Posted on 05/23/2015 1:59:00 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
WASHINGTON—The Senate early Saturday defeated a string of efforts to extend the Patriot Act as lawmakers splintered over its contentious phone surveillance program and left town with no plan in place to prevent the law from lapsing.
After next week’s Memorial Day recess, the Senate will resume its debate over the national security law at 4 p.m. on May 31, eight hours before the law expires at midnight.
Lawmakers fractured through the evening, rejecting a House bill overhauling the NSA, a two-month Patriot Act extension and then increasingly short extensions of the law. Primarily due to objections from presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) the Senate couldn't agree to pass even a 24-hour extension of the Patriot Act, the 2001 law that expanded the government’s authority to search for terror suspects.
“We better be ready next Sunday afternoon,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said on the Senate floor after the early-morning series of blocked votes. Next Sunday’s session will be an “opportunity to act responsibly and not allow this program to expire,” he said.
Beginning shortly after midnight, the Senate narrowly blocked a House bill ending the NSA’s collection of bulk phone information, requiring the government instead to obtain court approval to request phone records from companies on a case-by-case basis. The vote to move forward with the House bill was 57-42, short of the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate’s procedural threshold.
The bill had easily cleared the House with bipartisan support last week and was backed by the White House.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
What the hell does any of what you posted have to do with the NECESSITY of obtaining a proper search warrant, as required by the Fourth Amendment?
You are evading the central issue: Blanket surveillance on every American citizen!
I don’t give a rat’s ass about intent - CAPABILITY is what matters.
You are one of those who would willingly expand the powers and scope of government, as established in the Constitution and further by the BOR, just to have “security” from whatever new bogeyman the government invents - or else creates w/o considering, or worse ignoring, the unintended consequences (as was the case with OBL)
The government had, prior to 9/11, ALL the tools it needed to do the job - The ONLY issue was that Clinton REFUSED to do the job. End of story!
All your freaking naive and asinine justifications do nothing to alter that reality!
Your Phone Bill? Because that’s what is being collected.
So my name and address is not on my phone bill? So every person whom I contact cannot be identified by their phone number? Ever hear of a “phone directory”?
I cannot believe the naivete of some people.
Except that it's not true. The only surveillance that goes on "without a search warrant" is of foreign terrorists. American calls are not recorded, nor are records that are kept looked at unless by court order.
I for one don't care if the U.S. government has on file all my phone calls. Verizon Wireless already does that. I can look up all my calls online.
I am glad this bill failed. I am glad if the Senate refuses to reauthorize the NSA spying. Sadly several of the news stories are giving credit for the failure to reauthorize to the Democrats, when in fact most of the no votes (all but one in fact) came from Republicans. OK, I get that some actually wanted a more intrusive spying bill. But it only goes to show how screwed up and ass backwards Washington has become. Voting no to mean yes, voting yes to mean no, abstaining to show support, voting as a party block instead of what is important for your state and country and so on. Nothing can be straightforward anymore. Everything is some kind of scam, con or hoodwink, some kind of diversion. Even the bills are put for consideration (like this one) as a trick. I fear it is way beyond reform.
Anyway bottom line on this, if we can stop the NSA and all federal agencies from collecting information on Americans without a warrant it is a good thing. We didn’t sign up for it. Unlike Hillary, who should have to turn over her email and phone servers immediately. See, totally backwards! Somehow she who signed up for it gets a pass by the media, while the Democratic Senators who voted for more spying are given credit for being civil libertarians and the Republican Senators who voted against it are lumped in with those who want more spying! ...and somehow this is all totally accepted, thoughtlessly, by what seems to be the majority of Americans. Bizarre. And sad.
In this day and age how would one call blatant acts against the law and the Constitution? And to call protest of that absurd?
Despite being a government agency with a host of patriotic and law abiding personnel, they are still commanded by people of the Administration’s choosing. Commanded by people chosen by the same President that put IRS’ Koskinen in charge and allow operatives like Lois Lerner to fester. Look at DoJ - Fast and Furious, Eric “My People Holder”. Look at the FBI, DHS under Napolitano, look at DHS that has told the courts they will obey Obama’s orders instead of law when it comes to handling illegals.
