- Votes in the House and Senate used to be anonymous
- They then decided to make them public under the reasoning of transparency
- One side effect of making them public is that you got people like Grover Norquist and The Americans for Tax Reform who could see who voted for taxes and then use that to "name and shame" people (there was a pledge signing in there as well). For more details see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist
- This now means that it's MUCH easier for lobbyists and special interest groups to see where to spend their money as a Senator's voting history is public knowledge (which both sides are WELL aware of)
- As a sibling poster points out: you can easily see who receives money from defense groups vs not.
- This is probably good for us as voters in the short term but bad for the country in the long term (Due to the above)
I'm not convinced that this is a problem. Lobbyists and special interests already knew how politicians voted, they just knew via old fashioned grapevine methods. There was an information asymmetry between well connected lobbyists and average people. The fact that no longer exists is a good thing, in the long and short term.
“when private citizens are able to vote privately, it protects their ability to vote their conscience, rather than allowing some third party to explicitly buy votes or bully someone into voting in line with someone else”,
and the belief that somehow this doesn’t apply to congress members.
Additionally, on hard philosophical and policy qurstions, some bits of negotiation and dealmaking are bare-knuckled “the sausage gets made” affairs that are brutally hard on the ego and participants. Part of why nothing can get through Congress anymore in a timely fashion and without continual brinksmanship on important funding or to prevent shutdowns is because even if crossing party lines would very often be in the public’s interest, and to the public’s net benefit, haggling to make it happen or voting to make it so often doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of thousands of watchful eyes where an important deal may hinge on brutal haggling which the public couldn’t stomach seeing the intermediate steps and votes of.
One such example in practical terms: if the constitutional convention which replaced the articles of confederation took place in the internet age with modern real-time, to the minute reporting on how everyone was voting on every intermediate plan and how any compromise made was a betrayal of “party lines” on an issue, America as a country probably wouldn’t exist today.
Transparency has its own benefits, but it’s not without costs - you make a legislative body’s job more difficult, you get corresponding gridlock to match.
Sure there’s a tension, but one difference is that I know how I vote, but I don’t know how my representative votes unless it’s in the public record.
If you believe that electorates punish politicians for decisions in the public interest, and legislators’ jobs would be easier if they were less accountable to their voters, why support democracy at all?
There are a variety of differences between having representatives vote with your interests and voting yourself, such as practicality, time expenditure and access to advising and expertise, etc. That’s perhaps why many direct democracy systems (California, Switzerland, etc.) combine the two with direct democracy used for relatively few decisions.
There's no "THE problem." There's a ton of "problems." Just to be clear. Because many of the problems we face today are through interaction of different things, often in a complex chain, rather than a direct easy to follow causal chain.
> via old fashioned grapevine
Treat the problem as an adversarial problem. Yes, your adversary will always be able to break your defenses. Nothing is bulletproof. How you defend is through forcing adversaries to expend resources. It is very clear that forcing lobbiests to learn through the grapevine is a more costly method than simply looking at a public database. And if you aren't familiar with this concept, people lie. No one need know your vote unless you reveal it (which... might be a lie).
The point also is that it can also prevent inner conflict, among parties. You're not voting along party lines? You think you're going to get as much support from your party when it comes to your bills and campaign funds? So you have plenty of incentive to not reveal your vote, even among allies.
I agree with you in that switching to private votes won't solve the problems we have. But would it improve? I'd guess some and I'd guess it would take time for the real effects to be seen. But the other side is, would it do harm? I doubt it.
The continental congress itself was entirely secret with no notes taken and no existing journal, diary, or any other record of the proceedings - and this was a bunch of folks who obsessively recorded their lives and thoughts for posterity. They also thought pretty hard about the side effects of such things and congressional and senate votes were private until modern times.
I’m not one who believes the constitution is sacred or that the founding fathers were infallible, but I do think the chance for a person to vote their conscience vs their politics is an important feature. While the grapevine might be a route to learn, it’s also a route that doesn’t have to be accurate. I can tell my lobbyist whatever I want about my vote, but only I know what my vote was in private voting. This feels like a feature not a flaw.
The point of representative democracy is selecting a person whose judgement you believe in. Public voting records lead to populist and party strangleholds on outcomes with consequences for breaking dogma. Practically speaking it also gives lobbyists proof positive of whether their money was well spent.
The parties only have "disputes" on a short list of wedge issues, and either side winning on those removes the that issue as a cudgel that can motivate their base.
If you look at their donors, you'll see the lines. The people who voted for it make money from the defense and intelligence industries, and the people who didn't, don't. Voting for for something majorities of the voters of both parties are against is expensive (in terms of being re-elected.) That price is paid by donors, and the media control that those donors will exercise. Which again, is why the wedge issues are needed: you're going to have to vote for those people who voted against your civil liberties if you want Democrats to pretend to protect abortion rights for another 4 years, or Republicans to pretend to end them.
I mean, except that many people can’t get either an abortion or IVF. This affects people’s entires lives, it’s not “pretend” unless you are unaffected.
What would you have Biden do about exactly? Pack the Supreme Court? If Roosevelt couldn’t pull that off at the height of his power, there’s no way Biden is making that happen.
My hot take is that IVF enables infertile couples to propagate their genes, which is bad in an evolutionary sense since it increases the population and decreases the fertility of the gene pool. Another way of putting it is, it increases the odds of people falling in love with someone who is infertile.
which is exactly why the vote went the way it did. they wanted it passed, they found the votes from senators that were safe, and everyone else was allowed to bail so they didn’t have to deal with it at reelection.
this is normal practice, to provide cover for your party members.
it’s divided by party line because it’s national security. they’re splitting the spoils.
On the republican side, those voting yea are almost always the old McCain crowd. What the right calls “RINOs” or republicans in name only. That’s not surprising, they’re also the group funding wars, voted for the initial spy bills, etc.
What’s more surprising is the split in IL between Duckworth (yea) and Durban (Nay). Usually you don’t see states splitting too much. Tennessee was all Nays for instance.
at least a bunch of the isolationist sentiment on the republican side recently has actually come from former veterans, since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had such questionable returns
Because in reality the two party system is not accurate. It’s rich versus poor, those with power versus those without. Nobility versus peasants. That’s just how it works.
The US federal government is already pretty weak compared to other countries. The federal government looks pretty bad at the moment, but I’m not sure further weakening it will help the country.
The US federal government is very strong compared to many countries, just limited in where that power can be applied... in theory. In practice, the insanity that is a precedent-based judicial system over time means that it's all just a disorganized mess where on one hand the Feds can straight up prevent you from boarding a plane, ever, without any semblance of due process (this is not normally a power you'll find in other countries), and yet can't regulate many mundane things like firearms.
However, there is a very solid case for a weak federal government, and it is simply that US is a country that's way too big for any coherent national policy on most matters that we've currently pushed there. It's such a vicious fight because it's half the country trying to bludgeon the other half into submission, motivated by the knowledge that, if you yield, the other guy will pick up this huge club and do the same to you. This will continue until the country breaks down unless we dial it down to state level and accept the fact that other states may have laws and lifestyle that is despicable or horrifying to us in some ways. Either that, or we might as well just break the whole thing apart now and not wait for it to happen in a more violent manner.
Other countries don't institutionalize the two-party system by law. Because it would be insane and antidemocratic to create a complicated network of laws that would have to be eliminated state by state in order to ordain that an entire country must be ruled by two intimately-linked private clubs in turn.
The two-party system isn't so heavily institutionalized "by law". The law generally gives advantages to parties that pull in more than x% of the vote, and it so happens that the first-past-the-post system of electing representatives makes it very difficult for a third party to take root.
Except our law is nothing like that. You can have a party take 45% of each district across the whole country and end up with zero seats in the House (because the other party took 55% of each).
The first past the post system is encoding a two party system into law. If it makes to hard enough for a third party to take hold, there might as well not be one.
I do not find it surprising that groups of people with many overlapping viewpoints do not have overlapping viewpoints 100% of the time. If anything, I find it surprising that they overlap so frequently.
Furthermore, I think the frequency of that overlap is a major problem for our political system, because it makes compromise impossible.
Really makes you think about whether there are some things that can still transcend partisan showmanship, like national security.
I still am a believer in digital freedom, I'm old enough to have seen the changes in the Internet, and it is a much more malevolent and fucked up force than it was even 15 years ago. Maybe, just maybe, the government needs the power to spy on international targets with oversight.
> crackpots talking about a uniparty, deep state vs the people, etc
It’s not controversial to suggest that the interests of the political class, the special interests that fund their campaigns, and Washington bureaucrats differ from the interests of the public at large. You don’t need to evoke deep state conspiracies to explain nefarious coordination because when career and monetary incentives align then bills like this one get passed.
