This is from Olbermann from the first time the FISA bills were being amended…but you wouldn’t be able to tell given that the arguments are all the same today.
Please call your Senators today while your calls are still untapped and you can still make a difference.
AT&T whistle blower Mark Klein succinctly pins down the basics of the snooping allegations the EFF’s pursuing against AT&T in two minutes.
The New York Times has an editorial that nails the issue with more detail but I have paraphrased that article here for your condensed reading pleasure.
The White House and Democratic and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill announced a “compromise” on a domestic spying bill that is decidedly NOT a compromise. The White House and Republicans lap dogs want to keep courts from reviewing the legality of domestic spying programs and to give legal immunity to the telecommunications companies that broke the law by helping Mr. Bush carry out his warrantless wiretapping operation.
The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, requires the government to get a warrant to intercept communications between anyone in this country and anyone outside it. The FISA court has approved all but a small handful of the thousands of warrants requested by the government so anybody claimg the government’s hands are tied is ignorant or lying. (President Bush, I’m looking at you)
Still, after Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush bypassed the FISA court and authorized the interception of international calls and e-mail messages without a warrant. Once news about this got out in 2005 Bush falsely claimed that FISA did not allow the United States to act quickly enough to stop terrorists. Not surprisingly that was complete crap because FISA always gave the government the power to listen first and then get a warrant later (up to 48 hours later).
FISA did require a technology update since it required a warrant to eavesdrop on foreign communications that go through American computers, but it was an easy fix. Unfortunately when Congress made the fix last year, they once again curled into a pathetic fetal position and let the White House add amendments that seriously diluted the courts’ ability to restrain the government from spying on its own citizens. Typical really.
That law expires on Aug. 3, and Bush is trying to not only get it renewed but to weasel in more spy powers and the telcom immunity. Obviously given this administration’s refusal to submit to any oversight from courts or congress, lawsuits against the telcoms are the single best hope of finding out the extent of Mr. Bush’s lawless spying.
Alas Democratic leaders in Congress are still craven spineless cowards and have agreed to a phony compromise drafted by the Republican vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee Senator Christopher Bond. Under this “compromise” the government could tap all communications in the United States without individual warrants or even a showing of probable cause…and it would do so with greatly reduced judicial review.
If Congress cannot pass a clean bill that fixes the one real problem with FISA, it should simply extend the temporary authorization. At a minimum, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, should oppose FISA expansion and pledge to revisit it next year. If any significant changes are going to be made, they should be made under the next president, Barack Obama.
Please call your Congressional Representative and tell them you want this appalling legislation blocked. Also encourage the funding of stem cell research so that someday Democratic leaders can get the spinal and testical transplants they so clearly need.
Dry clean only…
Car discussed by BMW Director of Design Chris Bangle
If you don’t think this is the coolest desk ever you just don’t have any idea how wrong you really are. Yes, it’s that cool.
“Yes sir, I’d like to demand a raise. What? Why no I didn’t see your new desk. That IS something isn’t it?! Yes, um, I’m sure what I said is that I’m overpaid and underworked…nevermind.”
Credit: From Tom Spina Designs
Just try and pretend THIS isn’t the definition of awesomeness. In fact there is so much awesomeness in one place that if it was any more awesome it would collapse into an inescapable vortex of awesome that the entire universe would be sucked into. True story.
Bill’s guest Jeffrey Sachs pretty much summed up my feelings. Now if we could just get the election moved up a little so we could get on with an administration that isn’t hell bent on ruining this country planet even more.
This is just a commercial from the BBC but I really can’t wait for the full documentary.
I just can’t help but feel my inner consumer perk up when I read about technology like THIS.
Awesomeness just doesn’t get any more awesome than this.
That’s either one hell of an act or he’s an unbelievable savant. The rest of his videos are equally amazing.
You can buy his first CD at his site HERE
Ed Felten, you may remember, is the Princeton professor who accepted the recording industry’s challenge to hack their copy protection scheme, succeeded, and was promptly threatened with a lawsuit for breaking the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA. The recording industry eventually backed down and effectively established Felten’s bonafides as a public technology expert and freedom of speech advocate.
Felten is also one of the top computer science experts raising security concerns with e-voting machines and has published numerous stories revealing serious problems with the machines in use. So when election officials in New Jersey asked him to run some tests on a Sequoia e-voting machine Sequoia, instead of embracing this test as an opportunity to prove the exceptional security of their systems, instead sent a threatening email to Felten, saying that election officials who sent a machine to Felten would be breaking the state’s terms of service with Sequoia, and that the company has:
“retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any non-compliant analysis. We will also take appropriate steps to protect against any publication of Sequoia software, its behavior, reports regarding same or any other infringement of our intellectual property.”
We’re not talking preventing people from making mix-CDs here but the very security and trust in our democratic elections which, some may recall, has of late been suffering a crisis of confidence. For Sequoia, a firm entrusted with our elections, to threaten someone for merely testing its product to make sure it lives up to necessary standards is far from confidence inspiring and should call into question any locality choosing to use Sequoia e-voting machines.
(credit: Techdirt)
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