Congress Finally Decides NSA Surveillance Violates

[A loaded rifle]

 

Congress has finally decided that massive, unprecedented and unwarranted surveillance of the American people conducted by the National Security Agency is against the law. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has broad jurisdiction over matters related to federal criminal law, arrived at the conclusion months after the American people reached a similar conclusion.

“We never, at any point in this debate, have approved the type of unchecked, sweeping surveillance of United States citizens employed by our government,” said House fixture John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, during a hearing on the NSA. “If the government cannot provide a clear, public explanation for how its program is consistent with the statute, it must stop collecting this information immediately.”

 

It's a shame it took this long.

 

Full Article

[Finn 7 five 11]

I'm not generally one to buy into conspiracy theories, but I was thinking, what's going to stop them doing it anyway ?

[018361]

Yay Finally! Now if we can get them to stop spying on our allies...

 

Edit: You guys are really starting to be killjoys.

Edited July 18, 2013 by 018361

[jackass2009]

I'm not generally one to buy into conspiracy theories, but I was thinking, what's going to stop them doing it anyway ?

I was thinking something similar. I mean, just because it's ruled illegal or unconstitutional and whatnot, do you think that would really stop them?

[EscoLehGo]

Am I the only one who really doesn't give a sh*t about being watched or monitored? Watch me all day f*cker, I'm not doing anything illegal, unless masturbating excessively into one's sheets is a crime now.

[lil weasel]

 

I'm not generally one to buy into conspiracy theories, but I was thinking, what's going to stop them doing it anyway ?

Be sure there is Nothing to stop them once the hardware is in place. Only the individuals good faith 'pinky-swear'. If they get caught (practicing their trade) it will be a mistake, "Sorry, we won't do it again." until next time.

Nothing stopped Hoover, and he trained the people.

It all depends on loyalty. 'Gotta protect the people' or 'Give the bad guys the edge.' Which is more important to the guy with the recorder? 'Wait... their the same thing.' 'Better to secretly protect the people than leave them prey to the bad guys.'

We Have the Technology!

'

[Kwandilibro]

I'm not generally one to buy into conspiracy theories, but I was thinking, what's going to stop them doing it anyway ?

I was thinking something similar. I mean, just because it's ruled illegal or unconstitutional and whatnot, do you think that would really stop them?

Wasn't that sh*t illegal to begin with? If the law didn't stop them then, I doubt this will make a difference.

[Laura91]

 

Am I the only one who really doesn't give a sh*t about being watched or monitored? Watch me all day f*cker.....

This is the sort of attitude that annoys the f*ck out of me. People should be infuriated that this is going on but they roll over like f*cking puppies.

 

People should care but they don't.

 

If things actually escalate to a place where, trust me, NO ONE wants it to go, the only ones we will have to blame are the stupid people that didn't care that their rights were taken away slowly but surely.

[WildBrick142]

I think they are still spying. They probably just said that to make people calm down and forget about NSA spying.

 

 

WildBrick142 puts on tin foil hat.

 

But if this is true, then I'm happy.

[GrandMaster Smith]

Am I the only one who really doesn't give a sh*t about being watched or monitored? Watch me all day f*cker, I'm not doing anything illegal, unless masturbating excessively into one's sheets is a crime now.

Hey bro well since you're not doing anything wrong I was hoping you wouldn't mind if I just stuck a surveillance camera in your bedroom just to keep watch? Ya know, for your own good of course

[Mr. Sleepy]

Am I the only one who really doesn't give a sh*t about being watched or monitored? Watch me all day f*cker, I'm not doing anything illegal, unless masturbating excessively into one's sheets is a crime now.

This is the f*cking attitude that makes me want to kill myself and leave this world..

 

There's something called privacy bro, ever heard of it? No? Let me watch you and your family all day then.

I mean I am no different than NSA.

[Mr.Mordecai]

Am I the only one who really doesn't give a sh*t about being watched or monitored? Watch me all day f*cker, I'm not doing anything illegal, unless masturbating excessively into one's sheets is a crime now.

This is the f*cking attitude that makes me want to kill myself and leave this world..

 

There's something called privacy bro, ever heard of it? No? Let me watch you and your family all day then.

I mean I am no different than NSA.

Do it

 

I honestly don't care.

 

Who's to say the aren't spying on us now? Besides, I'm gonna move to South Africa when I graduate.

 

 

[agent17]

I'm not generally one to buy into conspiracy theories, but I was thinking, what's going to stop them doing it anyway ?

Conspiracy theory implies that NSA's surveillance is still a theory, which it's not.