Yep, this trend of dismissing undemocratic power structures as conspiracy theories is deeply troubling. Important issues such as surveillance, censorship, and the military-industrial complex have a long history and are extensively documented. Yet it's hard to bring these issues up today without being labeled a far right conspiracist.
It wasn't always like this. Many have agreed these were legitimate issues during the Iraq war. Where have all those people gone today?
It's definitely who you hang around with, but I think how the conversation is approached also dictates outcome. Talk about a political ruling class with most people, and they'll look at you as though you grew a third eyeball. Talk about the Dems and Repubs being out of touch with the average person due to the insulative effect of DC, and they'll usually agree.
You can generally convey the same idea gently as long as you hedge your phrasing somewhat. Making it sound like a wacky accusation comes off sounding, well, wacky.
You nailed it. This discussion would never have happened on HN if I hadn’t worded my original comment the way I did. It’s not how I wanted to word it ;)
Yup, I have that happen a lot. So, I can definitely empathize.
We're in this really weird place where some of us on different parts of the political spectrum who may not have previously agreed are now in general agreement one way or the other, just because politics itself has become so insane.
I mean, I'm a little crazy, I won't deny that. But it's kind of bugging me that phrasing matters far more than the idea. Most reasonable people would agree that the system is fundamentally broken. We might not agree on a solution, but at least we can look at it and say "yeah, this isn't sustainable." Unfortunately, if you use the wrong word around the wrong group of people, you get branded a little bonkers. :)
The bureaucrats regularly present scary information to the politicians to justify their actions and powers. The juiciest bits of intelligence are intentionally selected for escalation up the chain, with many being presented ASAP at the highest levels (SECDEF, President) and/or retained for later demonstration to oversight authorities (FISA court, Congressional committees). While much of "raw" intelligence is not reliable, the agencies can curate the best (most believable/most sensational/most verified) intelligence reports over time.
Given recent events in the Middle East and the fact that both parties' senior politicians mostly lean the same way in terms of which sides they support, this result is unsurprising if disappointing.
One way some people suggest is at least one of the 3-letter intelligence communities will send/drop CP on their computer or phone if that congressmen doesn’t vote their way. If that’s even partially true, then it makes them more powerful than all of the elected bodies.
Trump announced that he believed Putin over his own intelligence.
But then there was the time Biden installed Hunter on the White House staff and ordered that he be given a security clearance, despite dozens of discrepancies, undisclosed foreign contacts, and other red flags on the paperwork. Oh, wait, no, that was Trump, too.
The only person willing to take them on is Trump. Look at all of the fake cases and mainstream media attacking that followed. I don't think anyone can stop them now. When America is replaced as a world power that day will come.
I think you have things a bit backwards. Without FISA, the intelligence agencies have less oversight and fewer restrictions.
> The FISA resulted from extensive investigations by Senate Committees into the legality of domestic intelligence activities. These investigations were led separately by Sam Ervin and Frank Church in 1978 as a response to President Richard Nixon's usage of federal resources, including law enforcement agencies, to spy on political and activist groups.
Well, before FISA, constitutional warrant requirements were not sidestepped, they were simply ignored. So now we're acknowledging that the constitutional requirements are still there, but now we use this weird dodge to get around it. So is that better or worse?
Neither am I cheering for it. Don't put words in my mouth.
I am seriously asking whether being flat-out unconstitutional is worse than building a (legislated and approved) backdoor around the constitution, yes.
I mean, better than both would be to just follow the constitution, but that wasn't the question.
Well, you are asserting a binary choice here which is questionable and implies that unless we grant spooks legal OK for some violations of the constitution they are free to ignore the entire matter. If a government agency is acting in violation of constitution then there are legal and constitutional remedies to make sure the said agencies act according to the law of the land.
Please note that at no point I said that you specifically cheered, so no need to project. It’s a threaded topic.
As you noticed, following constitution is apparently not an option here. Being unconstitutional and ignored, there was at least some hope for improvement, but codification gave us a clear answer that elected representatives are, at best, only selectively interested in supporting constitution.
They're ultimately the same, the partisanship is mostly a farce as they both know that they're the only realistic options, so as long as neither side goes out of its way to seriously be better than the other, they can both enjoy the perks of being in power eventually, and therefore increased power is always good from their pov as regardless of party, they'll eventually have access to that power too.
This was noticeably on display for me in 2020 right after it was determined that Biden had won the election. Lindsey Graham, a Republican Senator, was caught on video in the Senate chamber warmly congratulating and hugging Kamala Harris, a D senator and VP-elect. It was as if they both knew Graham's hyper-partisan antics during the preceding months before the vote was all just an act - a part of the game. I'd bet that he secretly voted for Biden/Harris as well and will do so again.
This is basic human empathy from a very small group of insiders. I mean, this is their job. Do you think they all go around work being dicks to each other all day every day?
Their job is to represent us, supposedly. And they keep trying to whip their own supporters into frenzy against each other (quite successfully, I should note - so much so that it's already getting violent at times). The fact that the people doing so are themselves chum buddies tells volumes.
> D in US is more right than other countries' left leaning parties
I don't think this is accurate. Maybe on healthcare and welfare, sure. But on many social issues, the Democrats are much further to the left than the European left. On issues such as abortion, gender/sexuality, migration, and race, the Democrats are more extreme compared to Labour in the UK, SPD in Germany, and the PSOE in Spain. Even the left in France isn't as socially extremist as the Democrats.
It's a boring take from more than 30 years ago that was kinda true in the Regan years when the dominant voting groups could pretend that elected officials and government didn't actually matter because they all voted similarly and discrimination against groups that disagreed had been publicly accepted for decades. Historical electoral maps were not usually competitive at all like they are now.
The both parties are the same is such a lazy take, except in super limited circumstances like this naked power grab in the article. Both are going to use it in wildly different ways
>Even the left in France isn't as socially extremist as the Democrats.
Depends which left which you are talking about. LFI is certainly on that level in their way, PS/Place Publique are not(given that "printemps républicain" was part of what killed popular support for the party).
For migration, sure, but it is very related to the history of the US (nearly everyone is a relatively recent immigrant so it feels wrong to refuse that others come in). For abortion and gender this is not correct though. It is not as hot a topic but positions are not that different between European left and democrats. There is also a very wide scale of opinions inside the Democrat party itself. Some people just focus on the very left of the party but plenty of democrats are much more similar to Macron than the French left when it comes to social issues.
I mean, those countries have other further left parties with held seats in their legislatures up to and including outright explicit communist parties.
Those parties you listed are known for being center to center left in Europe, sometimes explicitly escuing the left as UK Labour and SPD have done.
Excpet PSOE which is farther left than the Democrats, having all of the identity politics of the Democratic party while being explicitly and empathetically pro union. Heads would have rolled if PSOE had broken the rail workers strike that like Biden did. The also tried to legalize abortion in the Spanish constitution in the 1970s, and haven't wavered on their view of abortion since. They passed same sex marriage when they got their first chance to (and before the US did), and used the same opportunity to expand transgender rights.
Left and right are different in different countries. In the US, the Republicans are generally pro-building (see where new homes and factories are being built). But in the UK, the left party (Labour) is the one pushing for less onerous planning.
There are a lot more similarities between "both sides" than that. They make a big show out of arguing over a small number of things they disagree on. But for many important things, they don't significantly differ.
The two parties do not significantly differ on indefinite detention of American citizens on US soil.
The two parties do not significantly differ on domestic spying, dragnet-style data collection and warrantless wiretapping.
The two parties do not significantly differ on allowing extra-judicial targeted killings.
The two parties do not significantly differ on the use of unmanned drones, either for combat or domestic surveillance.
The two parties both support pre-emptive "cyber" war and non-defensive hacking.
The two parties do not significantly differ on their support for continuing the War On Terror.
The two parties both support maintaining US military bases around the world.
The two parties do not significantly differ on favoring Keynesian economics.
The two parties support delegating monetary policy decisions to the Federal Reserve, including support for quantitative easing.
The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of earmarks and pork barrel spending.
Neither of the two parties have (recently) proposed plans for balancing the budget.
Neither of the two parties plans to significantly cut defense spending.
The two parties both favor taxpayer-funded foreign aid.
The two parties are largely backed by the same corporate sponsors and special interest groups, with a few key differences.
The two parties both backed TARP and in general favor bailing out companies too big to fail.
The two parties do not significantly differ on their general support of "economic stimulus" as a tool to prop up the economy.
The two parties do not significantly differ on their support for and allegiance to Israel.
The two parties both favor and continue sanctions on Iran.
The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of super PAC funding and their support of unlimited spending from corporations and special interest groups.
The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of gerrymandering to gain political advantage.
The two parties oppose any measures that would strengthen the viability of a third party.
