Re: Re: derp state
nope!
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Re: Re: Re: derp state
It was the illuminati dumbass!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: derp state
Why did you comment, then reply to your comment, then reply to your reply?
Talking to yourself isn't the problem. But answering yourself is.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: derp state
My father always said that talking to yourself isn't a problem. Answering yourself isn't a problem either. You can even talk to walls.
It's when the walls start talking back that you have a problem.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: derp state
I was actually just saving someone else to have to chime in on that. Now I realize they get even more snide when you save them the trouble like that!
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The one thing that hasn't changed ...
A must pass bill shouldn't exist. At the least, once declared 'must pass' then amendments should be blocked.
I'm amazed we haven't fallen down to this level of chaos years ago, because the system was never designed to actually work.
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Re: The one thing that hasn't changed ...
The system was not designed to work as apparently intended.
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Re: Re: The one thing that hasn't changed ...
I thought that emergencies called for executive orders .... but I guess those are just for show.
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Re: Re: Re: The one thing that hasn't changed ...
Emergency? Fuck those politicians can hardly hide their glee in their faces over how smoothly this has worked so far. New York now has its taste of the coronavirus, a woman from IRAN for fuck sakes. If this isn't a willful act of bio terrorism by our own US customs allowing people from countries already swamped with deaths from the spreading coronavirus, then tell me what it is so I can really have a good laugh.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The one thing that hasn't changed ...
That may be, but I was simply pointing out how there is no need for this mass pass bill.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The one thing that hasn't changed ...
It will soon become ILLEGAL to have the Coronavirus and be out in public. Singapore has already taken these steps against its own citizens.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The one thing that hasn't changed ...
"If this isn't a willful act of bio terrorism by our own US customs allowing people from countries already swamped with deaths from the spreading coronavirus, then tell me what it is so I can really have a good laugh."
It's not.
Playing Devil's Advocate, even if we assume a worldwide conspiracy exists (which i don't), even if a cabal of shady politician powermongers are being evil just because hey, EVIL (which I doubt, but can't, given the existence of people like Bill Barr, entirely disavow any longer), and even if the US customs managed to selectively allow coronavirus-afflicted vectors into the country (which would require actual sorcery to be a viable act)...
...then we're STILL looking at a scenario where the would-be masterminds of that operation can only be described as suicidally stupid.
A pandemic can't be targeted. You are essentially arguing that a cabal of would-be masterminds are choosing to use a hand grenade as a close combat weapon.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The one thing that hasn't changed ...
Which is apparently more comforting to some people than the idea that a disease like this can just happen at any time.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The one thing that hasn't changed ...
They just completed a multi trillion dollar underground bunker complex joined by a plethora of tunnels. China also completed their underground complex under 3 Gorges Damn. Do what you want and say what you say, but a few too many politicians I saw were acting a bit too cavilier when the rest of the world had outbreaks and none had been reported in the US yet. UN troops have been stationed in US now for two years or more. Billions spent on hollowpoint ammunition by FEMA. These are foreign troops. It is against geneva convention to use hollowpoint rounds in war. Scary getting scarier.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The one thing that hasn't changed ...
DHS planned to buy (didn't research to see if it actually happened) 1.6 billion rounds of ammo, some of which is hollow point. Not FEMA, unless of course you have a reference for that.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-sec urity-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/#5de3193f624b
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Good idea, but not far enough
I'd actually go a good bit farther than that and say that it should be absolutely prohibited to attach amendments to a bill which are not directly related to the bill itself.
You want to pass a bill automotive related? Great, it can only contain auto-related amendments, anything else attached is rendered null and void as though it didn't even exist.
Healthcare-centered bill dealing with an outbreak? It can only contain amendments related to that outbreak, anything else tacked on is thrown out even if it makes it through.
If a matter is important enough to try to make a law about it or amend the law to deal with it then it's important enough to get it's own bill, no more tacking on completely unrelated amendments to pass things that otherwise would have been shot down on their own.
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Re: Good idea, but not far enough
The corrupt government has eagerly been sending this kind of bullshit through on the hidden sly for decades. You are a little late to start complaining now.. in the twentyfirst century.
