A provision snuck into the still-secret text of the Senate’s annual intelligence authorization would give the FBI the ability to demand individuals’ email data and possibly web-surfing history from their service providers without a warrant and in complete secrecy.
If passed, the change would expand the reach of the FBI’s already highly controversial national security letters. The FBI is currently allowed to get certain types of information with NSLs — most commonly, information about the name, address, and call data associated with a phone number or details about a bank account.
Since a 2008 Justice Department legal opinion, the FBI has not been allowed to use NSLs to demand “electronic communication transactional records,” such as email subject lines and other metadata, or URLs visited.
The spy bill passed the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, with the provision in it. The lone no vote came from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who wrote in a statement that one of the bill’s provisions “would allow any FBI field office to demand email records without a court order, a major expansion of federal surveillance powers.”
Wyden did not disclose exactly what the provision would allow, but his spokesperson suggested it might go beyond email records to things like web-surfing histories and other information about online behavior. “Senator Wyden is concerned it could be read that way,” Keith Chu said.
It’s unclear how or when the provision was added, although Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., — the committee’s chairman — and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., have both offered bills in the past that would address what the FBI calls a gap and privacy advocates consider a serious threat to civil liberties.
“At this point, it should go without saying that the information the FBI wants to include in the statue is extremely revealing — URLs, for example, may reveal the content of a website that users have visited, their location, and so on,” Andrew Crocker, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in an email to The Intercept.
“And it’s particularly sneaky because this bill is debated behind closed doors,” Robyn Greene, policy counsel at the Open Technology Institute, said in an interview.
In February, FBI Director James Comey testified during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats that the FBI’s inability to get email records with NSLs was a “typo” — and that fixing it was one of the FBI’s top legislative priorities.
Greene warned at the time: “Unless we push back against Comey now, before you know it, the long slow push for an [electronic communication transactional records] fix may just be unstoppable.”
The FBI used to think that it was, in fact, allowed to get email records with NSLs, and did so routinely until the Justice Department under George W. Bush told the bureau that it had interpreted its powers overly broadly.
Ever since, the FBI has tried to get that power and has been rejected, including during negotiations over the USA Freedom Act.
The FBI’s power to issue NSLs is actually derived from the Electronic Communications Privacy Act — a 1986 law that Congress is currently working to update to incorporate more protections for electronic communications — not fewer. The House unanimously passed the Email Privacy Act in late April, while the Senate is due to vote on its version this week.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, is expected to offer an amendment that would mirror the provision in the intelligence bill.
Privacy advocates warn that adding it to the broadly supported reform effort would backfire.
“If [the provision] is added to ECPA, it’ll kill the bill,” Gabe Rottman, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s freedom, security, and technology project, wrote in an email to The Intercept. “If it passes independently, it’ll create a gaping loophole. Either way, it’s a big problem and a massive expansion of government surveillance authority.”
NSLs have a particularly controversial history. In 2008, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine blasted the FBI for using NSLs supported by weak evidence and documentation to collect information on Americans, some of which “implicated the target’s First Amendment rights.”
“NSLs have a sordid history. They’ve been abused in a number of ways, including … targeting of journalists and … use to collect an essentially unbounded amount of information,” Crocker wrote.
One thing that makes them particularly easy to abuse is that recipients of NSLs are subject to a gag order that forbids them from revealing the letters’ existence to anyone, much less the public.
Update: May 26, 2016
This story has been updated to provide a comment from Wyden’s office.
FBI Director James Comey on Capitol Hill in February 2016.
People always have a responsibility to protect themselves, Authorities eventually always abuse their powers.
For example in the UK even lowly local councils set up video surveillance to check if families really live in houses which allow their children to attend certain schools.
The lowest civil authorities completely miss-using regulations designed for terrorism.
Free secure mails, VPNs and encrypted DNS servers (with no logging of web sites visited or activity) all exist now, all that is missing is an easy to use package for everyone.
If we are going to give officials unconstiutional powers, we must have more investment and more manpower in government watchdogs to watch those illegal activities.
It takes far more watchdog officials to police essentially an American Stasi (communist style secret police) – so the watchdog agency must have far more manpower than the constitutional violators to arrest rogue FBI and other officials.
For example: If you had 20 FBI agents harassing an innocent citizen in Richmond, VA (top blacklisting city in the US), you would need about 200 watchdog officials to police those 20 rogue agents violating their oath of office. In places like Richmond, the local and state police and prosecutors refuse to arrest rogue FBI agents for harassing innocent Virginia citizens.
The best solution would be for all government officials to follow their supreme loyalty oath, oath of office, to operate within constitutional boundaries instead of constructing a huge bureaucracy to police some (not all) disloyal FBI officials.
James Comey was asked directly to apologize to post 9/11 CoinTelPro blacklisting victims. Instead of him apologizing to the FBI’s crime victims, Comey wants more illegal powers. We need a loyal FBI Director, someone with the integrity of Vanita Gupta.
No. If there want powers prohibited by the constitution, they have to propose an amendment. George W. Bush is a traitor. He usurped our democracy by lying to America and attacking the Constitution.
we must have more investment and more manpower in government watchdogs to watch those illegal activities.
WON’T WORK. eventually they own the watchdogs, now sooner than later. That’s how criminal thieves operate.
It’s interesting, attempting to track the various agencies’ software applications across various articles on this site (and elsewhere). Some of them also attempt to piggyback on others’ in an attempt to stir up different pots. Fascinating, really. Not to take attention away from your article and the topic it relates to, Jenna — in fact, quite the opposite. It astounds me that we’re basically back where we were in the 60’s only with less power, attempting to exercise our First Amendment (and Fourth Amendment — two for one, here) rights in an environment where our governments get carte blanche to work against those principles. I’d say we’re overdue for another Media, PA — and maybe we are — only we seem to wind up in a situation where we have no outlet to address the very overreaches that we are attempting to point out and correct. I’d also like to mention that ‘getting a warrant’ means only a little bit right now, since anyone with power can get a warrant for anyone’s anything (or find a way around it). I am quite against ‘warrantless access to email records’ — or any records — but I think we have to be more demanding than this. We not only need to prevent warrantless access, but we must demand that warrants have meaning — and oversight. And that’s just for starters.
Good article, Jenna. But sad state of affairs we are currently living in.
Seriously, as a foreigner I ask of citizens of the U.S.A.: it’s time you guys started protesting this kind of legislation, because we all know if you’re doing it, this kind of law will become the norm and what the current superpower in international relations sets as a norm, becomes quickly acceptable.
Fight for your privacy rights, and remember what Snowden said ‘privacy is the right to the Self’. Good luck.
I can only recommend using encrypted email like Tutanota: https://tutanota.com
Just in case.