> The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of earmarks and pork barrel spending.
This is not true; the Republicans strongly oppose them and have repeatedly tried to abolish them (and were temporarily successful at one point).
> Neither of the two parties have (recently) proposed plans for balancing the budget.
This isn't true. Both parties have recently proposed plans for balancing the budget; Biden proposed plans to balance it by raising taxes and instituting a wealth tax just last year, and Republicans have put forward various entitlement reform proposals to balance the budget.
> The two parties both favor and continue sanctions on Iran.
Obama ended sanctions on Iran with the nuclear deal before Trump reinstated them; Republicans blocked Senate ratification of the deal, allowing him to do that and ensuring the Iranians wouldn't trust future entreaties from the US. Claiming the two parties are the same on this is odd.
> The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of super PAC funding and their support of unlimited spending from corporations and special interest groups.
Dems support and have repeatedly attempted to pass an anti-Citizens United amendment.
> The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of gerrymandering to gain political advantage.
Dems repeatedly tried to pass a bill banning gerrymandering federally when they controlled the House in 2021.
I'm no expert but for these 5 at least, I am aware of significant and specific interparty differences.
I guarantee you that whichever points you think are "common sense" on this list, there's millions of people in this country who will disagree with you on every single one of them.
Given the present state of international relations, monetary policy, or the country in general, I'm no longer sure such people even exist. There are certainly many people who would like the proles to think so, and to vote them into power on that basis. But it doesn't appear to be translating to policies that are actually good for most of us, somehow.
Have there ever been a point where our law enforcement and intelligence agencies haven't been weaponized by our politicians against their opposition? FBI under Hoover, COINTELPRO, Watergate...
I suspect in the incentives, the downside risk weighs much heavier for these people. If they block surveillance powers and another 9/11 happened they'd be dragged over the coals, whereas approving them is pretty risk free.
It's the first time I can ever remember on a contested vote where both the two Democratic Senators from my current bluer than blue state voted the same (nay) as the two Republican Senators from my former redder than red state. Strange bedfellows in interesting times.
That reminds me of Wellington's response under similar circumstances.
A former lover tried to blackmail Wellington. His response was 'Publish and be damned.' It was published to the delight of many. But he still went on to become Prime Minister.
Reminds me of when the KGB and the CIA tried to use knowledge of the sexual exploits of Indonesia's president Sukarno to blackmail him. Instead of falling in line, he told them to release what they had so his countrymen could be impressed by his sexual prowess. The KGB went as far as having a group of their agents pose as flight attendants to engage him in an orgy, which they secretly filmed. When confronted with the film, he asked if KGB for extra copies for him to take home.
I obviously can't guess your age, but I'm gonna wager you weren't around much prior to 9/11. The world was getting on quite well without massive surveillance creep, and none of the stuff FISA has done in the last 23 years would have stopped it. The authorities already had all the info they needed back then and just didn't act on it.
FISA has been in existence since 1978. It did not prevent 9/11, so honestly your comment undersells how worthless the program has been in light of the constitutional freedoms we willingly cede in reauthorizing it. The fact is though it remains law and the officials we elected feel the value is worth it. I hope its being done solely based on the benefits it provides us as a whole and is not being used for self-serving purposes
People just toss comments like this around as though they were facts when in fact it’s completely paranoid made up q-anon level nonsense.
These laws work a very specific way and have very specific controls in place to prevent shit like you describe from happening which you could go and read up on if you wanted to but it’s much easier to fear monger amongst one another because it plays to your ego that somebody who is important enough to be under surveillance by an intelligence agency.
You could easily look at things like the Snowden leaks to see how well such controls end up working out. My favorite was NSA agents collecting and sharing sexual content. [1] The reason that's my favorite is not because it's the most extreme example of abuse - it's not, not by a longshot. The reason is that it really demonstrates that 'government' isn't some abstract or holistic entity. It's just a group of people, like you and I -- with the exact same vices, egos, weaknesses, and so on.
And of course this applies not only to the NSA spooks, but all the way up. You shouldn't be any more comfortable letting 'the government' spy on you, than you would be letting me spy on you. If you want another example along the same lines, spooks spying on their love interests is so common that there's a slang term for it - LOVEINT [2]. Basically, don't grant people power over other people unless it's really just completely and absolutely necessary, because it will be abused. So the benefit needs to substantially outweigh the inevitable abuses. And in this case, that obviously doesn't hold.
"Completely paranoid made up q-anon level nonsense" from the New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, Associated Press, and many others? I think not.
It's a secret court making secret law. This is, by definition, both unaccountable and impossible to conclude is not being used to cover up massive abuse, because whatever is happening is being concealed from the voters.
People dislike parts of the original 1978 bill that contunued.
I take issue with this bit: FISA also established the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a special U.S. Federal court that holds nonpublic sessions to consider issuing search warrants under FISA. Proceedings before the FISC are ex parte, meaning the government is the only party present.
When combined by foreign agents including US citizens, it’s troubling.
Agree with the sentiment, but spying capabilities have been abused before FISA, just ask Martin Luther King Jr. So I don't think things were particularly fine before 9/11 either. It's just that technological advancements have made abuse on a mass scale possible for the first time in human history. AFAICT surveillance used to be much more targeted and labor intensive. That all changed after 9/11.
I didn't downvote you, btw (I upvoted you). I think MLK Jr's problems with the government weren't traditional spying, they were more harassment of government employees acting on their own because they were bigots. The organized government actions that did happen, IIRC, were in places were the local government was highly corrupt and infiltrated by the KKK.
> Are you aware the alternative is less oversight?
Yes, I am. That is in fact what I want.
> FISA protects Americans
No, it does not. At this time, the greatest threat to me (and other Americans) is in fact the glowies who want to use this sort of law to violate our civil liberties.
The alternative is requiring a warrant, which means following the Constitution. Due process doesn’t disappear because you want it to. Even if someone is supposedly a terrorist or criminal.
If you’re hoping the Supreme Court, and in particular this Supreme Court, is going to agree that the Constitution requires the executive branch get a warrant before spying on cross-border communication with a non-citizen, you’re going to be disappointed.
FISA is Congress exercising the only authority it has here, which is oversight & regulation. You could argue FISA should be stricter, but it can’t extend the Constitutional reach of the Fourth Amendment, nor can it contract it the way many in this thread believe it’s somehow doing.
It's baffling to many people how FISA is even a thing. To a layperson, the Fourth Amendment leaves no room for a rubber stamp court authorizing mass surveillance. And no one except politicians and bureaucrats are buying the argument that this is somehow targeted surveillance.
Also, free nations should have higher standards than "Not a citizen? Too bad, anything goes."
This is not complicated: If you run a telegraph wire between El Paso and Juárez, the executive has the Constitutional authority to tap it to intercept communication to or from a non-citizen not in the United States, warrant-free.
Congress can regulate the process that must be followed, the documentation that must be made, even require judicial review at the program level to ensure it doesn’t also record traffic that is Constitutionally protected. That’s what FISA is.
But it can’t ban that tapping, nor can it require the executive to get a warrant for a particular otherwise Constitutional intercept from an Article 3 court.
Where do I even start? Let's first reiterate that even when it's technically legal to screw over non-citizens, it doesn't make it right. That's not the standard expected of a free nation.
But let's ignore that for a moment and move on to the next point. Your example is still hoovering up communications from citizens who are supposed to be protected by due process of law. En masse. How does this not run afoul of the law?
The problem is compounded by the fact that the internet blurs geographical borders. Wholly domestic communications can and does end up crossing borders. Also, I'd bet a large part of our communications aren't even between people. The majority of the traffic likely are sent to or from computer programs. They happen without most people even realizing it, but contains highly personal information. The simple telegraph analogy doesn't translate well to the internet.
What's more, there's currently no meaningful system in place to prevent abuse. And no, a rubber stamp court authorizing dragnet surveillance isn't it.
OK, you want FISA to be stricter. But way up thread, someone made the point that it’s FISA itself that puts any meaningful balancing constraints at all on the Constitutional power of the executive. This includes the FISA court—made up of real, lifetime-tenured federal judges of the same robes you would like approving warrants—that is there by law to be watching out for just your parade of horribles.
The poster was roundly criticized for being correct.
No, FISA should not be a thing. Wiretap warrants should be reasonably scoped and acquired on an individual basis. There shouldn't be a secret court issuing do-whatever-you-want warrants.
To get that you have two choices: Do your best to persuade your fellow citizens to elect a President who will choose to forego this part of his Constitutional powers—or get a Constitutional amendment passed.
What I keep trying to explain is that this FISA vote can’t address your concerns one way or the other. If you disagree, I wish you’d explain how.
