We're Giving Trump a license to spy on us???

[DemocracyMouse]

Really? 55 Democrats joined even more Republicans and voted to extend NSA surveillance power – a truly paranoid hold-over from 9/11 that has pushed our country into the current climate of distrust and extremism.

This is from NBC News:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/think/amp/ncna836836

Democrats have been all over the airwaves recently accusing Donald Trump of abusing the Justice Department to go after his political enemies —most notably his former opponent Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, which the Department of Justice is reportedly currently investigating based on allegation made during the 2016 presidential campaign. So you’d think they would oppose handing Donald Trump any more power with which he could potentially use against all sorts of Americans who attract negative attention from his administration.

Yet, with the help of some Democrats, the House of Representatives voted today — and the Senate will do so sometime in the next week — to extend a controversial NSA surveillance power that potentially affects millions of Americans’ privacy rights.

The New York Times:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/us/politics/fisa-surveillance-congress-trump.html

And here's CNN:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/01/12/politics/fisa-surveillance-weird-politics/index.html

This issue transcends partisan politics and should be given as much space in our daily dose of dialogue as Trump's stupid tweets or the latest cute cats. We are still victims of Osama Bin Laden if we continue to inflict so much destruction on our freedoms. This is a Democrat speaking. I want my country back!

The fact that Pelosi and other Democratic leaders supported the continuation of FISA suggests that they are not tuned into the growing progressive wave which is going to change a lot of things in November.

Get ready to vote, and vote with your eyes wide open.

Peace,
Democracy Mouse

[MattP]

1. It's FISA and it's been around for decades

[Sophia4]

3. We need an open, court record of all government snooping on the communications

and things of Americans.

That means getting a warrant for search and seizure of anything involving an American citizen. It's the Fourth Amendment, and it should be respected.

[DemocracyMouse]

4. Yes, we need to spy back (in the open) so the paranoid can't sink democracy

[questionseverything]

7. nope...this bill was even worse

http://bradblog.com/?p=12440

We're joined today by ELIZABETH GOITEIN, former Dept. of Justice attorney, now co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, to explain Section 702, the efforts to lobby against its reauthorization, and why it is that many Congressional Democrats are willing to join Republicans in granting the Trump Administration's NSA, DHS, FBI, DOJ, CIA, etc., extraordinary new powers to secretly spy on every American citizen's phone calls and emails without warrant, due diligence or even probable cause.

While the legislation was "driven primarily by Republican leadership," she says, there were "enough Tea Party style Republicans who have really rallied in support of greater privacy protections" that some marginal reforms were added. Though, she explains, they aren't really reforms at all, and the entire dangerous package could not have moved forward had Dems stuck together in opposition.

"It's a failure of Democratic leadership," Goitein tells me. "At the last minute, [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer said he would vote no on cloture [to end the filibuster] --- but he hedged that and said, 'Amendments should be in order and we should have the chance to look at amendments, but the bill itself is not that bad, it makes improvements to the law'. Which is not true. It actually takes the law backwards. Minority Leader Pelosi in the House did even more damage...coming out in support of the bill and opposing the amendment that would have made these improvement. And then a whole bunch of Democrats went along with her."

Goitein argues "there was a full court press by intelligence officials" to pass this measure. So, even Trump's cluelessness about it was unable to prevent it from moving forward, even as it allows for the emails of two American citizens speaking to each other --- with no foreign target in the mix --- to be indexed, searched and read by the FBI without an order from any court. She explains the horrible details in depth on today's show, and why it has been so difficult to challenge this provision in a court of law.

[Sophia4]

2. This section in the FISA surveillance law should be done away with.

No secret spying on the communications of Americans without warrants.


"We are still victims of Osama Bin Laden if we continue to inflict so much destruction on our freedoms." I agree.

And whether or not an administration is spying on its political foes becomes a topic of discussion and a means to sow doubt about political opponents.

We really don't need this. If something needs to be read or examined, the government can get a warrant. It's really not that hard. But a warrant leaves a record showing who read or examined what.

I'm for sticking to the Fourth Amendment on surveillance.

[Wellstone ruled]

5. If you live in any City of 100k or more,

you most likely have been under surveillance since the early years of Bush and Cheney. If you know what to look for,you will spot the Cameras.

