US Senate strikes down open-access FBI hacking warrant by just one honest vote The US Senate has struck down an amendment that would have allowed the FBI to track internet histories and communications without judicial oversight, but a re-vote could be called as soon as today due to Senate rules. The amendment [PDF] to the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act would have …
Apparently from various reports, this wasn't "a terror attack" in the sense they're using it. It was a grudge or even a hate crime according to reports on why he targeted that particular club. The ISIS thing was a smokescreen.
If this info is wrong, then so be it. But Congress shouldn't be knee-jerking legislation based on the same media that's reporting it wasn't about the ISIS.
And don't get me started on the gun vote. My stance is that if your on the no-fly or terrorist watch list then buying gun should be out of the question. But, there should be a redress method in case someone is on one of those lists and doesn't belong there.
The longer I live, the more I believe our government is now run by idiots instead of the crooks they used to be.
The ferals will try to use any mass victim attack to expand their Stasi powers. But they can not show that the expanded powers would have stopped the latest attack. Usually, there are serious reports of feral bungling and incompetence in most of these cases.
There is a significant contradiction between the implicit notion that the government should not be able to bypass tight procedures, involving some type of judicial review, in order to conduct a search, yet should be able, based only on hearsay and with no judicial review whatever, to abridge the explicit constitutional right to own firearms.
According to the FBI's public information, you cannot find out if you are listed in the Terrorist Screening Database, and although there is a link for "Redress Procedures," it refers to a page of bureaucratese jargon that inspires little confidence in the existence of real redress. Use of such material to deny any right is seriously problematic, and its use without review independent of those who assemble and maintain it fails miserably, in the same way as national security letters, to meet a reasonable standard of due process, as the fifth amendment requires. The history of the DHS No Fly List suggests that although it doubtless is considerably smaller (at a bit over 100,000) it is no better.
Using Orlando as an excuse is particular galling because all evidence points to this guy acting alone, with perhaps his wife as being aware of his plans and not stopping it, but not really aiding him either. Critically, there wasn't any communication between him and ISIS or other home grown radicals so even if the FBI had perfect surveillance of all electronic communication it wouldn't have helped them stop this one.
There's a daft assumption implicit in the 'Gun Buying' arguments that needs to be made explicit, so that we can examine it in the daylight and laugh at it.
The daft assumption is that hardly anyone in the USA already has any guns. So when the nutters finally 'snap', they need to go out to BUY a gun.
In fact, there are reportedly about 300M guns in the USA, about one per person. They're reportedly concentrated in about one-third of residences, so (just barely) most don't have guns at the ready. But I'd argue that nearly 100% of the borderline nutters mostly already have an arsenal.
The whole 'Gun Buying' debate is almost entirely daft nonsense.
It's like debating if drunk people should be permitted to BUY cars.
Same thing. That's how idiotic the 'Gun Buying' debate is.
I'm not sure why this duh-obvious point isn't more obvious to everyone. Frankly, it seems to be a widespread IQ issue, that hardly anyone seems to be aware of this point.
Just like a "gun free zone" will guarantee your safety because no criminal would ever bring a gun into one of those zones.
I don't recall anyone claiming that gun-free zones will guarantee safety, let alone that the restriction would be observed by criminals, but they do significantly reduce the risk of death or injury from an argument getting out of hand, an idiot pratting around, a drunk losing control or a toddler reaching into a handbag.
Good old Mitch, the only person in the game who read and memorized the rulebook, at least the "slow things to a crawl" bits of it.
The Do Nothing Senate. The Do Nothing Congress. Two chapters in a future history book. Short chapters, to be sure. So at least these lazy f*ckers will be doing something in the fight against global warming whether they believe in it or not.
Two years in and they get Tax-Payer Funded Healt Care For Life. Not a bad little con when you think about it.
"It will allow the FBI to collect the dots so they can connect the dots, and that's been the biggest problem that they've had in identifying these homegrown, radicalized terrorists, like the shooter in Orlando,"
The FBI already knew about the Orlando killer. They had questioned him on a number of occassions and let him go. Why didn't they use their existing powers such as an NSL to get more evidence against him or did they want him to commit some act so they could use it as the argument to increase their surveillance powers?
It doesn't matter how many times they get turned down they will keep coming back (as I have said before) like a spoiled brat until they get what they want.
Why didn't they use their existing powers such as an NSL to get more evidence against him or did they want him to commit some act so they could use it as the argument to increase their surveillance powers?
OK, but exactly what might that extra evidence be? Right up until he walked into the club and started shooting people he'd presumably been within the law.
In a country where gun ownership is 'normal' (wake up America; gun ownership isn't normal) the police/FBI have to second guess someone's intention; they can't just stake out everybody just on the off-chance they'll decide to go shoot up some place.
Roughly 3 US households in 10 have one or more guns. That's a large enough number to qualify as reasonably normal, or at least not seriously abnormal. The average number of guns per owning household is somewhat nearer 3 than 2, which is not overwhelmingly large. Still, that is a lot of guns compared to all other countries, and based on death and injury statistics, in need of a bit of regulation.
Two thirds majority rule, aka Supermajority.
57 votes would have shy the minimum. Yes, it does sound wonky, but it gives them the chance to claim they were for the majority, but those >other party< managed to defeat it.
They're full of tricks like that. They used to vote themselves a payraise every year, until it became a hot topic with the public.
So they quietly passed a law that they get an automatic raise unless they vote against it, and never voted on payraises again.
I'm of the view that all US politician's voting patterns can be predicted by looking at their donors list.
In this case does that mean the FBI has donated to Senator John Cornyn?
There's no evidence, so maybe they have other more persuasive methods of getting the votes they want.
Democrats hold Congress 'sit-in' protest to force gun control vote
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36598736
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What will it take to taper guns versus internet overreach?
If enough gun crazies shoot sufficient politicians maybe?
Never happen! US Politicians & their families live in a dream bubble..
"It makes me wonder how they plan on misusing this proposed bit of legislation."
Spy on everyone, cherry-pick the easy victims so they can report great success to the media, justify their budget, convieniently misplace data on actual threats so they can blame their next failure on the lack of sureveillance capabilities, start casting about for the next freedom they can violate in the name of security.
Same 'ole, same 'ole.
If the American people are very very lucky the FBI hasn't cottoned on to the fact they could augment their funding by selling the data on to Google.
«"The hypocrisy behind what has been going on the last few days; due process ought to apply as it relates to guns, but due process wouldn't apply as it relates to the internet activity of millions of Americans," he [i e, Ronald Lee Wyden] said.»
That hypocrisy is easy enough to explain ; while the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution - originally designed to permit slaveholders like Thomas Jefferson & Co to organise «well-regulated militia[s]» to maintain control over their slaves - hardly represents a threat to those who dominate the country, enforcing the 4th Amendment would, in fact, render their spying on all and sundry a tad more difficult. For this reason, people there will be allowed to keep their AR 15s - or as the case may be, their SIG Sauer MCXs - clasped to their respective bosoms until pried from their cold, dead fingers, while the authorities will continue to spy on their every communication....
QED....
Henri
The second amendment has roots in the English Bill of Rights (1689) among other things. Analogues also were present in the state constitutions of New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, where controlling restless slaves would not have been a major issue, and also in the Articles of Confederation and in the Northwest Ordinance that governed settling the area that now includes Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota and prohibited slavery throughout the territory. Georgia, which permitted slavery at the time, had no constitutional provision that allowed keeping and bearing arms, although as in all of the states, customary and common law (adopted almost entire from England) certainly would have allowed it.
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