That's actually a great point. After the Snowden revelations, politicians justified some of the surveillance programs by claiming they were only looking at the metadata, not the content, as if that made any difference. So that's one of the excuses they use to create the appearance of legality.
> This is not complicated: If you run a telegraph wire between El Paso and Juárez, the executive has the Constitutional authority to tap it to intercept communication to or from a non-citizen not in the United States, warrant-free.
That's not correct at all. It would only fall under federal overview if it's commercial (Article 1 section 8 clause 3 of the constitution gives congress the right to regulate commerce with foreign nations).
The Feds don't just get to do anything they want by default. All powers that aren't specifically given to the feds are defaulted to either the states or the people.
It's dumb, but Wickard v. Filburn makes basically anything involving physical goods "commerce". I'm sure there's a ruling somewhere that says something like: people entering the country subtly alter the restaurant market (not really any dumber than the Wickard v. Filburn rationale), and therefore the feds have a right to search everything.
I think it would be a lot harder to do that with speech though. Maybe you could argue that the telegraph line itself impacts international copper markets or something, but there are non-tangible based communication methods.
I don't understand the argument that it couldn't require a warrant. The argument is simply that the executive branch has a constitutional right to wiretap without a warrant, unless the the constitution forbids it?
There is some judicial oversight in the FISA court of course. What's the argument for why congress can legislate that, but not a more typical warrant?
For the same reason Congress can’t require the President to get the approval of the Supreme Court before he vetoes a bill: Our Constitution gives powers to the executive that cannot be usurped or overruled by Congress, notably in this context to conduct the national defense and foreign affairs.
The FISA court exists to ensure that the executive is not operating outside his Constitutional authority, not as a gatekeeper for use of that authority at all in any instance.
> Our Constitution gives powers to the executive that cannot be usurped or overruled by Congress, notably in this context to conduct the national defense and foreign affairs.
This is not true. The constitution explicitly reserves the power to declare war or enact treaties to Congress. Neither the military nor federal law enforcement can spend a single dime, or even exist, without Congressional approval. If the budget allocates no money to mass surveillance, no money is available to conduct mass surveillance.
That interpretation of the constitutional grant of foreign affairs and defense to the executive forbididng requiring a warrant is not obvious to me.
Do you have any case law to cite for this, or it's just your favored argument that you'd hope a court would agree with? You are talking about it like it's settled law. Cites?
Also, note that the cases you are talking about to which the law applies have someone in the USA involved in the wiretapped conversation as well. It wouldn't shock me if the courts -- although probably not the current supreme court, but you never know -- simply said it required a warrant constitutionally at some point in the future. It's certainly not obvious that you can wiretap an American without a warrant as long as they are talking to someone overseas.
And what exactly stops them from doing that, as a condition of how they spend the money? You could certainly have budget allocation for "surveillance conducted pursuant to a warrant" that prevents the money from being wasted on useless surveillance of innocent people.
The Constitution. What you’re saying is no different from Congress declaring war and funding the army, but with the proviso they must clear all battles with a Federal judge before they’re begun.
Or funding the Department of Justice, but with the proviso that any nominee for Attorney General must be over age 60.
Requiring battles to be approved by a judge has obvious practical problems, because they often happen in remote locations at unpredictable times, but Congress can pass all kinds of dumb requirements if they want to. That doesn't mean it's unconstitutional.
You're proposing an alternative where the executive gets to decide how money is spent. As if mass surveillance, which is a waste of money, has to be funded in order to fund ordinary investigations.
The executive is the weakest branch. It has almost no powers of its own, and shouldn't. It's checks and balances. For something to happen, the executive has to want to do it and Congress has to fund it. Not one or the other; both.
No, it really is unconstitutional for Congress to encroach on the enumerated powers of the executive. Just look at the recent SCOTUS cases around the setup of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to understand how consequential this constraint is.
> Just look at the recent SCOTUS cases around the setup of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to understand how consequential this constraint is.
Isn't this about the opposite issue, whether Congress can delegate control over funding to the executive? They were trying to get the executive to do the job of Congress and control the CFPB's funding.
The Constitution has already been shat on in all manner of ways to the point where it's not recognizable anymore. If we continue doing so anyway, we might at least do that to the citizens' benefit.
> You could argue FISA should be stricter, but it can’t extend the Constitutional reach of the Fourth Amendment, nor can it contract it the way many in this thread believe it’s somehow doing.
Congress can't pass a law violating the Fourth Amendment. They can certainly pass a law constraining the executive from doing something that is otherwise constitutional, if the courts are reading the Fourth Amendment too narrowly.
They could also straightforwardly require the FISA court to publish its opinions, or have the same cases heard in ordinary federal courts with public accountability for the decisions. There is nothing in the constitution requiring secret courts.
I used to work for several of the US intel agencies. I can say with great confidence that we never have acted gainfully on preventing a major event using intel and we never will. The catalyst for acting boldly to prevent or defend a major event is much mor political than informational. No intel will ever play a big role in deciding whether a country lives or dies.
But we most certainly WILL abuse individual civil rights my abusing that intel. THAT has been confirmed in history again and again.
> The catalyst for acting boldly to prevent or defend a major event is much mor political than informational.
Could you explain what you mean by this? On a tangential note, have you considered talking/explaining this with politicians/academics studying this field? Or is it more of something that's already known to those familiar with the field?
The most relevant example I know is the Zimmerman telegram in 1917 which British intelligence decrypted and passed along to Pres Wilson. It detailed plans Germany had made to invade the US with Mexico's help. Wilson released it to newspapers in March as support for his decision to declare war on Germany in April. However the primary justification for war wasn't the telegram, but the public decision by Bismark to fully resume uboat attacks on merchant ships in the Atlantic.
So even as damning and revealing as the Zimmerman telegram was, ultimately it was Germany's bold resumption of the torpedoing of US oceangoing traffic that catalyzed US public opinion into ending 3 years of American neutrality and joining the fight in WWI. Thus even when intel is most damning, the role of intel will always be subservient to publicly motivating events like lost lives, as in the much ballyhooed sinking of the Lusitania 2 years before (1915).
Wikipedia has a couple of outstanding articles on the topic:
We also had drug trafficking when the US constitution was originally written[0], and the founders of the US still gave us a constitutional right to warrants for searches relating to it. I don't understand why sealed warrants aren't "good enough" for this purpose, perhaps you could open my mind a bit. Why do we need "warrantless" surveillance for drug trafficking now? Specifically, what's wrong with getting a sealed (secret for a period of time) warrant for surveillance from a normal court?
> In 1800, the British Levant Company purchases nearly half of all of the opium coming out of Smyrna, Turkey strictly for importation to Europe and the United States.
I can't down vote you harder. FISA hurts Americans by short circuiting any kind of protections citizens once had for due process.
We were fine before, and arguably it would've done little to change the events that caused the reaction that allowed it to be established in the first place.
Once enough votes are there to secure the bill, there's no reason for either party to "waste" any more votes of their members on something that can be so politically unpopular with large parts of their electorate.
People generally vote for the incumbent if they happen to claim the same party affiliation. They complain for 4-6 years, then when it comes to what box they tick on the ballot, all of that is out the window. The lure of an incumbent is that they might have acquired enough markers and enough seats on various committees to help the state, when it often seems the reality is that they've probably just acquired more lobbyist friends and more incentive to stay in office no matter what. Sure, they may be corrupt and incompetent, but they've got so much influence!
The joys of the "first past the post" election system. Take your choice of a shit sandwich, or a shit sandwich with pickles. Heaven forbid we actually update our voting system to break up the inevitable 2-party outcome.
Heaven might not forbid, but the two ruling parties certainly do. Breaking out of the status quo would crush their cartel, end their monopoly. They don't want to do that. The cycle continues.
Since it expired at midnight and reauthorization passed after midnight, was there a period where the government acted illegally in continuing surveillance? How does that work?
It amazes me how we can pick and choose which part of the Bill of Rights we want to abate, while all of it is being obscured into history. We were united around the Bill of Rights, now we've been brainwashed into believing no one should have rights.
1A, Nope, you have to have facts, and specific facts, and a subject-matter expert, source?
2A, Ban all guns, the government will protect us.
3A, No worry, they're not soldiers, they're law enforcement.
4A, Unreasonable search and seizure? What was unreasonable about us listening to your phone call?
5,6,7A, Fair trail? What public figure is getting a fair trail, and has been unreasonable fines? But he deserves it.
8A, The death penalty is fair, right? I mean, if evidence ever shows up that exonerates them, we can dig them up, right?
9A I don't think anyone cares what order we get rid of these, right?
10A Those states don't have rights, it's my body, right?
I don't vote anymore. No offense, you all disgust me.
We were once called liberals. We believed in unalienable rights. Guess what, my liberties are gone, people are dying in wars, and I'm not happy.
