FISA warrantless wiretapping act quietly renewed

[MKTerra]

I look the FISA Amendment up and it doesn't allow the wiretaps on US soil - not when Glennwald was implying at all - and does set out rules for surveillance, which he didn't mention. The problem is it allows for warrantless taps in the case of emergencies, provided you file the papers afterwards; that's clearly open to abuse. Glennwald doesn't explain that, he implies the entire act is only about removing warrants (which it isn't).

Wyden's specific objections are as follows:

"Unlike the traditional FISA authorities and unlike law enforcement wiretapping authorities, section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act does not involve obtaining individual warrants," Wyden explained. "Instead, it allows the government to get what's called a programmatic warrant, lasts for an entire year, and authorizes the government to collect a potentially large number of phone calls and emails with no requirement that the senders or recipients be connected to terrorism, espionage, the threats that we are concerned about."

"If that sounds familiar," he added, "It certainly should. General warrants that allowed government officials to decide whose privacy they would invade were the exact sort of abuse that the American colonists protested over and led the Founding Fathers to adopt the Fourth Amendment in the first place."
...

"This law doesn't actually prohibit the government from collecting Americans' phone calls and emails without a warrant," he said, because "the FISA Amendments Act states that acquisitions made under Section 702 may not 'intentionally target a specific American,' and may not 'intentionally acquire communications that are known at the time of acquisition to be wholly domestic,'" which Wyden considers too large a loophole.

"It still leaves a lot of room for circumstances under which Americans' phone calls and emails, including purely domestic phone calls and emails could be swept up and reviewed without a warrant," he said, which "can happen if the government didn't know that someone is American, or if the government made a technical error, or if the American was talking to a foreigner even if that conversation was entirely legitimate."

Not only could it happen, he said, but it has happened. "The FISA court has ruled at least once that collection carried out by the government under the FISA Amendments Act violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Senate rules regarding classified information prevent me from discussing details of that ruling or how many Americans were affected over what period of time, but this fact alone, Mr. President, clearly demonstrates that the impact of this law on Americans' privacy has been real and it is not hypothetical."

[Charles RB]

You ever see an episode of The Wire or Law & Order or something where the investigators find out where a body or something is, but can't do anything because they didn't have a warrant? It's like that, but with terrorists instead of crack pushers, and anthrax instead of junkie corpses.

Which is why you should get a warrant.

Wyden's specific objections are as follows:

Which, of course, Glennwald didn't fucking say in his article.

Luckily we can have a look at the text of 702 and compare it to Wyden's claims.

And you know, it does prohibit. "‘(5) shall be conducted in a manner consistent with the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States." Now "may not intentionally" is open to abuse but Wyden is himself admitting that the FISA Court has ruled that intelligence services violated the fourth amendment, i.e. enforced that part of 702.

It also does require court orders to be filed retroactively before a federal court and specifies the time limit, sets out judicial reviews of certificates and contempt of court, and annual review of the "acquisitions" and who checks the reviews. It's a law with loopholes but I know there are checks and balances and limits included because I can look at it; I can see that reporters are leaving this stuff out, and that Wyden is playing silly buggers.

[Ood Omega]

Absolutely disgusting. Just goes to show that there really is no difference between the two parties.

Republicrats and Demicrans are completely different

[Wjowski]

Democrats and Republicans: different names for the same old shit.

[dupont2005]

Which is why you should get a warrant.

And hope they repeat what they said again. Waiting 24 hours for a judge to sign a paper never made much sense to me, especially when concerning international terrorism or anything else on that scale. It's like a rapist going free because someone forgot to read him his Miranda rights.

[Wjowski]

And hope they repeat what they said again. Waiting 24 hours for a judge to sign a paper never made much sense to me, especially when concerning international terrorism or anything else on that scale. It's like a rapist going free because someone forgot to read him his Miranda rights.

Quite frankly I'll take a rapist going free over a government with an unlimited ability to spy on it's citizens or a police force that can arrest whoever they want however they want.

[dupont2005]

Quite frankly I'll take a rapist going free over a government with an unlimited ability to spy on it's citizens or a police force that can arrest whoever they want however they want.

They don't actually have any of that though, as outlined in multiple posts in this thread.