What it applies to: any intelligence collection activity not otherwise authorized by court order (including FISA courts), subpoena, or similar legal process that is reasonably anticipated to result in the acquisition of a covered communication to or from a US person.
What it does: permits the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of non-public communications indefinitely, unless any parties are US persons and the communication is NOT encrypted, in which case they can only be retained for 5 years. (There are some other exemptions to this 5 year rule.)
Note that "incidentally acquired" appears only in the section title.
The main question here for me is what exactly this applies to. Is "any intelligence collection activity not otherwise authorized" blanket permission to collect anything?
In the most literal reading, the phrase "shall permit" refers to the required "procedures", which are themselves "approved by the Attorney General"... So that might be "Anything, subject to the discretion of the AG"?
Or does that actually require the AG to approve procedures which "shall permit the acquisition" of "[private] communication to or from a United States person" during "any intelligence collection activity not otherwise authorized"?
Yay, more fascism! Now, anything that wasn't explicitly within the law before is now within the boundary of the law, and thus is legal. This opens up all sorts of new avenues for abuse, while closing none. It also is one more statute that will need to be eventually repealed. Predictably, defenders of the bill are trying to pass it off as more oversight with their doublespeak.
I am really tired of this country and its bullshit. We've slid toward totalitarianism every single year for quite a few years running now. Voting has been useless in the many elections I have participated in. When will people wake up and demand change?
People need to demand change (they are) and there need to be real avenues for change (questionable).
The parent is likely echoing JFK: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Here are some things that have made peaceful revolution seem impossible:
- No ballot items for surveillance disclosures
- Loss of Udall, one of the only people representing the people on this issue in any real way in the Senate Intelligence Panel and in the legislative body
- Candidate Obama's campaign promises significantly divergent from President Obama's actions on civil liberties (and he was a constitutional law scholar, exactly what you think we would have needed)
- Habeas Corpus still suspended in America. The Constitution is a peace time document, but America is in perpetual war - in fact it is in wars that have no clear ending conditions (Terrorism and the threat of Terrorism will never end; the same is true of drugs)
- Political movements and protest groups responding to the surveillance state disrupted by federal agents
- Word games played with 'Congress was briefed' regarding Executive Branch activity, FISA courts proven to be rubber stamps, CIA willing to hack legislatures auditing them - intelligence arms seem to have escaped checks and balances.
- Hot button protests are being corralled away from protest zones where they are highly visible, either by police cages or by 'free speech zones' which are miles away, off the map and require you to register your intent to express free speech and get confirmation from the state
- Fusion Centers merging federal anti-terror tools with local law enforcement - ending non-surveilled local grass roots efforts to organize actions to express non-condoned political ideas
- Journalists and media outlets under routine surveillance and tap-and-trace (like the AP scandal this administration) to chill confidential informants that may bring stories from Washington to the news (and thus the people)
- The US government cuts access to press releases and interviews for those media outlets that don't 'play nice' with USG narratives or delay/kill/censor select stories (meta point: there's a reason journalism is called the Fourth Estate of American Politics)
- Every modern administrations feel it is reasonable to use their access to power to harass and sabotage political rivals (as is commonly done with the IRS)
- Political debates purposefully exclude third party candidates, appearing in front of the public and challenging 'enshired parties'
- Gilens and Page study out of Princeton and Cornell show high correlation between passed legislature and the demands of rich elite interests but poor correlation with national consensus
- The approval ("I feel represented") rating of the Congress is around 7% and the president's approval rating is around 50%
- The American people made it explicitly and extremely clear they were not interested in many things (such as military engagement in Syria) but could only manage to delay military action with a >75% national consensus on the issue for a couple of months
- The government lied repeatedly about the contents of the Snowden documents and passed faux legislation and even proposed bills to expand NSA authority as a response to public outcry
It would be easy to continue adding to the list. There are many reasons why it is hard to feel that peaceful revolution is possible.
So the parent feels, maybe, and maybe he said it a bit flippantly, that violent revolution is inevitable.
Many people will read this list and figuratively shrug saying "Americans are just too passive for this to amount to much revolution of any kind, violent or otherwise". For now, they are probably correct.
The final ingredient that must be added to the above witch's brew is large scale deprivation. We've still got more than enough bread and circuses to prevent mass unrest. But we sure are setting ourselves up for a bad time if and when the bread runs a little short. I'm not sure that the America of today could weather the rationing that took place during WWII or even the oil embargo of the 70s without a nation-wide Ferguson event.
Pretty much all those points, and many many more. Like you said, it would be easy to continue adding to the list.