If you wanted to be part of this experiment we call the United States, you could gain citizenship by learning and understanding what liberalism meant.
Not anymore, just cross the border, we will give you a debit card, and just wait, because we're going to make you a citizen, and your uneducated self will help us burn this nation to the ground.
No war will go unfunded, no problem will be solved, and we will teach you to hate everyone else. This while everyone is screaming about their abortion access while the Nation goes bankrupt.
We have $34T in debt, every 93 days we add another $1T. If you're all such internet geniuses, you should have figured that soon, and very soon, that starts walking away from the Treasuries' ability to pay just the interest.
Democrats will scream raise taxes on the rich, but guess what, there are not enough of them to tax. They won't agree to cutting spending cuts.
Republicans will refuse to cut the military because we have to defend Taiwan, and against every mythical and imaginary enemy.
But wait, there is more, Democrats want to expand surveillance on anyone practicing the 1A, the 2A, while violating the 4A & 5A.
Everything is about what you can get from this country. No one listened to John F. Kennedy. He was murdered. "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country..."
It is all about what you can get out of this for yourself. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or some guy on the street. You're trying to get what is best for you, not what is best for all of us.
I want what is best for this Nation. I served, my grandfathers served, my children serve now. But F-U when you tell me I'm part of the problem. I understood what I was fighting for, you have no clue why we're even here.
I will rebut by saying blank-and-white unnuanced opinions ("you all disgust me") is definitely part of the problem with political discourse, and it might be worth examining if you truly value the things you seem to
The surveillance state is bound to happen anyway. There’s just no path for one country to be an ideal democracy with a world full of autocracies. The citizens of US had a good run while it lasted. They did fight well and was worth a try.
Only one thing can make these people work past midnight: abusing the American public. “Representation”, my ass. None of them represents me or anyone I know.
Agreed, but the cynical side of me thinks that they are representing their constituents. It's just that neither you nor me are their constituents. They pay lip service only during an election year.
I'm politically very conservative. I hate every single one of the Republicans. They claim to want smaller government and less intrusion and then vote for... bigger government, more intrusion, and endless wars.
I still vote, though. Mostly, at this point, it feels like an act of protest more than anything.
I struggle to nail down my political affiliation because there’s literally just one party. They quibble over materially irrelevant hot button issues to create the illusion of choice, but all the bullshit that robs me and my kids or strips us of our rights is _always_ “bipartisan”, passed without reading in the dead of the night. And yeah the only two choices in our upcoming “elections” here are a guy with profound dementia who shakes hands with invisible people, and a narcissist moron con man who writes at a fourth grade level and capitalizes nouns for no reason. And neither side considers this to be a problem. I’m beginning to think this is some kind of a joke and the ruling class is just trying to see how far they can take it before people revolt.
The whole point of having cultural issues like abortion, gay rights, guns etc in the spotlight is because it's much easier to make people emotionally invested into that in lieu of, say, economics, foreign policy, military-industrial complex, or political reform.
E.g. get someone fervently believing that their vote is critical to preventing "murder of children", and you can abuse them economically however the hell you want - they'll hate you but they'll still vote for you because the other guy "murders children". This one is such an oldie but goodie that each party has crafted its own wedge issue around it: abortion for Republicans, guns for Democrats.
There was a real moment in the House where it might not have, at least without a warrant requirement. My Congresswoman was one of the attack dogs on this issue. She thought they would get an outpouring of support. She didn’t. The call sheets registered basically zero calls in support, and several lobbying against. So she caved. (This is a pattern I saw play out in New York years earlier in another privacy battle.)
> The unnecessary drama of stalling until after midnight is all theater
Sort of. The Senate calendar is funky. Putting it at the end of the roll was theatre. Having something voted on after midnight was not.
> There was a real moment in the House where it might not have, at least without a warrant requirement. My Congresswoman was one of the attack dogs on this issue. She thought they would get an outpouring of support. She didn’t. The call sheets registered basically zero calls in support, and several lobbying against. So she caved. (This is a pattern I saw play out in New York years earlier in another privacy battle.)
What's odd/interesting to me is that there's been little chatter of late regarding this. I spend an unhealthy amount of time on HN/Reddit/X and save for a few mild posts (as opposed to alarmist or clickbaity) on the topic, I barely see anything. During the net neutrality thing back when Ajit Pai was around I remember there was massive support. And I don't think I've ever heard of the NY privacy thing you mention. I wonder why it's so.
I think at this point most people just assume that this kind of stuff is a foregone conclusion, because they pass it every time without much of a fight (when you compare it to other matters) despite it being strongly disliked across the political spectrum.
Technically, it’s if you communicate to a target of a foreign intelligence investigation AND they deem you suspect enough to request FISA approval to access your side of the communication.
I find you can get a good idea of what's going on from reading between the lines of Wyden's statements. As a member of the intelligence committee he cannot directly disclose the operational details, but you can look at where he's concerned.
From the CNN article on this:
>> Another amendment at issue was from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, a member of the Intelligence Committee. His amendment, which was co-sponsored by several of the most liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans in the chamber, would strike a new part of the program that he argued would lead every day Americans into helping the government spy if they have “access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications.”
On the face of it, any cellphone or smartwatch seems to fit that definition. They could be converting everything into a listening device, recording all of it, and then making it available to intel officers only when they query for it and can argue one party is a foreign national.
So says Morgan Freeman's character Lucius Fox in 2008 in The Dark Knight[0].
The rest of the tech imagined in that scene is plausible today too, considering the density of WiFi/5G and research demonstrating the potential for its use as passive radar [1]. That paper metions a cooperative base station, but I am wondering if there is any value gained in knowing exactly what the traffic is (such as some of the intelligence community does) in modelling how the waves propagate and performing an even more passive observation.
Other info: This reauthorization of FISA includes the Turner-Himes amendment introduced by Reps. Mike Turner (R-OH) and Jim Himes (D-CT). (introduced House, passed Senate)
The Turner-Himes amendment expands the definition of “electronic communications service (ECS) provider” to include “any service provider” that has “access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications.” (except not personal dwellings and restaurants)
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) comment: “It allows the government to force any American who installs, maintains, or repairs anything that transmits or stores communications to spy on the government’s behalf. That means anyone with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a wifi router, or a phone. It would be secret: the Americans receiving the government directives would be bound to silence, and there would be no court oversight.”
EFF comment: “The Justice Department is playing word games when it says the amendment doesn’t change the ‘structure’ of 702 because the law prohibits targeting entities inside the United States. Garland’s pledge, isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on; if this amendment becomes law, the DOJ can and almost certainly will rely on it to conscript other providers who fit within its very broad scope.”
Notably, Trump doesn't like FISA? (removed yelly caps) “Kill FISA, it was illegally used against me, and many others. They spied on my campaign!!!”
Pelosi's speech was amusing: “I don’t have the time right now, but if members want to know I’ll tell you how we could have been saved from 9/11 if we didn’t have to have the additional warrants.”
This is FISA right? The target is foreign individuals and entities? It seems by default HN is against it, can someone articulate why?
There are elected representatives of the people providing oversight and it seems to have strong bipartisan support. Is there a popular line of thought with tech people that is suggesting foreign surveillance isn't neccesary? Or should some provision of the law be updated to protect americans' data?
There's so much information online on why and how FISA is bad, this is honestly hard to take as a serious question asked in good faith. But assuming that it is, start with the Wikipedia article for FISA and go from there; it has plenty food for thought, and links to more.
This the only relevant paragraph under the criticism section of the wiki page:
> The ACLU considers the FISA Act to be unconstitutional for several reasons including: the law was designed to mainly address terrorism threats, but in fact intercepts communications that have nothing to do with terrorism or criminal activity of any kind; and that "the government can create huge databases that contain information about U.S. persons obtained without warrants and then search these databases at a later point."
As I understand, these databases are only created if the other party is foreign, is that not the case?
I asked in earnest but you made this about my intent instead of articulating your views. My conclusion so far is that the HN crowd is jumping on the bandwagon and can't take any critique of the popular sentiment.
I have much critique of the patriot act and other provisions but FISA itself has been around since 1978 apparently. I was merely trying to figure out what specifically were the opposing views because in general, foreign surveillance is not optional.
This is not just about FISA but about all the amendments that have been tacked onto it since then. The criticism of those amendments is covered in the corresponding section in the Wikipedia article.
All this stuff has been around for literally decades at this point, and at some point people just get tired rehashing the same old stuff to every new person coming in and asking, "what's wrong with that?".
People who get elected are not like regular people. Until we fill at least one branch of government with randomly selected people, we don't have a democracy.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1...