Any person involved in Government and the expansion of the STATE to take away people’s GOD given rights should be held on TREASON charges. They are trying to destroy the Constitution and the American way of life. Government does not give me rights, nor does the Constitution have anything to do with my rights. The Constitution was written precisely to tell the Government what they CANNOT do. Not what we can do. When people say “I Have Constitutional Rights”, I try quickly to correct them, and say “God grants you rights, not other people/gangs/cults/ect, dressed up in robes that try to play DADDY”.
Unfortunately, your precious “God”, i.e. Yahweh, has a worse human rights record than Hitler. Under this fictional dictator, if you practiced the wrong religion you would be tortured forever.
Thank you for bumping this thread. I did not watch the May 26 Democracy Now! Nor know of the Jane Mayer piece prior to publishing my experience during the Macondo Prospect Blowout on this thread.
Prior to going off to read the Mayer piece, I will say that promoting the paradigm of “right-wing” organization is designed to further goose chase. These levels of “shadowy” do not announce themselves much less give themselves some organizational name.
Nor do they care less about the back and forth bickering between right and left besides to promote more “Crazy-Making Communication”.
There was absolutely no announcements or fore-warnings that targeting a home IP and hacking into a forum user’s posting, while that person typed, was even possible, during my experience on May 26, 2010 at 5:19pm.
Remember, as denoted below, the forum post I had made before the hacked post included a link to the EPA website. The procedure that was going down that day was called Top Kill. The Obstruction of Justice case dealt with that particular day and the issue of Rate of Flow. The Obstruction of Congress case also dealt with Rate of Flow.
Fast forward to “February 19, 2015: Ruling on Maximum Dollars-Per-Barrel Penalty Amount, as Adjusted by the Penalty Inflation Act.” It was the EPA that won the settlement. That would be Maximum Dollars-Per-Barrel based upon Rate of Flow.
I can assure Mr. McKibben that “On the double whammy and gaslighting” is beyond “creepy”.
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1995-25157-001
I shall go read that Mayer piece now.
The ultimate goal is exactly what was intended and designed, the applied application of the ‘Psychology of Capitulation.’ Mayer was correct to question the involvement of Seligman so many moons ago. Oh the double whammy wove when practicing the masters of applied science in positive psychology as the public face of ‘How to Win the Peace’.
I wonder if some of the reporters at The Intercept have considered doing interviews and putting them on a YouTube Channel?
For example, This Interview gives a lot of information in a short piece of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do4KrLEhmVs
Maybe its not so bad. With the pace that the intelligence community is growing and being outsourced soon we’ll all be working in surveillance or at least it will be part of our job descriptions. Its all about the economy, earth persons.
Who sits at the dinner table anymore? Who knows their neighbors? Good times are ahead.
After spending endless hours checking out each others sordid emails and phone calls (while trying to stay safe and thin) communities will come together to share some top secret gossip and attempt to win the Israel vs Palestine debate at last.
As we all know, U.S security and politics merged with the weight loss industry which also merged with the fast food and others.
If we were all the sum of top U.S industries what would that look like?
Aside from probably being dead, we would all be grouchy and hypocritical peeping toms (overseeing ever powerful gods) armed, with plastic surgery but also over weight.
We would live in a football field amongst a forest of plastic Christmas trees decorated with neon advertising signs and various colorful medications, no doubt. But we wouldn’t actually be outside, goodness knows.
This is a backdrop for some fascinating porn that is actually a screen saver on your favorite gadget in your very gray room that you had to quit looking at so you could continue to surveil the competition for the assistant manager position at some service industry you work for.
hasbara zions have begun spamming this topic because the NSA spy-on-americans office in Haefa Israel would be the ears for the F…B…I…
the zions are looking to prevent americans from seeing what others have to say here.
this is the link that will skip the spam for you
https://theintercept.com/2016/05/26/secret-text-in-senate-bill-would-give-fbi-warrantless-access-to-email-records/?comments=1#comment-234827
Yup. Keep on Rocking in the Free World!
Why this aversion to warrants? I could care less if an ISP hands over all my emails, all my logs, all my browsing history….if they are served with a valid warrant. Without a valid warrant, I expect them to keep the information secure. Obviously this is not the case. Why can’t the FBI and other legitimate crime agencies simply hey warrants?
Better to be a bit more demanding than ‘just a warrant’ imho. And I’m guessing we can agree (I hope) that a ‘secret warrant’ isn’t a warrant? At a minimum people should be informed in a timely manner if their communications have been plowed through, as well, on that well-documented, proper warrant (something we’ve been seeing fewer and fewer of in this country, especially given the expediency of advanced technology as a loophole to exploit due to our old warrant laws not being updated).
“people should be informed in a timely manner if their communications have been plowed through”
If automated analysis process are included this most probably would be everyone multiple times, perhaps even daily.
It could only be if there was human intervention concerning your data.
“A commenter is someone who makes isolated comments. These days, the word most often refers to people who post comments on blogs and news websites. A commentator is someone who provides commentary. -snip- Commentators don’t just make one comment; commenting is what they do.
The difference between these words corresponds to the difference between a comment and commentary. A comment is an isolated remark, while a commentary is a series of remarks, explanations, and interpretations.”
http://grammarist.com/usage/commentator-commenter/
As Grover, a non-elected power broker, was able to write a pledge and insist that everyone in Congress sign on to never raising taxes what is stopping citizens from writing a pledge for everyone to sign that simply states that when elected they pledge to honor the voices of their constituents and the Constitution or suffer the consequences, namely no reelection?
This smacks of Paranoia on the part of the Senate and the FBI when they feel it necessary to undermine the privacy of U.S. citizens. This evaporates the last remnants of so-called freedoms provided by democracy. Orwell missed this component in his conception of a world totally controlled by the thought police. Or did he?
Shades of Hoover. Or more recently, bush/cheney. The GOP teaparty is getting the rules ready for a GOP takeover of the country. Careful when you vote in Nov.
OK The Man Stan have the last word. I so do not care and can smell BISCUITS. And am so not in the mood for the behavioral rift games I see played and played out. Nor do I have any intent of hijacking the work put out in this thread.
I would like to take the time to amend a couple typos. It is behavioral drift in the world of BISCUIT. Behavioral Science Consultation Team.
Though numerous rifts in Communications and Intelligence obviously occurred somewhere along the way.
Ok. Thank you I found the post in my fray. “to become worn at the edge, typically through constant rubbing.” And I do not even know what Stasi children are anyway.
Another creepy Lorem Ipsum generator.
Ya know, your country used to at least pretend it had child labor laws (or law in general), but I’ve seen toddlers working in the San Jose, CA spook bidnes. And I saw one goon daddy bring his wife and toddlers along on work his shift in Austin. Is that supposed to make Americans safer, or just feel safer? Is it working?
Perhaps you are bit frayed too and no doubt you rubbed me the wrong way and you still did not offer the word for word and symbol by symbol of the Ambassador’s Reception though responded to this post instead.