On one hand, I'm OK with law makers ignoring public outcry. It is after all a republic, not a democracy. It's all of the lies, deceit, and outright criminal behavior that bothers me.
We need a new political party - The Guillotine Party. The slogan should be "Heads will roll". The party can bring an 'artistic display' of a real working guillotine to political rallies and chop watermelons, etc for demonstration.
The idea is to bring politicians, angry mobs, and guillotines together.
I liked your post a lot, it captures a lot of the issues that frustrate me.
I don't think that violent revolution is inevitable, though-- too many American minds have been killed by patriotism or passive-ism for such a thing to happen.
I do think that there is substantial unrest and instability in our near future-- unrest and instability that could be avoided, but it would require concessions from a government content to try to fight its people before the people even show up.
We have a second amendment in the constitution for exactly this reason. The pen may be mightier than the sword but sometimes you must write with the blood of your oppressors just to begin to be heard.
That is an interesting point of view, the government and the state are two separate things. You cannot overthrow a state (since it is a community) but you can overthrow a hostile government.
The American militia were part of the revolution to overthrow the British government and the recognition of that is codified in the Second Amendment.
You're confusing nation[1] with state[2][3] (though you may be correct that it might be more accurate to say "overthrow a government"). The writers of the Constitution didn't envision a standing army (or at least not a very large one) which is why they a) gave Congress the power to raise armies and b) highlighted the importance of a "well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state."
"Security" meant repelling foreign invaders and stopping insurrections, not starting them. To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions[4]
If you think it's because they wanted to make sure the people could easily overthrow the government if/when needed then you don't understand much about the founding fathers.
The founding fathers were terrified of the people. This is why they created the electoral college - they didn't trust the general population to decide such an important decision. [They thought they had designed the system such that the college would never (or at least rarely) produce a winner and Congress would select the President]. Only the House was intended to be based on popular vote, senators were selected by state legislatures up until the 17th amendment was ratified in 1913.
If the founders didn't trust the people to select their own President or senators do you really think they trusted them with the decision of overthrowing the government?
"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
In the context of a discussion of the 2nd amendment's [intended] purpose and how those that wrote it felt toward the people I fail to see the relevance of a quote by someone who had no part in writing our Constitution. [John Adams was in Britain during the Constitutional Convention].
I can provide more quotes but i get the sense that nothing will convince you. The ability of citizens to maintain power over the government was a critical piece of how the US constitution was developed.
You're correct, quotes won't convince me. Actions (i.e. what they wrote into the Constitution) mean much more than anything they said.
And what they wrote was:
* a House of Representatives selected by the people
* a Senate selected by state legislatures
* two executives selected by Congress (with the remaining members of the executive branch at most needing consent from the portion of Congress not selected by the people)
* a judicial branch selected by the executive (again, requiring consent only from the Senate, who were not selected by the people)
So out of the entire government they gave the people the ability to select half of one branch. And while that one branch would select the President (and VP) it would have no voice in selecting the rest of the executive branch or any of the judicial. The ability to remove members of either the executive or judicial branch also went to the branch not selected by the people.
Sorry, but when I read the Constitution I don't see much "ability of citizens to maintain power over the government."
As for District of Columbia v. Heller the question was if the 2nd Amendment grants the right to bear arms for lawful purposes - violently overthrowing the government is most assuredly not lawful, regardless of who you want to quote while doing it.
> What do you think the second amendment to the U.S. constitution is for?
Ensuring that states would have the ability to defend themselves in the against insurrection and invasion before the federal government -- which was, after all, not expected to have large standing forces -- could mobilize a response.
You are the problem. You whine and cry but don't do anything. Vote with your feet, go to some country not associated with the West if you find it so fucking oppressive.
SOPA was the Stop Online Piracy Act and had nothing to do with intelligence agencies collecting and storing data. The objections to SOPA were centered around the impact it would have on global DNS resolution.
This is not Reddit. I don't think we should sink to posts with grossly inaccurate titles that link to a JPG instead of to the actual bill text itself, or at least a piece of writing covering or analyzing it.
So this basically removes the limitation on how long encrypted intercepted communications (simply any encrypted communication at this point) can be retained. I doubt any limits were followed in the past, but this makes it officially disturbing that one's encrypted communications could potentially be used against him any number of years down the line by any future regime, especially after technology makes cracking such encryption feasible.
When you use the word regime you already know what actions you should take.
Leave now, while you still can, don't debate the wording of acts, especially when the regime starts to pass legislation increasing barriers to entry for leaving. Last year it was $400 to get out, now it's $2400, eventually when everyone smart wants to leave they'll put up a wall.
