https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/one-of-the-most-controversial-us-spy-programs-just-got-quietly-renewed/
Congress blew a rare bipartisan chance to protect Americans' calls and texts.
Congress blew a rare bipartisan chance to protect Americans’ calls and texts.
The federal government is entirely captured. Were going to get only little platitudes from it (if that) until stuff blows up (sometimes literally).
They've been rolling back civil rights for decades now. Autocracy is as good as here.
Opt out where you can and let the evil empire crumble under the weight of its own mistakes. Cornered beasts will lash out hard, so don't go for the killing blow, just let the empire die somewhere in the woods frok its self inflicted wounds and then peace-loving people can step into the void and build a better world.
In the meantime, do what you can to love those around you who you care for, promote liberty, support the innocents working for better change through peace, privacy, rights, speech, technology and so forth.
This 702 provision only allows spying on your communications with foreigners, and it's being used much less now than in the past.
How you feel about that is up to you, but it shouldn't be construed as a broad ability to spy on Americans without restriction.
These days, Godwin's law of Nazi analogies is something of a liability, as a lot of people are quick to assume (sometimes in bad faith) that a comparison to actual nazis is hyperbolic. I've taken to applied Godwinism, that is getting very specific in my comparisons.
That brings us to the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence service of the German Reich that was run by Reinhard Heydrich. The Behind the Bastards podcast two-parter on Heydrich gets deep into the starting of the SD. One of the things it highlights is that in the investigation and persecution of Jews, it was only supposed to go after known felons, but it went after anyone it could plausibly nail. It was an open secret within its own ranks, but by the time anyone on the outside wanted to check Heydrich's methods, he'd have enough dirt on them to keep them mum.
Cut to NSA and PRISM, which is the massive internet surveillance program that monitors traffic between Americans and foreigners. Yes, it's only supposed to be counterterrorism (Islamist terror, specifically) but from the beginning, it ruled-in any internet packet that crossed the US borders, even when the sender and recipient were both in the US. And since the mid 2010s, NSA has been allowing the mission to extend to all law enforcement, including letting local precincts know about large amounts of liquid assets in transit to be intercepted and confiscated. Some searches of the blog website Techdirt should yield you dozens of examples of incidents that made it to courts, to civil rights watch organizations and investigative reporters. The FISC was always a joke, known even by the FBI as a rubber stamp court.
Incidentally, ICE also engages in the same kind of ignoring (or reinterpreting) mission parameters. Ordered to only arrest and deport undocumented persons who've committed violent felonies, they go after everyone they can, including locking brown American citizens in a room with no phone and no resources and order them to prove they're a citizen. People deported, often shores alien to the deportees are quickly swept up into human trafficking rackets with which ICE closely operates.
So no, it's not as bad as we imagine. It's far worse.
Better just give up, then. Obviously the only solution is violence because random people on the internet have decided there's literally nothing at all that can be done to change things.
I don't think anyone is advocating violence but when no one can afford food or rent, the writing is on the wall
It's headed in that direction, but we're not quite there yet.
There are two ways to fight the autocratic takeover. One is opportunistic: The US is immense and has a lot of interlocking and often conflicting systems in place, which makes for a lot of chaotic complexity. So the way that dinosaur clones were able to breed, escape Isla Nublar and survive despite a lysine addiction (all contrived to contain them) we need to find opportunities to impede their takeover or creatively disobey.
The other is in creating local mutual aid organizations. Make sure that your marginalized and outcast locals are getting fed, keeping warm and otherwise having needs met, and the police will find it harder to push them out. Whatever you can do to allow strikes and protests to last longer will tax the goons of the plutocrats, and tax them until either they retreat and rally elsewhere or ratchet up the violence so that it becomes too atrocious for the neoliberal public to ignore.
The Arab Spring was kicked off by a Libyan street vendor who was so tired of paying bribes, fees, and ‘fines’ he set himself on fire instead of choosing another day at life. And enough of his countrymen saw that and said “Agreed. There’s no future anymore, let’s burn it all down and get a new government”.
The US has been in trouble for a long while - you have to wonder how long until the body politic is picked clean by capitalism and people are done with this project we call America. When all the political oxygen is consumed by the loudest fringe voices who achieve nothing of substance, while entrenching their power and prestige. There’s only two ‘viable’ parties, and they want it that way, all while we pretend with the illusion of choice.
But please, tell me how I need not give up, that all I have to do is get involved more local politics, or ‘play the game’ and throw campaign elections at my problems. Gerrymandering, dark money, DNC/RNC funding choking out 3rd party candidates, etc etc. the fix is in, and you and I aren’t in on it.
The article: On December 22, President Joe Biden signed a $886 billion defense bill that renewed one of the US government’s most controversial spy programs. Tucked in the 3,000-page legislation is an extension of the administration’s power to warrantlessly surveil foreigners overseas, and snoop on Americans in the process.
The authority, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), has been the subject of intense scrutiny over the past few months. Set to expire on December 31, in the weeks leading up to that date, lawmakers were still in heated debates over whether and how to allow it to continue. But these conversations were halted after Congress and the Biden administration squeezed a short-term extension of the spy program through the annual defense bill, potentially keeping it in effect until 2025.
Many civil liberties advocates are criticizing the extension, saying that it skirts a rare, bipartisan push to protect Americans’ privacy. This stopgap measure, they argue, kicks a crucial debate on government spying into the new year—or beyond. In the meantime, it allows federal authorities to hold onto a power that they’ve routinely abused.
