Who Needs Due Process? Senate Passes Spy Bill

[SRTDodge05]

U.S. Senate to telecoms -- I'll scratch your back, if you scratch mine.


Telecoms and many in the federal Executive branch seemed quite content with the increased usage of warrantless phone surveillance, which some people feel violates Americans' legal rights. The telecoms received large paychecks for every wiretap put in place; Comcast's rate was a modest $1,000 per tap. Meanwhile, politicians are happy because they were able to extend their surveillance programs as planned. The program may toss due process out the window, but, in their opinion, that is a necessary loss to deal with today's troubled world.

Then all of a sudden the good times ended, when a few members of Congress demanded telecom's spy records for hearings on the legality of the program. The phone companies refused, and all of a sudden, their dirty laundry was aired to the public. The public exposure opened the NSA and telecoms up to legal action from civil liberties groups and citizens. Sure enough, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed for a class action lawsuit for the warrantless eavesdropping practices. Such a lawsuit could cost telecoms and the U.S. government millions of dollars -- enough to rain on any wiretapper's parade.


DailyTech - Who Needs Due Process? Senate Passes Spy Bill

[ATINUT]

Why am I not surprised. I know where this will lead to, same way with the Real ID act and the FBI Biometric database.

[polymorphic]

This just proves that either A) Nancy Pelosi and her liberal cronies are anti-American traitors making it easier on those who would hurt us, or B) she and her cronies are incompetent of leading the US and frankly criminally liable for any future attacks on the country which could have been prevented using wiretapping, waterboarding and other security measures. Of course, Bush could still veto it and throw it back in their idiotic, peacenik faces.

I mean, is everyone so ignorant as to believe that Bush is listening to every single one of our phone calls 1 at a time and documenting our doctor appointments, car payments and girlfriend's names and numbers? For cripes sake, they are running tracking software watching known terrorist numbers and countries. If you call multiple times to Iran, even if you are calling family, you are calling an enemy of the US. Iran and other countries threaten the US and its allies monthly with annihilation and our govt can't use technology at hand to get a drop on internal spies?

This plays out to me like an animal stuck in a bear trap nipping and biting any human trying to help it.

[bassgt47]

+1 polymorphic

[TQ]

Yes, to Nancy, Barak and Hillary: what about my right to not get blown up?
This is all stalled because the trial lawyers want the exemption removed that protects the telecoms from being frivolously sued and the Democrats want the continued free flow of campaign cash from some of their biggest contributors.

I love hearing all the arguments about privacy protections from the same people that want to keep my name on a secret and illegal government list just because I am a gun owner.

By the way, feel free to eavesdrop on my boring conversations any time you want.

[TQ]

Originally Posted by polymorphic

I mean, is everyone so ignorant as to believe that Bush is listening to every single one of our phone calls 1 at a time and documenting our doctor appointments, car payments and girlfriend's names and numbers?

Sadly, some people do believe that. Mystifying, isn't it?

[TQ]

I've always thought that the people who bay the loudest about privacy issues seem to be the ones most likely to have something to hide.

[k0NG0]

Originally Posted by TQ

I've always thought that the people who bay the loudest about privacy issues seem to be the ones most likely to have something to hide.

You'd be wrong. That logic would nicely translate into you keeping firearms because you're most likely to use them on innocents. If you're against big government, you should be against government having the authority to listen in on your private conversations without a legally admissible cause.

It doesn't matter that they're not interested in your conversations now. They shouldn't have the right to define what's proper and not without judicial oversight.

As Schneier put it, it isn't so much a question of privacy vs. security, it's liberty vs. control. They would have the right to listen to your phone calls, without due process, without going through a court (and from what I hear, FISA courts tend to agree to anything and everything that lands on their desks).
Land of the free, not so much. People who think giving carte blanche to the gov't will keep them safe live in a delusion. The gov't is equally deluded that they will actually catch terrorists they wouldn't catch with other means by checking who's calling Baghdad. Any self-respecting terrorist has their plans hatched out before they even travel to the US. If they need to call their superiors, they'll use encrypted Skype conversations or something to that effect. The trend in the UK is to recruit newly converted Muslims, British natives, who'd blend in ever so nicely in any crowd in the US, and they'd sound all nice and proper with that accent too...

