Posted on 05/11/2015 6:51:10 AM PDT by GIdget2004
Congress is under new pressure to take action on the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance program, as a deadline looms near and questions swirl about the legality of its data collection practices.
Lawmakers have only 10 legislative days to renew portions of the Patriot Act set to expire on June 1, and there are deep divides in both parties over how to move forward.
Unusual political partnerships and varying motives leave serious doubts about what Congress will do as it sprints towards the finish line, even as a top court demands legislative action.
“Where I think it’s going — God I wish I knew, although I don’t think I’m alone in that,” said Amie Stepanovich, the U.S. policy manager for digital rights group Access and a supporter of legislation to reform the NSA. “Everybody’s kind of crystal balling it at this point.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other hawkish Republicans, including Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (Ariz.), freshman firebrand Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), presidential hopeful Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (N.C.), want to extend the existing program without change.
Meanwhile, the White House, liberal Democratic Sen. Pat Leahy (Vt.) and Tea Party favorite Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) want to pass reforms that would effectively end the NSA’s collection of bulk phone records and keep the information in the hands of private companies, all while extending the underlying law.
More radical proposals from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — another presidential candidate — as well as advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) would let the law expire entirely, which they say is the best way to protect people’s privacy rights.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Why does it seem that when push comes to shove on the important contested issues Rubio always lines up with the RINOs?
Did everyone notice that all military installations in the US went to condition Bravo last week? There was an “undefined threat” at an “undefined location”. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the information for this alert came from the NSA, based on intelligence gathered through these warrantless wiretaps. I’m also going to go out on a limb and posit that there is no real threat to anyone, the only threat is personal privacy courtesy of the NSA.
Because Rubio is a con man
“...and there are deep divides in both parties over how to move forward.”
Every time I see that sentence I know whatever happens will be 100% of what Leftists want with conservatives getting something down the road (that never comes).
“More radical proposals from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — another presidential candidate — as well as advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) would let the law expire entirely, which they say is the best way to protect people’s privacy rights.”
It’s considered radical to return to how the government worked on October 25th, 2001 (the day before Bush singed the Patriot Act)? Well, it is radical because the PA was a revolution.
Now is the time for the Do-Nothing Congress to do nothing.
The entire Patriot Act is a misguided assault on the constitution and liberty.
Time to start the process of whittling the federal government behemoth down to size.
You may laugh at this, but in Rubio I see the slow emergence of the next John McCain.
Is that a rhetorical question?
Anyone who thinks the NSA is not going to continue it’s totalitarien spying operations is living in a dream world. Most likely they’ll be given the green light for this by congress. If not, they’ll do it anyway, because there are no consequences to them if they do.
The basic argument is actually quite simple.
Is the purpose of these laws and agency actions *mostly* against foreign terrorists outside of the United States; or are they *mostly* used against Americans for no real purpose?
The argument for the former is that the War on Terror continues, and that there are a vast number of foreign enemies who wish to attack America, as well as some Americans who are supportive of these foreigners, and wish to attack America itself, as well as aid and abet their foreign enemies.
The argument for the latter is bizarre speculation: that because some Americans are anti-American, that all Americans must be imprisoned to be certain that the small number are imprisoned. Because profiling anti-Americans would be bad, for some reason.
But it gets worse: not only is such espionage *reactive*, that is, only *might* come into play after a terrorist attack; but that the real enemies will be “needle in a haystack” lost among the vast amount of useless data.
Yet there is a *qualitative* measure of how effective these laws are in practice.
That is, no doubt there has been *some* small successes in anti-terrorism. But the vast, overwhelming majority of the time, these laws are used to oppress Americans, even if they have committed some non-terrorist offense.
Is there real value to the TSA, for example? It is a huge and extremely expensive inconvenience to travelers. And most of what it does accomplish is remarkably petty, like stopping small time smugglers and people carrying unauthorized materials aboard aircraft. As well as intrusively spying on computer data that is none of their concern.
So is stopping a half dozen sort-of-terrorist activities worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the harassment of millions of innocent people, and lots of petty law enforcement totally unrelated to terrorism?
The same rule should apply to the NSA. If it is doing its job, spying on our enemies, most of whom are outside the US, then we can support it. But if it is wasting countless resources to catalog vast amounts of useless data, that which is actually used has nothing to do with terrorism, then the NSA’s mission must be reorganized.
The bottom line is that the War on Terror is about them, not us, so all of this effort should focus on them, not us. If it is the other way around, the Patriot Act has failed and needs to be abolished.
I'm of the opinion that it is not misguided, but an intentional assault thereon — the agency-powers and policies that have grown from the Patriot Act are, IMO, far too planned to have simply "grown". The ATF runs guns because that was what the elite wanted; the NSA spies w/o warrants on citizens because that is what the elite want; the TSA exists and conditions the people to accept government intrusion because that is what the elite want.
Since ISIS has threatened to attack American interests today they will use that to justify continuing the Patriot act
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