[DemocracyMouse]

14. ......and those cameras are depressing. It kills our sense of being proud, free, happy citizens.

The cameras are, in effect, operational transmedia sculptures saying "we don't trust Americans anymore. The police are now in charge."

[Wellstone ruled]

16. Wonder how few know what or where

to look for them. Streetlights yes. Traffic intersections yes. Cell Towers yes. Flag poles yes. Bill boards yes. And that is just a few.

[sarah FAILIN]

6. Mueller would not have a leg to stand on without this.

People a falling for "alternative facts" biting this hook. Without it, Flynn would still be right by Trump's side.

Dems need to wake up. If you haven't been talking to Russian spies, you're good.

[Honeycombe8]

12. Not true. The conversations picked up by surveillance were of RUSSIAN operatives.

Not the Patriot Act surveillance at all. As far as we know.

No one surveilled Trump or his gang, as far as we know. That's the Trump team's paranoid fear, and part of the paranoid accusation by Trump against Obama long ago (remember that? Kellyanne saying the Microwave could be a camera, and Trump saying Obama taped him or whatever).

The NSA surveillance is primarily for citizens, not officials. That's the danger of it all. There ARE pre-Patriot Act ways to do such surveillance, but they require getting the go-ahead from a judge BEFORE you do it. And there's a record of it.

Under the Patriot Act, no pre-surveillance warrant is required, so don't have to show cause for it, and there is no record of it. We will never know who was surveilled, unless there are records left somewhere to show it.

[sarah FAILIN]

20. FISA not Patriot Act

Right wingers have been throwing everything at the wall to see if anything sticks.

[Fred Sanders]

8. Osama won. n/t

[DemocracyMouse]

15. Yes, that was my point. He turned America into a police state...

We have been so willing to turn over and do his, and now Putin's bidding.

Not this rebel.

[DURHAM D]

9. Didn't you have this same OP removed just yesterday? nt

[DemocracyMouse]

17. A variation was removed. Possibly because of my deeply expressed frustration

with certain Democrats to vote like Republicans. I also quoted The Intercept which the editors don't trust. That periodical does have a bumbling past, but their current editor is from The Nation and others have written for Wired and other mainstream, progressive journals. Doesn't matter because dozens of other media sources are outraged by this anti-American FISA bill and I quoted them instead. THE DAMN THING WAS SUPPOSED TO END, but 55 Democrats helped the Republicans to extend it. And when an amendment was introduced by a conscientious Democrat to take the teeth out of it (to make warrants necessary on scooping communications between US citizens), the current Dem leadership rejected that amendment. It's just stomach-churning Follow those links above.

The point is we all need to speak truth to power – "satyagraha" as Ghandhi put it.

Peace,
Democracy Mouse

.

[emulatorloo]

11. FISA is about foreign nationals. I cant help it that Mike Flynn etc was caught conspiring with

foreign nationals. I am supposed to get “outraged” over that? fuck Mike Flynn.

[Honeycombe8]

13. We could always spy on foreign operatives. The Patriot Act...

(isn't that what we're talking about, altho they changed the name) allows spying on American citizens without showing good cause for it, and without there being a record of it.

???

I'm not sure what was covered by this extension. I'll have to read up on it.

When Flynn was caught, it was just standard surveillance of foreign operatives (Flynn wasn't being surveilled). We have always been able to do that.

[DemocracyMouse]

18. Democrats enabled the Repugs to eliminate warrants

as a necessary stage before SPYING ON US CITIZENS. (I called this Soviet-style spying and it still seems like an apt metaphor).

Love your country, Democrats. Don't vote with Republicans to destroy it!!!

Ugh, I have work to do...

Peace,
DM

[Honeycombe8]

19. I agree. But don't suggest we not vote for Democrats, please.

Any Democrat on a bad day is much better than any Republican on any day. There's more than one issue.

We need to vote for the Democrat, or anyone running who falls on the liberal side of the spectrum when there's not a Democratic Party-sanctioned candidate. Those candidates will for the most part vote Democratic. Republicans tend to vote straight party...whether candidates or bills.

[sarah FAILIN]

21. FISA came first

Check this link out
https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/a-breakdown-of-the-patriot-act-freedom-act-and-fisa/