

Obama's NSA Defense: Congress Can Raise Objections It Can't Actually Raise - known_unknowns
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/obama-nsa-response/66015/

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bo1024
"They don't have to show us Catch-22," the old woman answered. "The law says
they don't have to."

"What law says they don't have to?"

"Catch-22."

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jmadsen
This.

Was a point I raised here just yesterday - glad to see I was on the mark.

This is why we are now in an Orwellian state, rather that one with necessary
secrecy but checks and balances.

When Congress can say, "We are reviewing National Security measures to be sure
they comply with the law & Constitution, but we can't go into details" \-
that's the latter.

When Congress is under threat of penalty for even saying that we HAVE National
Security measures, that is Orwellian.

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known_unknowns
What I don't understand is how this squares with the Speech or Debate clause.
Aren't members of Congress protected by the same sort of legislative immunity
as they have in the UK, Canada, and Australia (where they call it
"parliamentary privilege")?

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spc476
Somewhat. Article I, section 6 of the United States Constitution: "They shall
in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged
from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses,
and in going to and return from the same; and for any speech or debate in
either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place."

How that plays out in this situation, I'm not sure, since I'm not a
Constitutional Scholar, nor a lawyer.

~~~
Natsu
They would simply charge them with a felony--revealing classified information.

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wycats
Article 1, Section 6: "They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and
Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the
Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the
same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be
questioned in any other Place"

~~~
mtgx
I don't understand why some of them aren't becoming whistleblowers, either.
Maybe because Obama has already shown he is willing to use the Espionage Act
against whistleblowers, because his logic is that "any revelation of our
wrongdoings helps the enemy". That seems like a very weak argument to me
either way.

But why aren't Americans in the street already? Europeans would be already in
the street by now for _a lot less_ than this. Remember the ACTA protests?

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mikeash
Americans aren't in the streets because we (collectively) _want_ this.
Americans care about fighting terrorism far more than they care about privacy
or government spying.

I wager that, for the average American, this news made them feel safer, and
the only thing they're upset about is that the "bad guys" now know something
they shouldn't.

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will_work4tears
Yep, I was talking about this whole situation with my wife and she of course
was like "I've got nothing to hide, yadda, yadda." I tried to explain why it
matters even so, and she kinda just dismissed it as not mattering to her as
much as the government "protecting" us.

I'm convinced most of us Americans just don't care, and that bothers me more
than what the government is doing.

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mikeash
The tech community paints this as a government conspiracy in opposition to the
desires of the public. I think it's mostly because the tech community is
generally opposed to this stuff, and they incorrectly project that onto the
population. I think it's also partly because this scenario is a lot more
comforting than reality.

If it's government running amok, that leaves open the possibility that they
can be reigned in. All you need to do is get the people sufficiently aware and
sufficiently angry and the problem is solved!

But if it's simply the government obeying the will of the people, then we're
screwed much harder. Convincing people who are deeply afraid of terror attacks
and who find comfort in massive government programs meant to protect them that
they should invert their priorities is massively difficult, perhaps
impossible.

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pfortuny
Remember: the great excuse is that the US is at war (albeit not against a
country, but "terrorism".) Hence, treason comes very much into place here.

Handling intel to "the enemy"...

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ekianjo
That's a direct application of 1984 : make the state of war permanent so you
can crush all political opposition as treason. Impressive how the US has gone
from the most principled, Freedom-loving Democracy to a totalitarian state
that does not say its real name in the course of 200 years.

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dllthomas
It wasn't anything new when Orwell wrote it, either. It's a failure mode of
democracy.

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ck2
Congress would have rubberstamped "defense paranoia" anyway, doesn't matter.

What I am curious about is the next presidential race and what the candidates
are going to promise, because Obama basically played a huge word game.

He said he was against _illegal spying_ on the country, so what he did was
just make it _legal_ to spy on the country instead of stopping spying on the
country! I mean come on, that's bullsh*t.

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DanielBMarkham
I have no problem with politicians, well, being politicians. Spin me, bullshit
me, tell me the sky is green and the grass is blue. This is all in a day's
work for those guys.

But Obama is crossing a line here. Yes, Congress in the aggregate could do a
hell of a lot of things, but not in some generic sense. It's not like one of
them could go out and start making press releases.

Intelligence committee members and their staff are the only folks that are
supposed to know about intelligence matters. Not "every member of Congress".
And they are thoroughly briefed NOT to disclose any information that comes
their way. In fact, there are clear penalties for doing so. Releasing
unauthorized data is a felony, and felons go to jail, Congressman or not. (And
no, Article 1, Section 6 specifically does not cover felonies)

Even then, the intelligence community _doesn 't_ brief the intelligence
committees on everything -- they've found out from painful experience that
somehow or another anything really juicy they tell them always gets out. So
with some of this stuff, the only people that were briefed were the
majority/minority leaders and the chairmen of the committees. Not "every
member of Congress" Not even the people supposedly overseeing intelligence
matters.

I think it's one thing to go about bullshitting when it comes to public
policy, or any other thing the nation does. But when the government purposely
keeps secrets from us, they take on the responsibility to at least honestly
explain to us how the system works so that we can address the problem. Not
continue to spin us as if this were just some proposed employment law or
something. You can't keep it secret and then also lie to us about what we need
to do to fix it. For Congress to again be a player here, it would need to pass
some major legislation -- and the president would need to sign it. Let's with
what that legislation would look like, which the president would be the best
person to say (since the executive branch knows all the secrets anyway), and
go from there. I'm happy to call up my Congressguy and give him hell -- but
not in order to be some kind of pawn in a PR war about whom to blame.

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Shivetya
It is common for Administrations to make declarations implying something can
be, could have, or should have, knowing full well it cannot, could not, or
would not, ever been able to be done. They simply rely on the general
ignorance of the public. The public is inclined to believe the simplest of
explanations, they don't want to really know how the sausage is made.

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venomsnake
Maybe lawmakes should have immunity about the things they say while in office.
This way the executive branch will have to ask for silence instead of
demanding it. And they will be free to leak something that is outrageous.

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ccarter84
POTUS v leakers & press.

Infants in Congress.

Finally have legit gripes

