HelloDollyLlama says:
"The issue isn't the law, it's the president executing it. Bush gave himself incredibly broad laws -- and STILL broke them. Obama won't."
Actually Bush was breaking the law... less than a week before congress voted for Telecom immunity claiming they needed to extablish FISA as an exclusive method for the government of conducting wiretapping, a federal judge ruled that the in fact the FISA law we've had for about three decades is exclusive, meaning that circumventing it was a breach of law. In addition to obscuring that with this bill, they actually write into law the ability of the government to conduct some domestic warrantless spying.
Up next, the ACLU and EFF will fight this one the grounds that it's unconstitutional per the 4th amendment. I found pretty good background pieces on wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmstead_v._United_States from 1928 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States from 1967.
What's truely scary, and which the Democrats have really openned the door for, is that there's no guarantee that this supreme court will uphold the 1967 interpretation of or privacy rights, but rather may open us up to permanent government data-mining (spying) of all electronic transfers, from voice calls, to email, and internet usage. In 1967 the contents of phone calls were mostly pretty benign, but today we do innumerable private transaction electronically, whether making online purchases, performing bank transactions, or confidential business arrangements. Depending on the supreme court's leaning, the government might have it all handed to them.
Of course, that would just drive an encryption push and we might see an encryption arms race between private citizens and businesses and the government...
Scary though
ronaldvandevender says:
"Totally Infected - all you say is going to happen anyway."
It wouldn't if congress had put up a firewall instead of this capitulation. It's mind-boggling to me that there's such a massive block out there that tirelessly fights for their interpretation of the 2nd ammendment and yet I feel like all we find in protection of the 4th amendment is is a few cranky forum posters with no real mass. I'm afraid people misunderstand the nature of the threats to the contitution, looking at the 2nd amendment threat with unwavering skepticism while giving the government the benefit of the doubt were the 4th amendment is concerned.
We have many items in our society which cause a criss cross of amendments. That's where the really hot toppics stem from. This is a road we have been traveling for some time now, and it's not likely to get much better. We have a population which is to complacent. When less than 1/3 of the voting age population will go vote, and most of them are extremist to one side or the other, what do you expect. We have at present a tyrant in office which is in my opinion no better than Castro. At least he had a set of balls and was not sneaky about keeping his people under marshall law as Bush has done, and the Cubans knew he was watching and listening unlike Bush who says he's looking to terrorist in order to spy on us.
As on my main page on here I quote "A government which does not trust it's people is a government which can not be trusted" Our own government does not trust us, thus mush brains like Bush will twist and twart the law in order to do what they want and spy on our own people. Even outright breaking the law to do it.
This issue is just one more step in the errosion of our right to privacy.
One thing to be overjoyed about though. It's the lazy attitude of most federal employees, and half ass doing their jobs. By Bushes definition of a terrorist there is a large number of us on this site which would fall under this lable. Then again what can they do with us. Our prisons are overfull. Guess they could build detention camps like they did for the Japanees during WWII. Then again half our cities would become vacant.