The summary is this:
- Votes in the House and Senate used to be anonymous
- They then decided to make them public under the reasoning of transparency
- One side effect of making them public is that you got people like Grover Norquist and The Americans for Tax Reform who could see who voted for taxes and then use that to "name and shame" people (there was a pledge signing in there as well). For more details see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist
- This now means that it's MUCH easier for lobbyists and special interest groups to see where to spend their money as a Senator's voting history is public knowledge (which both sides are WELL aware of)
- As a sibling poster points out: you can easily see who receives money from defense groups vs not.
- This is probably good for us as voters in the short term but bad for the country in the long term (Due to the above)
“when private citizens are able to vote privately, it protects their ability to vote their conscience, rather than allowing some third party to explicitly buy votes or bully someone into voting in line with someone else”,
and the belief that somehow this doesn’t apply to congress members.
Additionally, on hard philosophical and policy qurstions, some bits of negotiation and dealmaking are bare-knuckled “the sausage gets made” affairs that are brutally hard on the ego and participants. Part of why nothing can get through Congress anymore in a timely fashion and without continual brinksmanship on important funding or to prevent shutdowns is because even if crossing party lines would very often be in the public’s interest, and to the public’s net benefit, haggling to make it happen or voting to make it so often doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of thousands of watchful eyes where an important deal may hinge on brutal haggling which the public couldn’t stomach seeing the intermediate steps and votes of.
One such example in practical terms: if the constitutional convention which replaced the articles of confederation took place in the internet age with modern real-time, to the minute reporting on how everyone was voting on every intermediate plan and how any compromise made was a betrayal of “party lines” on an issue, America as a country probably wouldn’t exist today.
Transparency has its own benefits, but it’s not without costs - you make a legislative body’s job more difficult, you get corresponding gridlock to match.
If you believe that electorates punish politicians for decisions in the public interest, and legislators’ jobs would be easier if they were less accountable to their voters, why support democracy at all?
The 51% that voted for them out of the 20% of total voters?
I mean, this does get very hard to define.
There's no "THE problem." There's a ton of "problems." Just to be clear. Because many of the problems we face today are through interaction of different things, often in a complex chain, rather than a direct easy to follow causal chain.
> via old fashioned grapevine
Treat the problem as an adversarial problem. Yes, your adversary will always be able to break your defenses. Nothing is bulletproof. How you defend is through forcing adversaries to expend resources. It is very clear that forcing lobbiests to learn through the grapevine is a more costly method than simply looking at a public database. And if you aren't familiar with this concept, people lie. No one need know your vote unless you reveal it (which... might be a lie).
The point also is that it can also prevent inner conflict, among parties. You're not voting along party lines? You think you're going to get as much support from your party when it comes to your bills and campaign funds? So you have plenty of incentive to not reveal your vote, even among allies.
I agree with you in that switching to private votes won't solve the problems we have. But would it improve? I'd guess some and I'd guess it would take time for the real effects to be seen. But the other side is, would it do harm? I doubt it.
I’m not one who believes the constitution is sacred or that the founding fathers were infallible, but I do think the chance for a person to vote their conscience vs their politics is an important feature. While the grapevine might be a route to learn, it’s also a route that doesn’t have to be accurate. I can tell my lobbyist whatever I want about my vote, but only I know what my vote was in private voting. This feels like a feature not a flaw.
The point of representative democracy is selecting a person whose judgement you believe in. Public voting records lead to populist and party strangleholds on outcomes with consequences for breaking dogma. Practically speaking it also gives lobbyists proof positive of whether their money was well spent.
If you look at their donors, you'll see the lines. The people who voted for it make money from the defense and intelligence industries, and the people who didn't, don't. Voting for for something majorities of the voters of both parties are against is expensive (in terms of being re-elected.) That price is paid by donors, and the media control that those donors will exercise. Which again, is why the wedge issues are needed: you're going to have to vote for those people who voted against your civil liberties if you want Democrats to pretend to protect abortion rights for another 4 years, or Republicans to pretend to end them.
this is normal practice, to provide cover for your party members.
it’s divided by party line because it’s national security. they’re splitting the spoils.
What’s more surprising is the split in IL between Duckworth (yea) and Durban (Nay). Usually you don’t see states splitting too much. Tennessee was all Nays for instance.
A big step forward for the USA would be a vast reduction of federal power over the states.
However, there is a very solid case for a weak federal government, and it is simply that US is a country that's way too big for any coherent national policy on most matters that we've currently pushed there. It's such a vicious fight because it's half the country trying to bludgeon the other half into submission, motivated by the knowledge that, if you yield, the other guy will pick up this huge club and do the same to you. This will continue until the country breaks down unless we dial it down to state level and accept the fact that other states may have laws and lifestyle that is despicable or horrifying to us in some ways. Either that, or we might as well just break the whole thing apart now and not wait for it to happen in a more violent manner.
The US is a massive country, with the populace far removed from the decision making. I believe this is the core problem.
Not everything is spelled in ink.
The effect of a law is at least as important as the literal words on the page.
Furthermore, I think the frequency of that overlap is a major problem for our political system, because it makes compromise impossible.
I still am a believer in digital freedom, I'm old enough to have seen the changes in the Internet, and it is a much more malevolent and fucked up force than it was even 15 years ago. Maybe, just maybe, the government needs the power to spy on international targets with oversight.
The constitution's term for this is "warrant".
It’s not controversial to suggest that the interests of the political class, the special interests that fund their campaigns, and Washington bureaucrats differ from the interests of the public at large. You don’t need to evoke deep state conspiracies to explain nefarious coordination because when career and monetary incentives align then bills like this one get passed.
It wasn't always like this. Many have agreed these were legitimate issues during the Iraq war. Where have all those people gone today?
This really isn't all that true in my experience. And, I mean, look at the discussion here... Maybe consider the people you hang around with?
You can generally convey the same idea gently as long as you hedge your phrasing somewhat. Making it sound like a wacky accusation comes off sounding, well, wacky.
How that is broached depends on whom you are talking with.
We're in this really weird place where some of us on different parts of the political spectrum who may not have previously agreed are now in general agreement one way or the other, just because politics itself has become so insane.
I mean, I'm a little crazy, I won't deny that. But it's kind of bugging me that phrasing matters far more than the idea. Most reasonable people would agree that the system is fundamentally broken. We might not agree on a solution, but at least we can look at it and say "yeah, this isn't sustainable." Unfortunately, if you use the wrong word around the wrong group of people, you get branded a little bonkers. :)
US Gov/LEO/IC must be gifted the most power possible
to surveil Americans who are not suspected of a crime
Given recent events in the Middle East and the fact that both parties' senior politicians mostly lean the same way in terms of which sides they support, this result is unsurprising if disappointing.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/312605-schumer-t...
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ThIfbGXWTxBITTsj18aBw
But then there was the time Biden installed Hunter on the White House staff and ordered that he be given a security clearance, despite dozens of discrepancies, undisclosed foreign contacts, and other red flags on the paperwork. Oh, wait, no, that was Trump, too.
See what happens when a politician of any stature dares to defy them.
> The FISA resulted from extensive investigations by Senate Committees into the legality of domestic intelligence activities. These investigations were led separately by Sam Ervin and Frank Church in 1978 as a response to President Richard Nixon's usage of federal resources, including law enforcement agencies, to spy on political and activist groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...
What restrictions are you talking about? Constitutional warrant requirement was sidestepped using this law and you are still cheering here.
I’m not the one here cheering for demise of constitutional republic…
I am seriously asking whether being flat-out unconstitutional is worse than building a (legislated and approved) backdoor around the constitution, yes.
I mean, better than both would be to just follow the constitution, but that wasn't the question.
As you noticed, following constitution is apparently not an option here. Being unconstitutional and ignored, there was at least some hope for improvement, but codification gave us a clear answer that elected representatives are, at best, only selectively interested in supporting constitution.
This was noticeably on display for me in 2020 right after it was determined that Biden had won the election. Lindsey Graham, a Republican Senator, was caught on video in the Senate chamber warmly congratulating and hugging Kamala Harris, a D senator and VP-elect. It was as if they both knew Graham's hyper-partisan antics during the preceding months before the vote was all just an act - a part of the game. I'd bet that he secretly voted for Biden/Harris as well and will do so again.
Besides, it cost him nothing.
If nothing happens most people don’t understand or care either way.
I don't think this is accurate. Maybe on healthcare and welfare, sure. But on many social issues, the Democrats are much further to the left than the European left. On issues such as abortion, gender/sexuality, migration, and race, the Democrats are more extreme compared to Labour in the UK, SPD in Germany, and the PSOE in Spain. Even the left in France isn't as socially extremist as the Democrats.