And who or what the freak is a Lorem Ipsum Generator? The area in which I reside and sit at the moment is under a severe weather threat.
You bet that the topic of Secret Text and Sacred Text for that matter are pretty heck darn import.
Commenter and some of the other Stasi children come here to play whenever the topic comes up.
Great Nation indeed.
Please, Stan, for all involved, the author of this work, and the work she and Dan did a couple days ago, and the persistence of heros, other posters and moderators, and yes, all involved.
Please feel free to describe in words, here, within the boxes of this website, to the other posters and moderators what the Ambassador’s Reception is. Be specific. No minced words. It is still unreleased information in full in the initial NSA files published.
When the topic of Sacred Text (and National Archives that store ancient art and the tell of civilized culture) comes up you mean? Yes. I am Sociology employed as a starving artist.
That is Sociology with a minor in Psychology. Career path and Psychometric Battery of Babble Testing – Forensic Psychology – Behavioral Sciences. I have a born identity to smell Gas-lighting.
Gas-lighting is the pathological use of crazing making. Designed and practiced to create the Triangulation Matrix of Crazy-Making Communication.
“When one doubts his or her perceptions of reality, the gaslighter is able to control that person; he or she becomes completely dependent on the gaslighter for the ‘truth’.”
And Ryan was correct yesterday –
“You say you have nothing to hide; don’t be so sure. Even the most mundane details can be used to implicate you in a crime, or manipulate you in some way. It’s not unreasonable for the government to request access to these records, but warrants should be required to prevent abuse, and the process should be transparent.”
And, if they cannot implicate crime, they will implicate crazy even while sockpuppeting state-sponsored crazy-making.
The publishing of The Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations confirmed the alliance with the American Psychological Association: Report of the Independent Reviewer and Related Materials.
Thank you, Official Sources.
Then please, Stan. Share with us all, word for word and symbol by symbol what the Ambassador’s Reception is as briefly mentioned thus far in the NSA Files published.
This does not so much have to do with intelligence and counterintelligence or intuitive or counterintuitive under another bureaucratic program or programming name.
It has all been psychological torturing silencing, sensory deprivation, or sensory flooding, for so many in so many different ways. Yes. Based upon psychometric batteries.
I get it. I cannot even post a comment under my own name and share what words were inserted into my post during the Ambassador’s Reception because a word would be imprisoned in the spam filter.
Oh the solitary confinement of imprisoned words even when put into context.
The photo above tells most of the story behind the text. I was the Canary in the coal mine in the mid 80’s but I flew away before the sepsis killed me.
Sigh. The good old early 80’s. I really really wish Dr. Stephen R. Band, Ph.D. would come out as the next whistleblower. His quotes and work from the binder material from the APA Independent Review are really actually enough email or e-mail or electronic communications to confirm my diagnosis of Comey as the Gas-lighting Poster Child.
This is what happens when you have career politicians more interested in growing an all powerful government than serving their constituents!
GIVE WASHINGTON AN ENEMA IN 2016! Vote against EVERY INCUMBENT ON THE BALLOT! We can flush the entire house and 1/3 of the senate every two years! Send them a message about who they REALLY WORK FOR!
I totally agree with your thinking. There should be term limits on Congressional leaders also. I think we are at a turning point when it comes to the govt structure and how they are able to do things. We know longer live in a democracy, but instead have become a Socialistic society.
ditto that
A few observations:
1) Every day the government asks for our trust. Everyday they abuse it.
2) My left-wing friends have been against surveillance. With the recent IRS privacy abuses, my right-wing friends are against it too.
3) Are you still unable to make up your mind about Snowden? He’s a hero, and deserves the Nobel Prize.
4) Most of all, don’t just get mad, DO something. Encryption has never been easier to use. Download the TOR browser. Use ProtonMail. Safely and anonymously report the illegal actions of EVERY LARGE ENTITY that you have ever hear of. It’s what THEY FEAR MOST.
They are not afraid of your protests, your signs, your votes. They are VERY AFRAID of having their illegal activities leaked! Only this. You are sitting at a computer right now. The world thanks you in advance.
More trashing of the Constitution.
Our system is broken and it is past time to cleans it of the politically entrenched parasites. Limit government or lose liberty. That simple. Time for a major tick bath.
As Nancy Reagan so succinctly put it, “Just say no.”
As Nancy Reagan put it, “Just say no.”
When the government has enough information on you they can accurately predict whether or not you are or will be a threat to the massive disinformation and propaganda campaign that has been waged against the American people since the Zionist coup of 911. Who will they murder next? The list of unproven murders is growing. Can there be any doubt that Gary Webb was murdered? What about Matt Simmons? Andrew Breitbart? John P. Wheeler III, Donald Young (Trinity Church and Jeremiah Wright “Down Low Club”, Loretta Fuddy (Obama birth cert) Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone? And the murder of William Cooper has got to be the most obvious government hit since the year 2000.
The false lure of security is the devil’s (and tyrants’) best trick to rob us of our God given Free Will.
Many people believe that once you go God you accept his will to replace yours.
Not so. God shows your how to protect your free will because it is free will that makes us human, not reptiles.
quote”The spy bill passed the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, with the provision in it. The lone no vote came from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.,…”unquote
The lone vote. DUH!! He’s the ONLY member of the IC committee who has EVER stood up for the Constitution. The rest of the committee members are just scumsucking traitors. FUCK the IC committee. The Framers would hang these bastards in a new york second..after a short session in due process of course.
If you people were as concerned about Google and Facebook capturing, selling and manipulating your personal data every time you logged on to your computer or cell phone you’d be more credible. If the government wants my emails, so be it, I have nothing to hide and they’re not interested nor have the time to be requesting my information. Nothing to hide, nothing to be worried about. The rest of you….better get eyes in the back of your heads as whatever you did, they are going to find you!
We people do care what Google and Facebook do with our personal information, but they lack the power to charge us with crimes and take away our freedom, a power the government has, making it much more dangerous.
You say you have nothing to hide; don’t be so sure. Even the most mundane details can be used to implicate you in a crime, or manipulate you in some way. It’s not unreasonable for the government to request access to these records, but warrants should be required to prevent abuse, and the process should be transparent.
But I was not on Facebook when the British are coming the British are coming showed up on my IP doorstep and broke and entered. I was on a website/community/forum watching the procedure called Top Kill go down in front of my eyes.
Obstruction of Congress and Justice cases and settlements and so forth and now just all out of site out of mind.
Though now that I really think about it. There was a scathing email I sent, my fingers shaking as I typed, once I regained access to my laptop, that I would like back as well. Maybe Comey could actually help me out.
My crime? I was pissed off they were pumping more toxins into the Gulf? Nope. Not A Crime. No crime to find. Nada.
