Posted on 06/07/2016 7:43:07 AM PDT by Cyberman
The FBI continues its push to greatly expand government surveillance and exempt that spying from constitutional safeguards and privacy rules
Like living in a police state much? The FBI is pushing on multiple fronts to greatly expand its surveillance powers and exempt that spying from constitutional safeguards and privacy rules. Many in Congress are only too happy to help.
With a treasure trove of digital information tantalizingly within reach, the FBI doesn't want to be slowed down by inconveniences like Fourth Amendment protections....
Comey's campaign against encryption may have stalled, but his push to expand the agency's use of warrantless searches got a couple of assists recently. The FBI uses an extraordinary search procedure known as National Security Letters (NSLs) to obtain Americans' bank and phone records without a court order. NSLs not only compel companies to provide the information, they come with gag orders that forbid companies from disclosing the requests. Talk about a process ripe for abuse.
Various aspects of NSLs have been ruled unconstitutional, but still they persist. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other civil rights groups have fought for years to spread awareness about the boom in NSL searches and push for greater accountability and oversight of the process. "NSLs have a sordid history. They've been abused in a number of ways, including ... targeting of journalists," Andrew Crocker, staff attorney for the EFF, told The Intercept.
But the Senate Intelligence Committee last week passed a bill that would expand their reach. A provision in the 2017 Intelligence Authorization Act would allow the FBI to use NSLs to obtain "electronic communication transactional records" -- one of those deliciously vague terms that could include email subject lines and metadata, Web browsing histories, and more....
What use is the FBI if they can’t nail H->! ?
I have read that they are scrutinizing every search that anyone’s computer does. What happened to our country? I put a medical symptom in to look up the possibilities and I am then bombarded with so much info it is sickening. Fair warning, do not research ANYTHING this Government might find suspect. Big Brother is here.....now.
Don’t you dare try to find out anything the FBI is up to though!
“The FBI uses an extraordinary search procedure known as National Security Letters (NSLs) to obtain Americans’ bank and phone records without a court order. NSLs not only compel companies to provide the information, they come with gag orders that forbid companies from disclosing the requests”
An utter blatant violation of the 4th amendment which is crystal clear. And a secrecy requirement is pure STASI.
As an aside, the Stasi collected about 900 million to a billion pages on information over it’s entire 40 year existence. The NSA collects that amount now every 2 days. We have become a USSR with better food and clothes. We are free to do anything we want, except exercise any power as citizens.
I don’t trust them. bammy can order them to do anything he wants them to.
Maybe they are behind the Windows 10 auto upgrade crisis.
James Commie?
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
/ a grievance…from a list of grievances
“Various aspects of NSLs have been ruled unconstitutional, but still they persist. “
Ruled unconstitutional, and they do it anyway.*(1)
(1) see also, “banana republic”.
what privacy?
So a kind of watered-down Writ of Assistance.
Various aspects of NSLs have been ruled unconstitutional, but still they persist.
Just like "exigent circumstances" and the 4th Amendment.
"NSLs have a sordid history. They've been abused in a number of ways, including ... targeting of journalists,"
They're only following the Bill of Rights Privileges.
I think the solution is left dangling.
If anyone follows PERSON OF INTEREST .... the show’s purpose was to allow us to peek behind the curtain at what’s really happening. (Edward Snowden helped.) Now PERSON OF INTEREST in the final few episodes is showing us that we can’t win. They’re “machine” is much more powerful than our “machine”.
We need to know who voted for this crap.
It's worse than merely voting for this outrage -- the perpetrator derailed a genuine pro-Constitution bill to dump this toxic waste into the body politic:
A bill that would require authorities to get a warrant to access U.S. emails older than 180 days faces an existential threat as a senator attempts to make it a vehicle for "the FBI’s No. 1 legislative priority," an expansion of the bureau's authority to take online records without court oversight.CORNYN MUST GO!!
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, is a co-sponsor of the Senate version of the email warrant bill, which passed the House unanimously last month, but his proposed changes threaten to kill momentum and perhaps the bill itself....
Cornyn's amendment would allow FBI officials, such as agents who lead field offices, to acquire various records without court approval....
History teaches us that when government is unable or unwilling to attend to the “big things” that government is supposed to do, they instead concentrate on oppressive minutiae against their own citizens.
Just as importantly, this also indicates that the government that does this is nearing collapse.
Currently, the US government has 17 major intelligence agencies, and well over 100 federal police agencies. Having long ago run out of legitimate things to do, they now demand every increasing powers to collect information of little or no utility, even creating vast archives of useless trivia crap.
The reformation of these bureaucracies begins by stripping them of their overreaching powers, despite their frantic and passionate threats of doom if this is done. Once this is done, as agencies they can be downgraded to the point where they are once again focused on their missions and have a much higher level of efficiency.
Importantly, if the government is able to do this, it may survive. If it fails, it will collapse, resulting in a major catastrophe. And while these intelligence and police agencies may imagine the catastrophe as being caused by being refused the vast powers they demanded; the truth is that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Even the status quo is intolerable, because they are wasting resources and focus that is needed against our enemies. Real ones, not paranoid fantasies.
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