The both parties are the same is such a lazy take, except in super limited circumstances like this naked power grab in the article. Both are going to use it in wildly different ways
Depends which left which you are talking about. LFI is certainly on that level in their way, PS/Place Publique are not(given that "printemps républicain" was part of what killed popular support for the party).
Those parties you listed are known for being center to center left in Europe, sometimes explicitly escuing the left as UK Labour and SPD have done.
Excpet PSOE which is farther left than the Democrats, having all of the identity politics of the Democratic party while being explicitly and empathetically pro union. Heads would have rolled if PSOE had broken the rail workers strike that like Biden did. The also tried to legalize abortion in the Spanish constitution in the 1970s, and haven't wavered on their view of abortion since. They passed same sex marriage when they got their first chance to (and before the US did), and used the same opportunity to expand transgender rights.
The two parties do not significantly differ on indefinite detention of American citizens on US soil.
The two parties do not significantly differ on domestic spying, dragnet-style data collection and warrantless wiretapping.
The two parties do not significantly differ on allowing extra-judicial targeted killings.
The two parties do not significantly differ on the use of unmanned drones, either for combat or domestic surveillance.
The two parties both support pre-emptive "cyber" war and non-defensive hacking.
The two parties do not significantly differ on their support for continuing the War On Terror.
The two parties both support maintaining US military bases around the world.
The two parties do not significantly differ on favoring Keynesian economics.
The two parties support delegating monetary policy decisions to the Federal Reserve, including support for quantitative easing.
The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of earmarks and pork barrel spending.
Neither of the two parties have (recently) proposed plans for balancing the budget.
Neither of the two parties plans to significantly cut defense spending.
The two parties both favor taxpayer-funded foreign aid.
The two parties are largely backed by the same corporate sponsors and special interest groups, with a few key differences.
The two parties both backed TARP and in general favor bailing out companies too big to fail.
The two parties do not significantly differ on their general support of "economic stimulus" as a tool to prop up the economy.
The two parties do not significantly differ on their support for and allegiance to Israel.
The two parties both favor and continue sanctions on Iran.
The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of super PAC funding and their support of unlimited spending from corporations and special interest groups.
The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of gerrymandering to gain political advantage.
The two parties oppose any measures that would strengthen the viability of a third party.
This is not true; the Republicans strongly oppose them and have repeatedly tried to abolish them (and were temporarily successful at one point).
> Neither of the two parties have (recently) proposed plans for balancing the budget.
This isn't true. Both parties have recently proposed plans for balancing the budget; Biden proposed plans to balance it by raising taxes and instituting a wealth tax just last year, and Republicans have put forward various entitlement reform proposals to balance the budget.
> The two parties both favor and continue sanctions on Iran.
Obama ended sanctions on Iran with the nuclear deal before Trump reinstated them; Republicans blocked Senate ratification of the deal, allowing him to do that and ensuring the Iranians wouldn't trust future entreaties from the US. Claiming the two parties are the same on this is odd.
> The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of super PAC funding and their support of unlimited spending from corporations and special interest groups.
Dems support and have repeatedly attempted to pass an anti-Citizens United amendment.
> The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of gerrymandering to gain political advantage.
Dems repeatedly tried to pass a bill banning gerrymandering federally when they controlled the House in 2021.
I'm no expert but for these 5 at least, I am aware of significant and specific interparty differences.
the best capitalist simply had their competition shot.
> D in US is more right than other countries' left leaning parties
D in US is more right than other countries' right leaning parties
[1]https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1...
Unfortunately both my senators voted for it. I did call their offices Thursday to no avail.
A former lover tried to blackmail Wellington. His response was 'Publish and be damned.' It was published to the delight of many. But he still went on to become Prime Minister.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rear-window-when-wellin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...
That is inevitable. If there is an easier path to a goal some human will use it. It doesn't matter if the goal is against the people.
These laws work a very specific way and have very specific controls in place to prevent shit like you describe from happening which you could go and read up on if you wanted to but it’s much easier to fear monger amongst one another because it plays to your ego that somebody who is important enough to be under surveillance by an intelligence agency.
And of course this applies not only to the NSA spooks, but all the way up. You shouldn't be any more comfortable letting 'the government' spy on you, than you would be letting me spy on you. If you want another example along the same lines, spooks spying on their love interests is so common that there's a slang term for it - LOVEINT [2]. Basically, don't grant people power over other people unless it's really just completely and absolutely necessary, because it will be abused. So the benefit needs to substantially outweigh the inevitable abuses. And in this case, that obviously doesn't hold.
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/us/politics/edward-snowde...
[2] - https://slate.com/technology/2013/09/loveint-how-nsa-spies-s...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/world/middleeast/book-rev...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/20/gchq-targete...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/24...
https://apnews.com/article/b25197d5b11740b2b29681bbc521a45f
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/fbi-misused-fore...
One does not have to be “important enough” if they are conducting mass surveillance and storing it in a database indefinitely.
For what is worth, I'm quite left leaning and fully agree with the parent poster. Information is power, no matter which party or in which country.
2008.
https://bja.ojp.gov/program/it/privacy-civil-liberties/autho...
I take issue with this bit: FISA also established the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a special U.S. Federal court that holds nonpublic sessions to consider issuing search warrants under FISA. Proceedings before the FISC are ex parte, meaning the government is the only party present.
When combined by foreign agents including US citizens, it’s troubling.
Maybe don't jump to biases so fast, people within all age groups have different opinions about the same topics.
HN is very opinionated on surveillance, as the comments on this story reinforce
Yes, I am. That is in fact what I want.
> FISA protects Americans
No, it does not. At this time, the greatest threat to me (and other Americans) is in fact the glowies who want to use this sort of law to violate our civil liberties.
FISA is Congress exercising the only authority it has here, which is oversight & regulation. You could argue FISA should be stricter, but it can’t extend the Constitutional reach of the Fourth Amendment, nor can it contract it the way many in this thread believe it’s somehow doing.
Also, free nations should have higher standards than "Not a citizen? Too bad, anything goes."
Congress can regulate the process that must be followed, the documentation that must be made, even require judicial review at the program level to ensure it doesn’t also record traffic that is Constitutionally protected. That’s what FISA is.
But it can’t ban that tapping, nor can it require the executive to get a warrant for a particular otherwise Constitutional intercept from an Article 3 court.
Which part of this do you think is incorrect?
But let's ignore that for a moment and move on to the next point. Your example is still hoovering up communications from citizens who are supposed to be protected by due process of law. En masse. How does this not run afoul of the law?
The problem is compounded by the fact that the internet blurs geographical borders. Wholly domestic communications can and does end up crossing borders. Also, I'd bet a large part of our communications aren't even between people. The majority of the traffic likely are sent to or from computer programs. They happen without most people even realizing it, but contains highly personal information. The simple telegraph analogy doesn't translate well to the internet.
What's more, there's currently no meaningful system in place to prevent abuse. And no, a rubber stamp court authorizing dragnet surveillance isn't it.
The poster was roundly criticized for being correct.
What I keep trying to explain is that this FISA vote can’t address your concerns one way or the other. If you disagree, I wish you’d explain how.
Whether the FISA vote can fix all the problems isn't the point. The problem is that current surveillance practices looks illegal to begin with.
Do you disagree?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40100565
https://www.npr.org/2013/06/21/193578367/calling-it-metadata...
That's not correct at all. It would only fall under federal overview if it's commercial (Article 1 section 8 clause 3 of the constitution gives congress the right to regulate commerce with foreign nations).
The Feds don't just get to do anything they want by default. All powers that aren't specifically given to the feds are defaulted to either the states or the people.
I think it would be a lot harder to do that with speech though. Maybe you could argue that the telegraph line itself impacts international copper markets or something, but there are non-tangible based communication methods.
There is some judicial oversight in the FISA court of course. What's the argument for why congress can legislate that, but not a more typical warrant?
The FISA court exists to ensure that the executive is not operating outside his Constitutional authority, not as a gatekeeper for use of that authority at all in any instance.
This is not true. The constitution explicitly reserves the power to declare war or enact treaties to Congress. Neither the military nor federal law enforcement can spend a single dime, or even exist, without Congressional approval. If the budget allocates no money to mass surveillance, no money is available to conduct mass surveillance.
What they can’t do is allow them to spend money on foreign surveillance, but only if an Article 3 court gives them a warrant.
Do you have any case law to cite for this, or it's just your favored argument that you'd hope a court would agree with? You are talking about it like it's settled law. Cites?
Also, note that the cases you are talking about to which the law applies have someone in the USA involved in the wiretapped conversation as well. It wouldn't shock me if the courts -- although probably not the current supreme court, but you never know -- simply said it required a warrant constitutionally at some point in the future. It's certainly not obvious that you can wiretap an American without a warrant as long as they are talking to someone overseas.