I think it was the post before that triggered what looked like some kind of pre-coded and pre-targted kinda format of words into one of my own sentences.
When did it become a crime to post a link to the formula for drilling mud from the actual United States Government Environmental Protection Services website!
You know. Maybe Comey could actually just thumb through the rolodex of metadata for me for May 26, 2010 at 5:19pm if he would not mind being such a doll.
And, Dear John, I do not do Facebook. And my silly ole google gmail is still serving me right now in this moment as push send.
Just like Herson
Absolutely right.
You can be sure that just because you’re not breaking a law right now (but trust me, you are, there are thousands of laws you’ve never even heard of) they can always pad [pass, surely? – Ed] another law to get you.
And even if they can’t, they can just arrest you and hold you in jail for a year or two before dropping charges on the eve of the trial.
Found the Joseph Goebbels supporter.
Notwithstanding the ghosts of the Framers, our children for generations to come will SPIT ON OUR GRAVES for leaving this legacy of tyranny upon them. Shame on the citizens of this nation, as by virtue of total complacency and cowardice, they have now, and forever more, allowed this great experiment in freedom to die. In a parallel universe of sanity, armed patriots in the hundreds of thousands, would be encircling WDC, ready to drag these these scumsucking traitors out of their granite palaces and burn them alive in the streets. But here? We’ll see… when the USG starts kicking in doors to confiscate weapons, because THAT is what’s next.
You are correct. An ignorant citizenry will always be the downfall of a nation. Look at Venezuela , its a textbook case. We have met the enemy and they are us.
I’d like to hear from the staff at TI wrt all the work they do.. What do they think U.S. citizens should do? Do the journalists/staff/writers/editors at TI believe the U.S. Constitution is dead?
It would be nice to read/hear opinion pieces about what they think of all this mess they are reporting.
Aside: maybe the U.S. Consti can be compared to a newborn baby; it is born, it begins to grow and mature, and at the same time begins the parallel journey to its death.
This GREAT comment follows the article below it
—————————————————————-
FUNNY how the filthy rotten scum AT THE FBI,have no problem arresting the BUNDY FAMILY,or THE HAMMON FAMILY,but when confronted with a REAL CRIMINAL,they can’t get it together,I think its pass time to start ARRESTING THE CRIMINALS AT THE FBI,AND CHARGE THEM WITH TREASON…….ALONG WITH ALL THE FEDERAL AGENCES….THEIR ALL TRAITORS………
http://dailybail.com/home/ex-nsa-chief-michael-hayden-every-foreign-intelligence-servi.html
F the FBI!
Decades of complacency with 8 years of solid stupidity and here we are. If you listen real hard, you can hear Orwell saying “I told you so”.
Actually it’s been going on for over a century. It’s just gotten much worse the past 20 years. The problem is that people are too trusting of the govt, most everything done is to further large corporate enterprises the average citizen is there just to pay taxes and support the leviathan.
I must have missed the part of the 4th Ammendment that allows searches under NSLs.
I understand there is also a built-in exemption for Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Oh no. They’ll be very useful once they orchestrate her into office. What better than having all the connections and emails of the possible forthcoming POTUS ready for the application of pressure?
Vote Bernie. He’s literally you’re only hope.
If the FBI can’t do it’s job with the tools they currently have then GET RID OF THEM! They are useless. Why can’t they get a court order or warrant? For christ sake they have a private court that pretty much rubber stamps any and all requests as is..
Question: Since the NSA already has access to everyone’s e-mails and phone calls without a warrant, why don’t the lawless thugs at the FBI just ask the lawless thugs at the NSA for the records? PS. Welcome to the police state. Whoever thought the Land of the Free would have its very own Stasi and KGB?
Actually, the NSA does require warrants for e-mails and phone records…
It’s a rubber-stamp process. The NSA was never turned down once from a FISA judge.
Well, perhaps (in some cases) theoretically . . .
Why hasn’t NSA released HILLARYS email records ?
The FBI has always collected dirt on Americans for use in politics. J. Edgar Hoover kept blackmail material (now called control files) on everyone. This is merely a continuation of those evil corrupt policies.
The Constitution is dead. The system is rotten. American Democracy is a fraud.
This administration sees the US citizen as the enemy.
Ok. I was going to come in and say, “James Comey is the Gaslighting Poster Child.” But have changed my mind and thought better.
From the initial Guardian quote about the typo. What statute?
‘Email’ or ‘electronic mail’ or ‘ e-mail’ was really not even used that much by the general public in 1993.
Is that what the Gas-lighting Poster Child is talking about?
“1993 – The internet was a novelty whose concept few had grasped and most were confused by.” (CBC Archives: The Internet 1993)
What? Does Comey , et al, corp think we are going to achieve the big bang of Singularity if the FBI gets this typo changed?
“On August 6, 1991, CERN, which straddles the border between France and Switzerland, publicized the new World Wide Web project, two years after British scientist Tim Berners-Lee had begun creating HTML, HTTP and the first few Web pages at CERN.”
Hello, anybody out there. Is this about the Googleman’s life long desire to channel his dead father into singularity with himself if we could only amend this typo!
We have lost our collective minds. Really.
There is NOTHING so urgent that it should be exempted from the requirement to get a warrant.
We still have to deal with judges who rubber-stamp all warrant requests.
That is saying nothing of the FISA court. Secret court, which rubber stamps ALL the NSA/CIA warrants.
That’s actually not true. If a cop hears gunshots and screaming inside somebody’s house, they don’t need a warrant to go check it out, because there is an imminent threat to people’s lives.
But in this case, Comey can go fuck himself.
They forgot to mention one thing about this bill an “hidden text”….. The FBI can get email’s and other electronic information from “we the people” without a warrant. They have definitely left out Congress themselves… as usual!
Not sure which is more chilling. The bill itself, or the fact there are members of Congress who think this is a good idea, that it’s within the intent of the founders of the country.
The members of this committee:
Richard Burr, North Carolina, Chair
Jim Risch, Idaho
Dan Coats, Indiana
Marco Rubio, Florida
Susan Collins, Maine
Roy Blunt, Missouri
James Lankford, Oklahoma
Tom Cotton, Arkansas
Dianne Feinstein, California, Vice Chair
Ron Wyden, Oregon
Barbara Mikulski, Maryland
Mark Warner, Virginia
Martin Heinrich, New Mexico
Angus King, Maine[10]
Mazie Hirono, Hawaii
This is exactly why it’s not “left vs right” and it is: GOVERNMENT VS YOU!!
WAKE UP and F the righ/left paradigm! Either wake or remain enslaved for life.
Uh, no. It’s not government vs. you. If the US government wanted to kill everyone in the world all it would have to do is press a button. But this actually is a democracy. It’s a democracy where almost no one cares about politics, where voters let themselves be easily swayed, where the electorate sincerely and incorrectly believes it is powerless. It’s a democracy where the people support totalitarianism, routine human rights violations, torture, and rape, both on its own citizens and abroad. And those in charge – the American people – are largely getting what they voted for.