Get another passport before everyone else wants one and you have to wait in line.
I think this is a horrible idea. Cut bait and leave all this country's wealth and might in the hands of a slightly more concentrated group of fascists?
It's funny how people tell Mexicans "stand and fight for your country, dammit" and yet others are so ready to cut and run when the going gets a little rough at home. Get out in the streets. Start educating people. We can make this country something worth believing in.
Relevant piece to this discussion is SEC. 309. PROCEDURES FOR THE RETENTION OF INCIDENTALLY ACQUIRED COMMUNICATIONS.
Personally, I have an issue with paragraph 3 section B as follows:
(ii) the communication is reasonably believed to constitute evidence of a crime and is retained by a law enforcement agency;
(iii) the communication is enciphered or reasonably believed to have a secret meaning;
I don't know enough about this, so will someone more educated in this field tell me: am I wrong, or does the exception in ii apply to the way law enforcement currently uses State intelligence services to get around warrants? Does this change anything?
Parts of this thread got me all up on my
hind legs afraid of fascist Big Brother of 1984
with sound recorders hidden in
the walls of my bedroom, keystroke
grabbing on my computer, brainwave
recorders in stealth drones flying overhead at 100,000 feet capturing my thoughts, etc.
Yes, while my usual excuse has long been,
and apparently been confirmed, that the
US Federal Government is too incompetent to
do much to me, or really even know about me
(if they only knew what I really think of
them!), this thread got me worried again.
So, I just followed the link to the bill. There I got
the text version, in some small, light font
tough to read in Firefox on my screen and with the
warning that actually it was not accurate.
So I took the HTML version. Soon, much of the
text was off the right side my screen with
no horizontal scroll bars. Gee, is there
some CSS keyword to suppress the scroll bars?
My Web pages have both horizontal and vertical
scroll bars, and I entered nothing about
scroll bars and just took defaults.
So, I told Firefox to reduce screen magnification
until all the text characters fit my screen,
and then all I had
were characters about the size of two pixels each
with each line of text just some broken
horizontal line totally impossible to read.
Great work Congress: You found yet another
way to implement the now famous
Pelosi "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it"!
So, third try, I took the PDF version. Okay,
magnifying to 185%, I got something readable.
Looking at the table of contents for the really
deep, down, fascist dirty stuff, right away
(Adobe Acrobat has a search feature!), I found:
"H. R. 4681—5
SEC. 302. RESTRICTION ON CONDUCT OF INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES.
The authorization of appropriations by this Act shall not be
deemed to constitute authority for the conduct of any intelligence
activity which is not otherwise authorized by the Constitution or
the laws of the United States."
Okay, sounds not so bad. Maybe they just put that
in there so that it could be removed in
a conference committee with all that
really deep, dirty, fascist stuff elsewhere
now enabled? They are really smart enough
to be that tricky? Naaaaw ...! Congress?
The US Congress I have long watched? Naaaaw.
So, from that paragraph, apparently
this bill doesn't authorize even more
microphones in the walls of my
bedroom, more keystroke captures,
more grabbing of my PGP private
key (once I start using PGP),
my software to find some 50,000 or so
(don't want to be too exact here!)
decimal digit prime numbers, assuming
I don't encounter a prime gap, etc.!
Ah, I should not have said that and, instead,
should have let the NSA know that, really,
I've long been doing my super hush-hush
communications via the subspace radio flip phone
I got from Captain Kirk! Once he was parked
on my front lawn for three weeks, but
no one but me noticed because
he was using a Romulan cloaking device.
Maybe I'm too easily fooled, but, lazy
me, I'm back down off my hind legs now
no longer afraid of being subject to
"rectal feeding", etc.
I mean, were my thoughts that former
NSA head Michael Hayden looked too much
like Elmer Fudd a reason for me to
have 1 trillion exabytes of data kept
on me in some flat building covering 25% of, what is it,
Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Utah, somewhere
out there? So, was that the reason
HP worked out how to store one bit per
oxygen ion, just so that the NSA could
store what I really thought of them? Naaaaw!
Joking aside, the section I quoted does seem
to say that the bill doesn't make things
worse.
This post was murdered on reddit already. This is no SOPA 2 in any way shape or form nor is it really any sort of new authority at all. It just places boundaries on retention of collection communications. It's a smallish curb on existing authority.
> Supporters of Sec. 309 claim that the provision actually reins in the executive branch’s power to retain Americans’ private communications. It is true that Sec. 309 includes exceedingly weak limits on the executive’s retention of Americans’ communications. With many exceptions, the provision requires the executive to dispose of Americans’ communications within five years of acquiring them—although, as HPSCI admits, the executive branch already follows procedures along these lines.