“It’s tragic,” says Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security program. “Abuses and civil liberties violations are going to continue at a completely unacceptable rate,” she adds. “For every day, every week, every month that Section 702 continues without reform, that is what’s happening.”
Under Section 702 of FISA, federal investigators do not need a warrant to tap the phone calls, texts, and emails of foreigners outside of the country. But a loophole also lets them access messages that Americans exchange with targets abroad. These communications are funneled into a database that investigators can later search, again without a warrant. Numerous reports have documented the FBI’s “persistent and widespread” misuse of this authority to spy on Americans, running unauthorized searches on Black Lives Matter protesters, for instance, or January 6 rioters, and even a US senator.
In 2021, the FBI conducted about 3 million so-called “backdoor searches” on US residents. Last year, amid pressure from lawmakers and advocates to curb warrantless spying on Americans, that number dropped to about 119,000.
Still, the extent of this intrusion was troubling enough to spark a reform push from Republicans and Democrats. Earlier this month, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) introduced a bipartisan bill to renew a version of Section 702 with key changes, including a warrant requirement for law enforcement to pull Americans’ communications. It sailed through the notoriously divided House Judiciary Committee with support from both sides of the aisle.
Before leaving for winter recess, the House was set to vote between advancing Rep. Biggs’ proposal or a competing bipartisan effort sponsored by Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), which experts said would broaden Section 702 surveillance powers. But many lawmakers didn’t want to rush the vote. Instead, they opted to temporarily extend the spy program through the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, an annual measure that sets funding and policy priorities for the Pentagon. According to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who had tacked the extension onto the NDAA in the first place, this move buys “necessary time to facilitate the reform process.”
The short-term extension officially stretches the spy program for four months, into April 2024. But under a little-known provision of the FISA law, a special court that oversees the program has the power to let it run for an additional year, until April 2025.
It’s a win for the Biden administration, which had been cranking up the pressure on Congress to keep the surveillance authority intact. In a House Homeland Security hearing last month, FBI director Christopher Wray acknowledged that the bureau had misused its Section 702 power in the past, but assured lawmakers that the agency was now operating with more restraint. Wray also warned that now was no time to strip the FBI of any authorities. Since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, he said, a “rogue’s gallery” of groups have called for violence against the US. “702 is critical to protecting Americans from foreign terrorist threats,” he urged. “Please don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
“Do not let it expire,” echoed Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) on the House floor during its vote on the defense bill. “If it expires, Americans and allies will die.”
But many advocates say that by failing to add a warrant requirement and other key changes to Section 702, lawmakers had fumbled a chance to protect both Americans’ safety—and their rights. “It’s extremely disappointing,” says Sumayyah Waheed, a senior policy counsel with the civil rights group Muslim Advocates. There were bills introduced “to actually make the reforms that we desperately need in Section 702.” But “instead of allowing that debate to continue, this was kind of shoved through in a ‘must-pass’ piece of legislation.”
“There were a lot of opportunities for Congress to get this right,” says Andy Wong, advocacy director of Stop AAPI Hate, an organization for advancing the rights of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. “They sort of dodged the responsibility here.”
Wong says that leaving such a sweeping surveillance power in the government’s hands puts communities at risk. He points to the wrongful arrest of Professor Xiaoxing Xi, a Temple University physicist who was accused of espionage after the FBI misread emails he wrote to his Chinese colleagues—emails obtained in part under Section 702. Asian Americans and other communities of color often “face heightened scrutiny and suspicion,” he explains. “Really innocuous behaviors may be misinterpreted or viewed through a biased lens and lead to a lot of unwarranted suspicion and potential harm.”
Dr. Xi’s story may be among the more extreme, notes Goitein of the Brennan Center, but there may be other harms that are less obvious but also serious, largely because of the government’s extreme secrecy concerning its use of Section 702. “People can be subject to tax audits, be denied public benefits or public jobs,” she says. “There are any number of ways in which people’s lives might be affected by these searches, and they would never know it.”
When Congress returns in 2024, lawmakers will be expected to take up the reform effort once again. According to Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), leadership is trying to figure out a “fair process” for ironing out differences in the House proposals. Senate leaders Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also have pledged to work with the House on a bill that can be passed “early next year.”
Some experts are stressing the need to make sure the Biden administration acts swiftly since it now has room to drag its feet. “Even if Congress manages to pass a strong reform bill in the spring,” argues Goitein, “the administration has no real incentive to sign it because they know that they can continue surveillance until April 2025.”
Waheed from Muslim Advocates acknowledges their disappointment in what she described as “this setback,” but says, “We look forward to continuing the fight next year.”
Its actually pretty frightening that the population is ok with this. The modern news sources are just two minutes hate.
I mean, do you know anyone that would actually care about this? How many would sit and read/watch a story about it out of their own interest? How loud would you have to be to get heard?
The average American is simply too stupid (read: "overworked") to care about any kind of personal civic duty. We're too busy thinking of everything we wish our country would do for us, not what we could do to save the country. Tbh, must of us don't even know what good citizens are supposed to do
I didn't expect them to shoot this down at all, especially with everyone focused on the wars
Nobody gives a shit about this.
Now take away their Coors light and hotdogs and see what happens.
Because every totalitarian government in history has gone so well for the people under them