And you wonder why our entire Government structure must go?
But, but you will all be “safer” ……….in prison.
The gulag USSA. DemocRat boot and ChamberPot boot marching thru Con-greSS with nary a whiff of Liberty for the sheeples.
A people get the government they deserve, and will pay the consequences of their indifference.
Well that is not Constitutional, even the most wacky leftist Judge couldn’t let this stand!
This is WHY we have no faith in our elected civil SERVANTS…A mass firing over the next 4 years is coming, starting with the head antiAmerican…Barak Hussein Obama
Say ‘good bye’ to YOUR rights under the Forth Amendment;
The FBI is waging war against the right to privacy! The historian Fritz Stern labeled the US a police state. This bill is another nail in the coffin, and reinforces the police state.
Emailed my senator. Does ANYONE understand the constitution anymore? They swear an oath ———–to what?
Isnt it funny how 3rd world countries have more privacy and in some cases freedom than citizens of The United States of America ( The great beacon of freedom)
Congress needs to get rid of the NSA. Get rid of it. Its been a threat to the 4th Amendment and personal privacy.
The NSA no doubt is kept around so tyrannical leaders can stay in power
Some people will say we need the NSA to prevent another 911
The answer to that is “Dont worry about it”
If a country attacks our country, congress should send the military should be sent in to bomb that country back to the stone ages.
If a terrorist attacks our country, then our military should attack the country where he is from and blow up the mosque where he worshipped.
More proof that the systems of checks and balances within our government are eroded and no longer keeping the People safe from unconstitutional over-reach of the government. This is all part of the plan. When it’s time to disarm Americans by force it will be a lot easier to find them with this type of information.
quote”When it’s time to disarm Americans by force it will be a lot easier to find them with this type of information.”unquote
Indeed. The ONLY thing stopping the USG from becoming a Totalitarian regime is 200 MILLION guns..and 1 TRILLION rounds of ammo. And the USG knows it. Unfortunately, it still takes the WILL of the people to use them…come hell or high water. This is why Congress will eventually push for unilateral gun registration and background check databases on EVERY gun owner. Then.. revoke the 2nd Amendment. I gar-un-tee.. they’ll accomplish it within the next decade. However..there is a shitload of gun owners out there who will NEVER submit. After all..the Founders gave us the 2nd Amendment
BECAUSE they knew.. if the USG went rogue, like it’s becoming now, the only way to stop it is guns. PERIOD. Once they are taken.. this country will become a tyranny. PERIOD.
Just because it’s a democracy doesn’t mean it isn’t totalitarian. I see a lot of involvement by government in people’s personal lives. Republicans want to check what’s in your pants before you pee, regulate who you can marry. Democrats want to regulate your speech against protected classes. Both parties are totalitarian, to some extent. They intrude too much on people’s lives. They oppose freedom. The American people, by and large, don’t want each other to be free.
whisper messaging…use the 6 degrees of separation (which are down to about 3 now) and speak your message softly… we all start whispering to each other: “at three o’clock Saturday we take over their offices and lock them out.”
This would be trumped by the 4th amendment. The Supreme Court already ruled you must have a warrant on any data, info, conversation that Americans deem private. Email would fall under this category.
Yay! Bipartisanship.
Would appear, the only person who used the Grammarist rule correctly.
Be careful though. We just might see this person show up as just a Comment the next time.
Or Published Comment with or without typos that escaped from a box to pop out on the other side of the World Wide Web.
TOR for browsing. A home exchange server for email just like the dis barred lawyers wife. Done, problem for the most part mitigated.
TOR does not prevent torture. It mitigates nothing significant.
I guess I am the most naive citizen in the US. We have LAWS passed by Congress and signed by the President that are classified? Don’t all laws have to be published in the Federal Register before they become effective?
Of course there is a secret in the bill, what the heck is the matter with these people who want Everything we do tracked by them..who the heck are these traitors?
What? What did I just read? A typo? From the Guardian Version:
“In Senate testimony earlier this year, FBI Director James Comey said that a “typo” in a 1993 statute concerning electronic communications transaction records was leading “some companies” to resist providing the FBI with “ordinary transaction records that we can get in most contexts with a non-court order”. He called a legislative fix a high legislative priority for the bureau.”
OK. I am really going to curse here.
Can I have a fucking legislative fix for every fucking typo, or grammatical error, or misspelling, or out-of-context ranting, or every time I typed the word “fucking” in an email that I wished I could get back from my fingertips?
Of course not.
We are well beyond the theater of the absurd now. The theater of the absurd has left the house.
So, now, I will take this opportunity to quote my Aunt Dee from New Jersey while driving through the streets of New York. I will make it tailored for Comey’s face.
“Fuck you you fucking fuck, James Comey.”
I think I shall now follow it up with an email.
And now I shall quote Pvt. Hudson (1986):
“They’re coming outta the walls. They’re coming outta the goddamn walls.”
“What do you mean, “*They* cut the power”? How could they cut the power, man? They’re animals! ”
Wow. We have now fully achieved alienated consciousness. And we thought they were spending all those trillions for the last few generations looking for Aliens. Silly us.
Comey, himself, would never abuse powers. The problem is that Comey is unusual. One of the worst criminals in American history actually RAN the FBI. (J. Edgar Hoover, with the assistance of Clyde Tolson, had damaging intel on every politician, and thus dictated to all of them.) The powers Comey seeks should ALWAYS require a warrant, so the judicial branch can place limits on what the FBI can see.
I am very familiar with the J. Edgar Hoover, in alliance with The Art of Deception techniques of GCHQ.
The coded words that were inserted and targeted into my very own words and post were im_a_gay_spammers.
I would like to formally and sincerely add another D to the alliance technique. Discrimination.
As I noted, once I was no longer denied service to community/forum “…I am gay.”
My wherewithal to make that comment, though my hands still shaking, and head spinning, a day later, is probably the only reason I am still alive.
I am tired now.
Except that the vast majority of judges are right wing corrupt cowards who will give the government anything they want once they cry “national security!” This goes back at least to the interning of Japanese Americans in WWII.
People don’t seem to get it, but this is just another symptom of overpopulation. You simply can’t have a representative and ethical government with anywhere near this many people. It could be a lot better than what it is — proportional representation, no private campaign contributions, parliamentary system instead of an executive one, instant runoff voting, etc. — but it will always be very problematic if politicians don’t know and personally relate to most of their constituents, which in turn can’t happen without much lower human population.
Amen and a trillion likes.
I used the same colorful language about Atonin Scalia shortly before his death. Comey has had in in for average citizenry since he was appointed. Freedoms are merely now a suggestion read about in older history books on the USA.
