
H.R.4681 - Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 - jborden13
https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/4681/text
======
yawaworht_
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?

~~~
Cushman
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"?

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cryoshon
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statute that will need to be eventually repealed.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?

~~~
frostmatthew
> Voting has been useless in the many elections I have participated in. When
> will people wake up and demand change?

If voting is "useless" it makes it impossible to demand change since voting is
how we enact change in a democracy.

~~~
wyager
What do you think the second amendment to the U.S. constitution is for?

~~~
frostmatthew
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?

~~~
refurb
_" 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."_

John Adams

~~~
frostmatthew
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].

~~~
refurb
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.

Hell, just read the opinions from DC v Heller.

~~~
frostmatthew
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.

------
snowwrestler
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.

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joesmo
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.

~~~
fleitz
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.

~~~
acjohnson55
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.

~~~
fleitz
Umm... isn't the US a country of immigrants?

aka. the people who cut bait on their country to join a better one?

The US is literally founded on the idea of cutting bait and running to another
country (that's better).

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ameister14
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?

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jamiesonbecker
maybe this is what it's referring to?

Congress 'Endorses' Warrantless Collection, Storage of U.S. Communications

[http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/12/11/congress-
endo...](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/12/11/congress-endorses-
warrantless-collection-storage-of-us-communications)

------
tracker1
How about a campaign to "Vote No on H.R.4681" ?!?

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graycat
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.

------
tootie
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.

~~~
Cyther606
From Congressman Justin Amash:

> 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?

~~~
tootie
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.

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rjsamson
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.

~~~
mtmail
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.

~~~
rjsamson
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?

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jimktrains2
Wait, why couldn't you simply link to the bill or the petition linked to in
the imgur post?

~~~
rjsamson
Yeah, that's really annoying - text is here:
[https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-
bill/4681...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-
bill/4681/text)

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we changed it from
[http://imgur.com/gallery/h47E4Bj](http://imgur.com/gallery/h47E4Bj) and
updated the title.