> In exchange for the data retention requirements that the executive already follows, Sec. 309 provides a novel statutory basis for the executive branch’s capture and use of Americans’ private communications. The Senate inserted the provision into the intelligence reauthorization bill late last night. That is no way for Congress to address the sensitive, private information of our constituents—especially when we are asked to expand our government’s surveillance powers.
Reddit is one of the most manipulated, banal social platforms on the internet. Need I remind you that JTRIG is tasked with manipulating public discourse in a professional capacity?
That pretty much says what I said which is still in no way related to SOPA. The notion that adding these admittedly weak conditions on data retentions can somehow be construed as a backdoor authorization of those retentions seems like a huge stretch. Calling it SOPA 2 is pretty meaningless. You want to talk about "manipulated" this headline was crafted to inspire outrage out of something obscure and probably meaningless.
The offending Section 309 was added on _Tuesday night_. Congressman Justin Amash explains:
When I learned that the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2015 was being rushed to the floor for a vote—with little debate and only a voice vote expected (i.e., simply declared “passed” with almost nobody in the room)—I asked my legislative staff to quickly review the bill for unusual language. What they discovered is one of the most egregious sections of law I’ve encountered during my time as a representative: It grants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the communications of every American.
On Wednesday afternoon, I went to the House floor to demand a roll call vote on the bill so that everyone’s vote would have to be recorded. I also sent the letter below to every representative.
With more time to spread the word, we would have stopped this bill, which passed 325-100. Thanks to the 99 other representatives—44 Republicans and 55 Democrats—who voted to protect our rights and uphold the Constitution. And thanks to my incredibly talented staff.
###
Block New Spying on U.S. Citizens: Vote “NO” on H.R. 4681
Dear Colleague:
The intelligence reauthorization bill, which the House will vote on today, contains a troubling new provision that for the first time statutorily authorizes spying on U.S. citizens without legal process.
Last night, the Senate passed an amended version of the intelligence reauthorization bill with a new Sec. 309—one the House never has considered. Sec. 309 authorizes “the acquisition, retention, and dissemination” of nonpublic communications, including those to and from U.S. persons. The section contemplates that those private communications of Americans, obtained without a court order, may be transferred to domestic law enforcement for criminal investigations.
To be clear, Sec. 309 provides the first statutory authority for the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of U.S. persons’ private communications obtained without legal process such as a court order or a subpoena. The administration currently may conduct such surveillance under a claim of executive authority, such as E.O. 12333. However, Congress never has approved of using executive authority in that way to capture and use Americans’ private telephone records, electronic communications, or cloud data.
Supporters of Sec. 309 claim that the provision actually reins in the executive branch’s power to retain Americans’ private communications. It is true that Sec. 309 includes exceedingly weak limits on the executive’s retention of Americans’ communications. With many exceptions, the provision requires the executive to dispose of Americans’ communications within five years of acquiring them—although, as HPSCI admits, the executive branch already follows procedures along these lines.
In exchange for the data retention requirements that the executive already follows, Sec. 309 provides a novel statutory basis for the executive branch’s capture and use of Americans’ private communications. The Senate inserted the provision into the intelligence reauthorization bill late last night. That is no way for Congress to address the sensitive, private information of our constituents—especially when we are asked to expand our government’s surveillance powers.
I urge you to join me in voting “no” on H.R. 4681, the intelligence reauthorization bill, when it comes before the House today.
SOPA 2.0? I don't see how the linked language has anything to do with what SOPA was - this has to do with retention policies for incidentally acquired communications during intelligence gathering activities - specifically putting limits on how long such communications may be retained.
I think the confusion is if "acquisition" in "shall permit the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of covered communications" includes spying. I don't think it does.
I don't think so either. The impression I get is that this covers retention policies for communications incidentally acquired during intelligence operations. A (perhaps poor) example might be, a raid on safehouse that yields hard drive that contains email records, where some of those emails are unrelated communications with a US citizen - it sounds like records like that would now be destroyed after 5 years if there is no specified need to keep them. Sound right?
What it does: permits the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of non-public communications indefinitely, unless any parties are US persons and the communication is NOT encrypted, in which case they can only be retained for 5 years. (There are some other exemptions to this 5 year rule.)
Note that "incidentally acquired" appears only in the section title.
The main question here for me is what exactly this applies to. Is "any intelligence collection activity not otherwise authorized" blanket permission to collect anything?