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Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
It has been going on like for evarrrrr, so shut up already!!!111111
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Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
Yeah, see? You are starting to get it, right? It isn't so hard to figure out even by your lonesome if you pay attention for a few decades, like six I'm counting.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
Out of warped curiosity, how long do you think the lizard people and/or illuminati have been pulling the strings? Because if 'it's been going on for decades, so no use complaining about it now' is how you want to play things then it seems you'd best take your own advice, shut up, and get used to grovelling to your scaly overlords.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
You are such an ignorant dick. You either obviously don't know a fucking thing or are terrible at trying to make yourself look incredibly wise.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
Yeah, that's about what I expected based upon your other comments. 'When you can't answer, insult', truly the sign of a person engaged in an honest discussion and not trolling.
I'll let other people continue poking at you should they feel like having a go at it, as I have better uses of my time than dealing with either a troll or a paranoid person who thinks childish insults are how you convince people of anything other than 'this is a person you don't need to take seriously'.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
Uh yeah ok
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
I didn't start hurling insults until I was accosted by an ignorant dick!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enoug
Stop beating yourself up about it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far e
I'm pretty sure this is true: I have drank a $MM dollars worth of Budweiser.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
Illuminati as far as I am aware came out of hiding after an article published in 1957 in the Time magazine. Declaring something about the Council of Foreign Affairs. But they had their hands in a lot of crap around the world for more than a hundred years, including the Bolshevic revolution and the murder of the czar and his family.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
Woodrow Wilson and the ratification of the sixteenth amendment..
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
Jimmy Carter replaced his cabinet members with Trilateral commission.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
It may have been in a newspaper article around that time. It may have been Rockefellor or Kissinger, not sure but it was their confident public declaration on page four I think it was.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
"Yeah, see? You are starting to get it, right?"
I have no idea what the hell you are going on about, but have a nice day anyways.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Good idea, but not far enough
I know but read the flagged comment below this comment because he does!
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Yeah, my cunt
So, speech as manifest here at TD comments section is arbitrarily defined.
There is on one hand, free license for shitbags to spout "incel, cis gender, white men, baby rapist blahblah" by total spergs like bhull, and Stephen "My head is in Your ass " Stone, ad infinitum, and on the other hand , the exact idiots spouting that shit have NO IDEA what free speech means because they are stupid fags caught up in the meaninglessness of their generation, and lots of meisms.
But others who fought the fight before them see them as total deep state ass fucker tools, to whit:
http://caroleeschneemann.com/interiorscroll.html
Hence, frivolous, uninformed lawsuits, tried in foreign courts, not in the US, because US juries are full of #Gamergate trained fame whores and spergs.
Makes me wonder what exactly was the leverage that they had over HW, whoever they are.
But its easy: that crippled (but brilliant) hypocrite was likely jerking off to dog, horse, or child porn.
You know where to find ROGS, HW, if you want to discuss it, no neck.
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Re: Yeah, my cunt
Enjoy my free speech vote flagging your horseshit as such.
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Re: Yeah, my cunt
Didn't HW have something to do with JFK being alive one second and then..
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Re: Re: Yeah, my cunt
His wife being an hour and a half away having a delightful lunch with a well known Italian assassin's wife!
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Re: Re: Yeah, my cunt
So, nobody wants to touch this? You Pussies.
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Typo in headline
It's "coronavirus", not "coronovirus".
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Re: Typo in headline
But, in English, it would be a schwa, if we had any sense, and did away with outdated anti-phonetic spellings:
coronuvyrus
(consonantal y would be eu, long u would be oo, etc.)
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Re: Re: Typo in headline
I agree. We should adopt Mark Twain's updated English orthography:
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Re: Typo in headline
Us Corona drinkers already knew how to spell it before it became a thing!
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"Given the urgent need to pass a bill to address the spread of the virus, those wanting zero discussion will probably prevail and it will be five more years of business as usual before the next time they reauthorize the bill and promise to fix it later. "
There, fixed it in post for you.
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