There have been multiple scandals regarding NSA - they are highly incensed that Snowden brought even some of that to light.
I remember one of the NSA functionaries before Congress talking about “the program” and describing it as collecting just data (harmless, really - just ‘meta’ data) where they could just capture all that and IF they needed to, later on and go back and sift for more ‘detail’. What detail? The bits in between the metadata they already have? The actual call? You then see stories about new NSA and other IC works and efforts for even more advanced automated keywording and voice recognition - keywording metadata headers? Yeah. They didn’t build that megamemory Death Star out in Utah for just ‘metadata’.
They already have the capability to capture direct vendor feeds with all the metadata, in some cases they’ve coerced the vendors to supply their own streams and data so the NSA doesn’t have to go that added step to actually capture it somewhere else.
NSA has long been capable of capturing RF emissions from all over the world - they do it here, but that’s ‘just for foreigners, huh?’....in fact there is no way for them to know unless they’ve captured it all in the first place.
With regard to expectations of [ultra] privacy. No one said ‘ultra’. The Constitution just talks about certain basic rights that citizens should be protected from government infringement. To expect that your phone conversation and your comings and goings as a citizen under it not be stored and examined isn’t ‘ultra’. Further, to wrap today’s administration and underlings in the flag of 9/11 is an excuse. Some of that stuff it spawned is just plain wrong. Just like FDR’s internment program for Nisei was wrong. Just like the DHS (as it operates today) and its underling TSA is wrong. Just like coercing local gun vendors to sell weapons to obviously shady characters to spirit them across the border in F&F is wrong.
I don’t rejoice in it. I am saddened that the one true purpose for it was so badly abused and that it may prevent legitimate efforts to proactively prevent more terror.
I have this comment. All of this has worked well hasn’t it? We’ve caught so many acts before they were committed. Shoebomber was one - Underwearbomber was one? Boston was one, right? There are others, too - and they always said “we were aware of them, but.....”
We heard how those two nuts in Texas were under surveillance at some point....we even heard where the FBI or somebody called authorities several hours before with an alert. Before an event that was sponsoring contest drawings of Mohammed.....how difficult is that to figure out something might happen. Show me the time-relevant intel about the plans those two had and I’ll believe it.
My expectations for [ultra] privacy aren’t wild stretches of tortured legalese, interpretations, secrecy and legislation enacted in haste after a heinous act. They are spawned from the founding documents of this country. Documents, bruised, tortured, misinterpreted, and mistreated as they are whose words provide us with some pretty simple and basic affirmations of our rights. To expect those rights whose instantiation and continuance was bought at such dear price is not absurd.
So you are in favor of the FBI at ruby ridge, Waco and Elian Gonzalez.
Me ? I’m in favor of the Constitution and States Rights
+1
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I'm actually in favor of avoiding hysteria over things that don't actually fit the description of Libertarians and Democrats, the latter of whom were moaning and lying about it during the Bush administration.
And during the Clinton administration we complained about government overreach at ruby ridge Waco and Elian Gonzalez.
If you want a Facist or Stalinist state....you will get what your looking for with the patriot act.
Somewhere between zero and a million.
Just like jobs created or saved.
Ever heard of the word Redacted?
Yep, open borders again and someone might actually bomb the Boston Marathon this time. Uh, wait...
Funny how those on the Right are just as eager to trample the Constitution when it’s their ‘cause du jour’.
The 4th is as clear as the 2nd on what govt can and CANNOT do, regardless of, as you say, fear-mongering re: ‘terrorism’
Yeah, because tracking foreign terrorists tramples on the constitution.
Right, if we are not terrorists we have nothing to worry about.
All the expiration would do is require court approval to get the same information, a case at a time.
Ya’ll need to watch this, noob fight in progress, I have the popcorn...
Do you always post pro-big-government? I've seen you do that a lot.
Tracking foreign terrorists is a worthwhile goal. Tracking ALL AMERICANS is not.
mein gott.
It’s like that World of Tanks match I played where other team player suddenly decided the game was Skate 3 and kept trying to do rail grinds in a tank...
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