By the time y’all get to be Congressmen or Senators it would be cool to be down with the provisions of the US Constitution, including the Fourth Amendment, eh?
That a statute like this could survive a challenge in any U.S. court shows the total corruption of the judicial system. This is blatantly unconstitutional, as are other laws that have been upheld on the cowardly and corrupt pretext of national security. The Bill of Rights has become a joke, we live in a complete police state.
The USSA is Not quite complete Yet.
Might I suggest to the dear readers here, that while most of us still can, that we “vote” in our local gun stores for long guns (not just pistols) and larger quantities of ammo. 5.56 or 7.62 is preferred, not 22 because we ain’t gonna be squirrel hunting, comrades.
If this bill gives the FBI or any government agency warrantless access to emails and other internet activity of American citizens, every Senator or Congressperson who votes for the bill should be ousted. Personally I would prefer to see those traitors tarred and feathered, carried on a rail out to the Potomac and unceremoniously dumped there.
This legislation will open up an even more massively dark world of government abuse, including wholesale blackmail, I’d bet, than exists now. If this isn’t stopped, let’s just go ahead and welcome back J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. You know, the one that spied on the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Kennedy boys, countless celebrities and who knows who-the-fuck else.
It’s a real comfort, huh, knowing that those rabid, anti-government, pro-individual freedom conservatives are themselves the vanguard of an authoritarian movement to provide the government even more power and authority; cheer leading the way to one of the most abusive, freedom-destroying bills in American history.
If there’s one thing that still floors me after all of these years, it’s the massively hypocritical public stance of most conservatives–and many so-called progressives, for that matter anymore–that government has too much influence and needs to be reigned in lest our precious freedoms be lost to official overreach.
But then, after the campaign speeches and money-grubbing rallies fade to black–these charlatans turn around and give the very government that they don’t trust even to collect and spend tax revenue fairly, the right to know our most basic thoughts; the power to peer into the most private aspects of our lives; the legal right to know what we think, to know where our very minds have been.
And this is all in secret, without the slightest oversight or accountability from outside, particularly from the flag waving, constitution quoting, individual rights crusaders on the right, and increasingly–sickeningly–from the left.
The only possible way to combat these phony, rights-stealing creeps, is the old fashioned way: Throw the bums out. And don’t replace them with a new set of bums. Let’s wish ourselves good luck on that.
Just One Big Party in DC, comrade. DemocRats and ChamberPots. I agree with you completely with the slight reservation of the ProgreSSives being “johnny come lately’s” to the parade of tyranny.
Trump 2016, (because he is attacked by everyone except the voters) and Trump 2016 or Bust may just be a Bust, but 50/50 is better than 100% evil criminality with Hilarity.
Yea, agree with you on the progs. Also, somewhat about Trump vs Pillory. If you put a gun to my head, I might vote for Trump. If you put a gun to my head over Clinton, just pull the fucking trigger.
This is exactly why Trump happened. The Republicans we vote into office and expect to support our Constitution do not. McConnell has to go with the rest of them.
In a world where the courts were sane, this provision would be found clearly Unconstitutional.
Stop the bill. Clean out the whole of DC. Start over. Push the reset button.
The USA has truly become a banana republic.
What ?? “Secret bill” ??? Come, on. Is this Yellow Journalism, or just lazy reporting ?
Jenna, surely you know EVERY Bill in Congress has a number. Lesson 101 – H.R.xxx is a bill from the House of Representatives… S.xxx is a bill from our Senate. In either case, the xxx is a number, usually 3 or 4 digits long.
Your “story” lacks such details, thus making it more difficult to either fact check you, or call our Congress to voice our opinion…
Good Articles Jenna, BTW I’m selling ring-side seats to the next Brazil here in America, hurry there going fast…. To your article above “Life Magazine March 26, 1971, How The U.S. Army Spies on Citizens.” Walter Cronkite on the cover sailing on the Hudson. ~AWAKE
I lost faith in America years ago.
Two thoughts here:
First: “Either way, it’s a big problem and a massive expansion of government surveillance authority.”
And is it not their way to grab for so much and then settle for less? They threaten to take an enormous amount of what they have no right to take in the first place, and then play the compromise con to take as much as they can. The American public has been too long under the spell of the dark force of compromise.
Second: “One thing that makes them particularly easy to abuse is that recipients of NSLs are subject to a gag order that forbids them from revealing the letters’ existence to anyone, much less the public”.
Here they have even those with a basic sense of morality forced to be complicit in their criminal and unconstitutional activities or be ruined for life if not imprisoned, or exiled to the likes of Russia.
Had enough of a CORRUPT gubment yet ?
The United States Federal Government is a terrorist organization.
Maybe they can actually investigate the biggest email crime in history instead of peeking around to see how many times I click on Drudge.
Dam, I have my own email server. Nothing they can do to get my emails.
The people in charge have created Big Brother. They’re making him stronger with this bill. It’s over, people. But the people ought to heat up some tar, and wait for their Senators to come home.
Unless it’s a Democratic Administrator or someone like a cabinet member then there is no judge even anywhere that can get a warrant.
The FBI is probably already taking the e-mail records. We do know after all that if they were doing it illegally the chances of anyone in the FBI being prosecuted for it are zero even if it became public knowledge. It is just that going through the back door all the time is a bit cumbersome. They want to be able to go in through the front door.
It’s not that the back door is cumbersome, it’s that they can’t use illegal evidence in court.
It’s obvious they want to have everyone’s phone data and email. Get a good VPN and use GPG encryption in the mean time.
More like TOR, unless you like the people who blackmailed MLK to know about which ladies you sexted, etc.
The FBI already has access to NSA databases, you know. And if you think the NSA doesn’t read data that goes through VPNs just assume everything you do on a computer is public ffs.
That’s PGP encryption, not GPG but yeah everyone should be encrypting their emails. BTW hushmail has integrated PGP encryption even on their free email accounts.
Get a liberal senator to attach a huge Internet tax on the bill. That will kill it for sure. I’m also thinking a capital gains tax of 50% along with a gun tax should do it too.
traitor in the white house.
The way to circumvent their surveillance is for everybody to go to “objectionable” websites on a regular basis and even to include “objectionable” key words in emails. A footer with list of key words included in every email should do it. When everybody gets into their database the database will be worthless and they will be over whelmed. Happy surfing.
i dont believe that the bad guys ever indulge in the BFS the F…B…I… is saying they want vis-a-vis email. More likely they use a foreign language, foreign keyboard, foreign character set, and codewords. Those are the emails they want to peek at to see the email box to get a list of all other email addresses and names.
guaranteed.
The FBI doesn’t have the mandate, expertise or organization to pursue people over borders, languages, and cultural boundaries.