Or funding the Department of Justice, but with the proviso that any nominee for Attorney General must be over age 60.
The power of the purse is not unlimited.
You're proposing an alternative where the executive gets to decide how money is spent. As if mass surveillance, which is a waste of money, has to be funded in order to fund ordinary investigations.
The executive is the weakest branch. It has almost no powers of its own, and shouldn't. It's checks and balances. For something to happen, the executive has to want to do it and Congress has to fund it. Not one or the other; both.
Isn't this about the opposite issue, whether Congress can delegate control over funding to the executive? They were trying to get the executive to do the job of Congress and control the CFPB's funding.
Congress can't pass a law violating the Fourth Amendment. They can certainly pass a law constraining the executive from doing something that is otherwise constitutional, if the courts are reading the Fourth Amendment too narrowly.
They could also straightforwardly require the FISA court to publish its opinions, or have the same cases heard in ordinary federal courts with public accountability for the decisions. There is nothing in the constitution requiring secret courts.
But we most certainly WILL abuse individual civil rights my abusing that intel. THAT has been confirmed in history again and again.
Could you explain what you mean by this? On a tangential note, have you considered talking/explaining this with politicians/academics studying this field? Or is it more of something that's already known to those familiar with the field?
So even as damning and revealing as the Zimmerman telegram was, ultimately it was Germany's bold resumption of the torpedoing of US oceangoing traffic that catalyzed US public opinion into ending 3 years of American neutrality and joining the fight in WWI. Thus even when intel is most damning, the role of intel will always be subservient to publicly motivating events like lost lives, as in the much ballyhooed sinking of the Lusitania 2 years before (1915).
Wikipedia has a couple of outstanding articles on the topic:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_entry_into_World_Wa...
> In 1800, the British Levant Company purchases nearly half of all of the opium coming out of Smyrna, Turkey strictly for importation to Europe and the United States.
0: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heroin/etc/hi...
We were fine before, and arguably it would've done little to change the events that caused the reaction that allowed it to be established in the first place.
But probably companies could have stopped cooperating and challenged it in court.
[1] https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-urges...
Now we get suppression and astroturfing from a bunch of autocrats who despise democracy and call themselves the "Intelligence Community."
1A, Nope, you have to have facts, and specific facts, and a subject-matter expert, source? 2A, Ban all guns, the government will protect us. 3A, No worry, they're not soldiers, they're law enforcement. 4A, Unreasonable search and seizure? What was unreasonable about us listening to your phone call? 5,6,7A, Fair trail? What public figure is getting a fair trail, and has been unreasonable fines? But he deserves it. 8A, The death penalty is fair, right? I mean, if evidence ever shows up that exonerates them, we can dig them up, right? 9A I don't think anyone cares what order we get rid of these, right? 10A Those states don't have rights, it's my body, right?
I don't vote anymore. No offense, you all disgust me.
If you wanted to be part of this experiment we call the United States, you could gain citizenship by learning and understanding what liberalism meant.
Not anymore, just cross the border, we will give you a debit card, and just wait, because we're going to make you a citizen, and your uneducated self will help us burn this nation to the ground.
No war will go unfunded, no problem will be solved, and we will teach you to hate everyone else. This while everyone is screaming about their abortion access while the Nation goes bankrupt.
We have $34T in debt, every 93 days we add another $1T. If you're all such internet geniuses, you should have figured that soon, and very soon, that starts walking away from the Treasuries' ability to pay just the interest.
Democrats will scream raise taxes on the rich, but guess what, there are not enough of them to tax. They won't agree to cutting spending cuts.
Republicans will refuse to cut the military because we have to defend Taiwan, and against every mythical and imaginary enemy.
But wait, there is more, Democrats want to expand surveillance on anyone practicing the 1A, the 2A, while violating the 4A & 5A.
Everything is about what you can get from this country. No one listened to John F. Kennedy. He was murdered. "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country..."
It is all about what you can get out of this for yourself. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or some guy on the street. You're trying to get what is best for you, not what is best for all of us.
I want what is best for this Nation. I served, my grandfathers served, my children serve now. But F-U when you tell me I'm part of the problem. I understood what I was fighting for, you have no clue why we're even here.
I'm politically very conservative. I hate every single one of the Republicans. They claim to want smaller government and less intrusion and then vote for... bigger government, more intrusion, and endless wars.
I still vote, though. Mostly, at this point, it feels like an act of protest more than anything.
E.g. get someone fervently believing that their vote is critical to preventing "murder of children", and you can abuse them economically however the hell you want - they'll hate you but they'll still vote for you because the other guy "murders children". This one is such an oldie but goodie that each party has crafted its own wedge issue around it: abortion for Republicans, guns for Democrats.
We need a significant change in leadership for all those that voted this in.
If I recall correctly, this bill also includes an expansion of surveillance performed by federal law enforcement agencies and NSA.
There was a real moment in the House where it might not have, at least without a warrant requirement. My Congresswoman was one of the attack dogs on this issue. She thought they would get an outpouring of support. She didn’t. The call sheets registered basically zero calls in support, and several lobbying against. So she caved. (This is a pattern I saw play out in New York years earlier in another privacy battle.)
> The unnecessary drama of stalling until after midnight is all theater
Sort of. The Senate calendar is funky. Putting it at the end of the roll was theatre. Having something voted on after midnight was not.
What's odd/interesting to me is that there's been little chatter of late regarding this. I spend an unhealthy amount of time on HN/Reddit/X and save for a few mild posts (as opposed to alarmist or clickbaity) on the topic, I barely see anything. During the net neutrality thing back when Ajit Pai was around I remember there was massive support. And I don't think I've ever heard of the NY privacy thing you mention. I wonder why it's so.
From the CNN article on this:
>> Another amendment at issue was from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, a member of the Intelligence Committee. His amendment, which was co-sponsored by several of the most liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans in the chamber, would strike a new part of the program that he argued would lead every day Americans into helping the government spy if they have “access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications.”
On the face of it, any cellphone or smartwatch seems to fit that definition. They could be converting everything into a listening device, recording all of it, and then making it available to intel officers only when they query for it and can argue one party is a foreign national.
So says Morgan Freeman's character Lucius Fox in 2008 in The Dark Knight[0].
The rest of the tech imagined in that scene is plausible today too, considering the density of WiFi/5G and research demonstrating the potential for its use as passive radar [1]. That paper metions a cooperative base station, but I am wondering if there is any value gained in knowing exactly what the traffic is (such as some of the intelligence community does) in modelling how the waves propagate and performing an even more passive observation.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRELLH86Edo
[1] Samczyński et al. 2021 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=966...
The Turner-Himes amendment expands the definition of “electronic communications service (ECS) provider” to include “any service provider” that has “access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications.” (except not personal dwellings and restaurants)
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) comment: “It allows the government to force any American who installs, maintains, or repairs anything that transmits or stores communications to spy on the government’s behalf. That means anyone with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a wifi router, or a phone. It would be secret: the Americans receiving the government directives would be bound to silence, and there would be no court oversight.”
EFF comment: “The Justice Department is playing word games when it says the amendment doesn’t change the ‘structure’ of 702 because the law prohibits targeting entities inside the United States. Garland’s pledge, isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on; if this amendment becomes law, the DOJ can and almost certainly will rely on it to conscript other providers who fit within its very broad scope.”
Notably, Trump doesn't like FISA? (removed yelly caps) “Kill FISA, it was illegally used against me, and many others. They spied on my campaign!!!”
Pelosi's speech was amusing: “I don’t have the time right now, but if members want to know I’ll tell you how we could have been saved from 9/11 if we didn’t have to have the additional warrants.”
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/18/24134196/senate-cloture-v...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/12/fisa-surveil...
There are elected representatives of the people providing oversight and it seems to have strong bipartisan support. Is there a popular line of thought with tech people that is suggesting foreign surveillance isn't neccesary? Or should some provision of the law be updated to protect americans' data?
> The ACLU considers the FISA Act to be unconstitutional for several reasons including: the law was designed to mainly address terrorism threats, but in fact intercepts communications that have nothing to do with terrorism or criminal activity of any kind; and that "the government can create huge databases that contain information about U.S. persons obtained without warrants and then search these databases at a later point."
As I understand, these databases are only created if the other party is foreign, is that not the case?
I asked in earnest but you made this about my intent instead of articulating your views. My conclusion so far is that the HN crowd is jumping on the bandwagon and can't take any critique of the popular sentiment.
I have much critique of the patriot act and other provisions but FISA itself has been around since 1978 apparently. I was merely trying to figure out what specifically were the opposing views because in general, foreign surveillance is not optional.
All this stuff has been around for literally decades at this point, and at some point people just get tired rehashing the same old stuff to every new person coming in and asking, "what's wrong with that?".