If banning free-for-all wiretaps without due process would make Pelosi and her D-cronies responsible for the next attack, why didn't the 9/11 commission recommend jailing Condi Rice and Bush (possibly even people from the previous presidency) who clearly had good intel on an imminent attack and sorta messed it all up. The US executed Japanese soldiers who water-boarded US soldiers during WWII, by that logic wouldn't negligence in trying to prevent 3000 deaths rank higher? (And I'm being overly rhetorically dramatic here on purpose.)

[mcfoo]

Nobody's talking about listening to US citizens. Name one who has been hurt.

[k0NG0]

Originally Posted by mcfoo

Nobody's talking about listening to US citizens. Name one who has been hurt.

It's that they shouldn't have the right to do so that's the issue. I can't name a single US citizen who's been hurt by Iranian nukes either... So I guess they're OK.

It's a big deal, the signing away of rights I personally believe the US citizens should have. I don't live in the US, so if you guys feel like screwing yourselves over, be my guest. I just think you deserve better than that. The founding fathers would cry if they saw this.

[tamarelle]

Originally Posted by k0NG0

It's that they shouldn't have the right to do so that's the issue. I can't name a single US citizen who's been hurt by Iranian nukes either... So I guess they're OK.

It's a big deal, the signing away of rights I personally believe the US citizens should have. I don't live in the US, so if you guys feel like screwing yourselves over, be my guest. I just think you deserve better than that. The founding fathers would cry if they saw this.

You are so right, Kongo. How come it's a swede who is seemingly the only one here who has any idea of the right to privacy granted to Americans by their forefathers? I am myself mystified to read the amazingly right wing rants going on here. Waterboarding is TORTURE. Once Americans accept that their government may torture people and eavesdrop on private conversations without benefit of judicial oversight, then IMO the USA is already as corrupt as any country that it is seeking to defend itself from via those horrendous methods.

And frankly I am tired of reading attacks against Hillary Clinton here. Some people apparently are threatened by strong women.

[mcfoo]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I wouldn't want us to emulate the Swedish government in peace or at war.

[tamarelle]

Originally Posted by mcfoo

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I wouldn't want us to emulate the Swedish government in peace or at war.

Better I guess to emulate Nazi Germany.

[k0NG0]

Originally Posted by mcfoo

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I wouldn't want us to emulate the Swedish government in peace or at war.

Heh. I didn't know that was what I was saying.

I just think you deserve better than a signing away of inalienable rights, much like what the DDR did with Stasi wiretap protocols (i.e. "whatever you feel like"). Even if you think liberty is overrated, I still think you should have the right to privacy.

[ctal]

Originally Posted by tamarelle

How come it's a swede who is seemingly the only one here who has any idea of the right to privacy granted to Americans by their forefathers? I am myself mystified to read the amazingly right wing rants going on here.

Count me as an American ABX'er who has a good idea of the value of the rights of privacy, although I don't necessarily agree with all of kONGO's comments (I'm not sure I understand the distinction between privacy vs. security and liberty vs. control, for one thing). And I don't feel that everything that has been said on the other side is wrong (for instance, although I consider most of post no. 3 to be a worthless "right wing rant," the thought about the government being unlikely, as a practical matter, to spy on mundane conversations by average Americans has a good deal of validity, I believe, and should be part of the perspective from which legislation on these matters is viewed and judged).

Obviously the laws have to draw a balance between privacy vs. security, or liberty vs. control, or whichever it is (or both). The balance point post-9/11 must obviously be drawn, to some degree, to the right of where it was previously drawn. For our political system to find the optimal balance point, and enact legislation to implement it, is a difficult process at best. And it is a process which is not helped by rants that in a general way insult or impugn the motives of those on the other side. While as I say there is some validity to some of what has been said in this thread on the security/control ("right wing") side of the issue, ad hominem sarcasm and insults will not help persuade others who don't fully share the same views. The problem with threads like these is that people tend not to focus on the specifics of specific legislation, but rather, as Tam rightfully implies, to just rant in a general kind of way.

Regards,

-- Al