“National Security Letters” = woefully unconstitutional
The “USA PATRIOT” (sic) Act = obscenely unconstitutional
America’s enemies are not overseas. They’re in Washington, DC.
So why should the FBI have any less access than any two-bit hacker from Russia? Hey, everybody, wake up! All of our e-mail can be hacked at anytime.
We are at a place in time in our Republic that our Founders feared, the return to the despotic rule. Now instead of the English Government being our enemy, now it is our own government which is the enemy
Yep, a nation – if not the globe, and for all appearances they’re tryin – run by a criminal class…
Kill the bill.
Any idea about the ‘secret contents of the secret bill’?
This is perfectly normal and has been happening for generations here in the US. Until people (US citizens) wake up to the fact that it is We the People vs. The government (left or right dem or repub) nothing will ever change for the better of the people.
There are few things more injurious to liberty than a secretive government. Be afraid; be very afraid.
AS long as the FBI/CIA/DEA/ETC needs to remain hidden and work undercover – TOR will live long and prosper. I know for a fact TOR is the DEFAULT required mode of communication among LE in these positions, so us folks need the same protections – obviously. Any suggestions it will be less secure in the future is pure propaganda.
So much for the fourth amendment!
So much for freedom!
How long are we going to allow this to go on America?
Freedom is yours for the taking, take it.
Written in secret, passed in double secret. What country do we live in, again? Wait, don’t tell me until I go to the bathroom and turn on the water.
To late you already wrote the email….
Really? How much illegal snooping will they get away with?
We do have a U.S. Constitution.
Come Nov. 2016, FIRE every member of Congress, TRUMP, 2016?
The intelligence agencies, military and police can not be trusted with mass surveillance technology, it is secretly being abused on a vast scale.
The dangers of mass surveillance is that it allows the gathering up of potential blackmail information on politicians, judges and even certain members of the public that they would want take revenge on. The data that is collected is be used in secret criminal programs to harass someone like organized stalking/gang stalking. Illegal programs like this have existed in the past, the FBI’s COINTELPRO is just one of them.
The potential for abuse is boundless – blackmail and intimidation by federal entities is a given. Once this NSL revision passes, the genie is completely out of the bottle, and the American taxpayer will foot the bill for the manpower and infrastructure to carry it out.
MK ULTRA continues as well.
It never was about terrorists. That was the psychological vehicle to undo the Constitution’s protections that ‘law enforcement’ fanatics, like Comey, want removed. Of course, the Comeys and ‘the people’s government’ will fight tooth and nail – and likely to succeed – to keep what they do secret from the people.
This is a news item newsworthy enough for the six, ten and eleven o’clock news programs. No, the people will not hear the story from corporate media (controllers of 90% of US media). Keep the people in the dark.
I am fully convinced the FBI & DEA (upper leaders for sure) are all paid off and terribly corrupt and that is why the Sinaloa Drug Cartel operates with impunity within the US, and they are headquartered in Chicago – where the ineptitude of Raum Emmanuel is beyond disastrous. While the leaders of this cartel get rich, the DEA and FBI are used to tackle down “competitors” and bust them, allowing the flow of drugs to continue with near little or no interference within the core operation.
The CIA is complicit as well since they have fostered the cocaine and heroin trade.
None of these buffoons should be trusted, but for the honest ones, those people I thank., and trust – except it’s hard to know which is which. The others, the corrupt ones, they deserve a trial under the rules of sedition and deserve the ultimate punishment.
This snippet shows a man briefly describing recent experiences of being stalked by at least one US goon squad. It seems a novel experience to him, possibly a first — and quite mild — taste of things to come, unless the goons shy away from more aggressive behaviors simply because of the public attention he is receiving.
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/5/26/bill_mckibben_on_exxon_the_power
He describes the experience as “creepy”, similar to targets’ interactions with GO and Mona.
@Stan –
That tracking by that shadowy group IS creepy. And no one knows who’s funding them or much of anything about them?
Very strange…
Thanks for the clip, Stan. Slowly but surely this $hit is getting revealed.
Bill McKibben says “it is what it is”. What it IS is overt stalking and surveillance with one objective–to leave the target feeling off-kilter, uncertain, a bit creeped out; to make the target hyper vigilant. This wears down a person’s self-confidence; makes them stumble over their words; makes them look over their shoulder; makes them seem less credible; makes them want to crawl into a hole in search of privacy and freedom from the harassment. The ultimate goal is to silence the target. It’s classic COINTELPRO.
Keep speaking up, Bill McKibben. They HATE that!
Hi WakeUp,
Respectfully… makes targets seem less credible to what? Mass murdering, torture happy American lizards? I take issue with the “makes them seem less credible” bit.
Of course this is the patriot-creeps’ primary objective, but the ‘people’ doing this, and all the rest supporting it, have zero credibility. None. Maybe among themselves, but what are they? Just 300 million (less a tiny minority) people. A drop in the bucket. That’s it.
Best,
Stan
Hi Stan,
Well, when you put it that way… we’re fucked:-)
Best,
WUp
In 1929 the privately held Federal Reserve Currency owner and master – established in 1913 by the foreign Rothchilds – provided for the continuation of transactability of stocks and bonds for the purpose of increasing wealth, without having to work, by lowering interest rates and increasing debt ratios. Of course this ponzi scheme of musical chairs was destined to fail, AND THEY KNEW IT. The scheme is in place today and is still a print-to-loan-to-own ponzi musical chairs con job that will, by design, fail harder and more often as wealth increases and growth (a trap) slows.
the F…B…I… was created to protect these scheming bankster colony from bank robbers altho all references to this have now been removed from the search engines. This would make the F…B…I… the secret police for the zion banksters.
You should look forward to losing more value, losing personal power, losing rights and freedoms, losing more personal return of your working productivity, dying in more wars, and bankruptcy prison because there is nothing you can do about it except to be happy.
UNLESS BERNIE SANDERS IS PRESIDENT.
FBI, domestic stasi. CIA, international stasi. NSA gives them both lists.
“UNLESS BERNIE SANDERS IS PRESIDENT” – BUHAHAHAHHAHAAAAA
Well, I for one have complete confidence in that former banker to the drug cartels (HSBC), FBI Director James Comey.
If previous FBI director, appointed by Bush and reappointed by Obama, Robert Swan Mueller III, was the grandnephew of Richard Bissell — fired CIA deputy directory, fired by President Kennedy, that is — one wonders who James Comey might just be related to?
Of course, it is probably just a coincidence that Comey was appointed FBI director in the same timeframe in which the Clinton Foundation received a major donation from HSBC?
Right?
This is the indication : The terrorists have won…..and Orwell was right.
Goodbye democracy……in any case the way we practise it was already
thoroughly rigged like everything else. Warrantless search power is the slippery slope to censorship and modern slavery if you ask me.
No Warrant, No Access PERIOD!
Any and all politicians supporting or voting for this belong in the unemployment line.
“A provision snuck into the still-secret text of the Senate’s annual intelligence authorization would give the FBI the ability to demand individuals’ email data and possibly web-surfing history from their service providers without a warrant and in complete secrecy.”
Don’t whine people. Offshore that service to a provider that also encrypts by default.
Deceitful pollyanna.
Get busy living, or get busy dying.
Whatever you say, Killer. Or should I call you Patriot? What’s your preference? Is there a difference among your kind?
Are you a groveling worm, or a man?
There is an easy solution, OpenPGP is the open source version of the PGP encryption standard. GNU Privacy Guard is a very good implementation that is completely free.
With current bit depths, it may or may not be possible to break this encryption, using warehouse sized buildings filled with super computers. Even if it is breakable, it would be extremely costly to do so. The cool thing about GNU privacy, as it is open source, it is reasonably easy to modify it to use extremely large keys. With a large enough key, Every computer built by man, would not be able to break it, in the total lifetime of the universe.
This whole surveillance thing has gone over the cliff. Not over the edge, or overboard, but totally over the cliff. Not long before we will need an extra room in every house for our official and personally assigned spy. Can’t say a thing on the phone or in an email that the spies don’t see. And we aren’t the enemy. I never thought I’d see the day.
At this point i’m willing to give up my security for some freedom…
Absolute bull crap that you cannot identify the elected official who adds addendum to bills pending passage. Bill should pass thru Congress on their individual merits, it is cowardly to add addendum especially insulting are those that have no relevance to the original bill .
Just make sure no one is exempt including all government agencies and politically sensitive posts like Representatives, Senators, Judges, CIA director, FBI director, IRS director and any body that is anybody in governement nationally, state, municipal, or any citizen. Yep, open prey for the FBI or any body can access the system! Real good for transparency or legal system. It simplifies one way but really complicated the life of many in many ways. Is the law legal in the first place?! Oh, forgot that. Go back and see if it violated the basic right to privacy first!
Why don’t we just CC the FBI in all of our emails. They should just hire a bunch of hackers but that would be conspiracy. What to do what to do.
Isn’t the senate majority democrats?? Just saying
It sounds pretty true to my torture
All this secrecy has no place in a republic. All this warrantless spying is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. None of the three branches of government has any respect for the Constitution.
We now live in a police state. Some will say it could be worse. Indeed, and it is continually moving in that direction.
A police state for a possible POTUS who has no respect for the 3 branches of government; all the while the world becomes more volitile. Perfect
Some are on the receiving end of severe, totalitarian abuses, right under your nose.
Yep.
Ditto.
It’s about time for a REVOLUTION! Go out and vote for someone who isn’t a totalitarian douche.
Facile response at best, something else at the other end.
There is one party, and nothing to vote for. To vote for a Trump or Clinton is a sinister act against one’s own person.
The Party has zero non-totalitarian candidates. Sanders does not count. One does not feed at the federal trough as long as he has — during this particularly nasty period spanning the turn of the century — and not be rotten to the core. He would not lift a finger against the Stasi or even mention what’s going on in a sound bite.
The only solution is for the US population to form their own non-totalitarian parties in direct defiance of the Stasi, but it is not interested because most ‘citizens’ in the US are openly pro-torture and lavish their Stasi with billions in cash and affection. The Stasi enjoys an easy time recruiting little helpers on the street and in the workplace to stalk and harass colleagues, neighbors, and in some cases blood relations. The abuses range from the childish pranks of a seven year old mind to death-threats and physical torture. The DDR’s old apparatchiks must be green with envy at how easy and entertaining their American counterparts’ job is.
I believe the Libertarian and Green Parties match that description of the sort of non-totalitarian parties you want people to form, except that they’re already in existence. The news media hardly covers them, they struggle to get on the ballot in some states due to ridiculous ballot access laws, and the Green Party’s Jill Stein was even arrested in 2012 for protesting her exclusion from the main presidential debates.
More people need to support Jill Stein and most likely Gary Johnson over Hillary and Trump. It is up to us to wake them up and get them doing that.
I support Austin Petersen. I agree that Clinton and Trump are totalitarian douchebags in the same party. I’m unsure about Sanders. I assume he will lose to Hillary somehow. That seems to be the plan.
But until the American people want freedom from such oppressive government, well, it’s a democracy, even if we give away our vote.
I don’t think much of Libertarian politics. Instead of a country its adherents seem to want it further broken down into medieval fiefdoms. I was born in Jim Crow, Texas so I say ‘fuck that shit’. The States have proven time and again they are not up to the task of protecting civil society. They do not want it. That is not saying the Federal Govt. can’t trash it too, which they have done. ) But again, the question is do you want a country or a bunch of shitty little Jim Crow states ruled by tyrannical sheriffs working for Monsanto and Exxon?
I do respect Green Parties, and have always looked up to people sticking their necks out and giving their time and effort to meaningful causes. And there isn’t much out there more meaningful than avoiding the coming die-off as the planet heats up. However, I think they need to also make themselves capable of going toe to toe with the extremist and cynical realpolitik practitioners like Kissinger, Clinton, Obama, etc. I’m not saying these a-holes know what they’re doing — they don’t, and Putin has been running circles around Obama with far less resources. I’m suggesting they school themselves on geo-strategy so they can make fools out all the General Rippers running around the Pentagon by out reasoning them at their own game. War sucks. So does torture (I know this from personal experience). But it takes more than a bumper sticker.
Your comment to me was respectful and I hope you accept my response in the same way. But, fifteen years of torture — for being right — has made me much less humble than I was before it started.
As I understand it, libertarianism is more about individual freedom than decentralization. Decentralized tyranny is still tyranny, as you say. The libertarian non aggression principle, to oppose the initiation of force, I think the most reasonable exception to it is to exercise force in opposition to unjustified initiation of force. So if a state government starts robbing people in the highway, the federal government should prohibit that, since robbing people is obviously an unjustified initiation of force.
Oh hello no. You need probable cause and then a warrant. Nothing’s changed!
James Comey really wants to be the next J. Edgar Hoover, it seems. However, his history of working for corporate interests (including arms dealer Lockheed Martin – which has a lucrative relationship with the Saudi dictatorship, and HSBC, notorious for laundering billions in money for organized crime while avoiding criminal prosecution) really makes him unfit for his position.
It really shows that the domestic warrantless mass surveillance agenda is not just an unconstitutional overreach that undermines the core democratic concept of separation of powers, but also is aimed at protecting a corrupt federal government from exposure by whistleblowers and journalists. Comey should be asked if he understands the reason for separation of powers, and why he is set on avoiding judicial oversight of FBI actions.
“James Comey really wants to be the next J. Edgar Hoover, …”
He’s already got more peeping tom gadgets than J. Edgar could ever dream of. All he needs now are the panty hose.