 

The surveillance will continue, and the government has no reason to stop. A few members of congress and the house were fighting to repeal the patriot act, but it was ultimately reauthorized.

[EscoLehGo]

I love how all of the brony supporters followed me into this thread, how convenient, I'm sure you guys definitely wouldn't want any of your recent web searches reviewed but the government. You are the same babies that would cry why the government didn't do more to prevent a future terrorist attack that harmed many people and despite your feelings there are many more of you out there than there are me, do a web search and you'll find several fellow freakazoids who are very "up in arms" about being potentially spied on.

[agent17]

I love how all of the brony supporters followed me into this thread, how convenient, I'm sure you guys definitely wouldn't want any of your recent web searches reviewed but the government. You are the same babies that would cry why the government didn't do more to prevent a future terrorist attack that harmed many people and despite your feelings there are many more of you out there than there are me, do a web search and you'll find several fellow freakazoids who are very "up in arms" about being potentially spied on.

NSA's surveillance did wonders to prevent the Boston Marathon bombing.

[sivispacem]

 

Congress has finally decided that massive, unprecedented and unwarranted surveillance of the American people conducted by the National Security Agency is against the law. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has broad jurisdiction over matters related to federal criminal law, arrived at the conclusion months after the American people reached a similar conclusion.

“We never, at any point in this debate, have approved the type of unchecked, sweeping surveillance of United States citizens employed by our government,” said House fixture John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, during a hearing on the NSA. “If the government cannot provide a clear, public explanation for how its program is consistent with the statute, it must stop collecting this information immediately.”

 

It's a shame it took this long.

 

Full Article

I do love the Infowars line on bullsh*t. Original source, actually referenced in the article. I can see you looked really hard to corroborate what Infowars was saying...

 

 

The U.S. National Security Agency and Department of Justice exceeded their legal authority to conduct surveillance when collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. residents, several U.S. lawmakers said Wednesday.

 

Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, both Republicans and Democrats, ripped into representatives of the DOJ and the U.S. intelligence community for their collection of U.S. phone call records, saying the bulk collection violates Patriot Act restrictions that limit surveillance to information relevant to an antiterrorism investigation...

 

...During the hearing, lawmakers raised few concerns about the PRISM program, in which the NSA collects the content of email and other Internet communications sent by people not believed to be U.S. citizens. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed both the phone records collection and the Prism program in news stories published in early June.

 

“Our primary responsibility at the National Security Agency ... is to defend the nation,” Inglis said. “These programs are a core part of those efforts. We use them to protect Americans and our allies and partners worldwide.”

 

While officials defended the surveillance court’s review of the collection requests, several lawmakers suggested the court is a rubber stamp. Since the court was established in 1979, U.S. agencies have made nearly 34,000 surveillance requests to the court, and 490 of those were amended at the court’s request, said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat. In that time, the court rejected just 11 requests, he said.

 

Those statistics don’t capture significant negotiations in many cases between the court and the NSA and DOJ before the judges grant the orders, said Robert Litt, general counsel for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

 

Several lawmakers called on the agencies to release more information about the surveillance programs and better explain to the public why the programs are necessary.

 

So, it becomes clear that Congress has not made any judgement on the legality or otherwise of surveillance conducted by the NSA, and that in actual fact it is several individual congressmen assessing that a single NSA project- the collection of telecommunications metadata- overstretched their legal interception capacity as outlined under the PATRIOT act. Which isn't a new development, because several members of both Congress and the House have come out as saying they believed that warrantless metadata collection violated the limits of what is legal under PATRIOT.

 

But hey, let's not let the sources that InfoWars provides only to explicitly contradict get in the way of a good bit of conspiracy sh*t-stirring.

 

You really have to be a special kind of idiot to buy into this stuff.

Edited July 19, 2013 by sivispacem

[Wolf of Badenoch]

You really have to be a special kind of idiot to buy into this stuff.

Or a conspiracy theorist. There's little difference.

[Raavi]

First of all Infowars is the most ill-informed source you can possibly cite, the sh*t they spew out of their asses is worse than a heavily edited wikipedia page on crack. There is absolutely nothing to be seen here, several congressmam had already stated that the surveillance conducted by the NSA wasn't within the legal boundaries of the patriot act, but there is in no way a general aknowledgement by Congress that it was in fact wrong.

[Creed Bratton]

Oh, well this will change everything. Right?

[na89340qv0n34b09q340]

 

Am I the only one who really doesn't give a sh*t about being watched or monitored? Watch me all day f*cker, I'm not doing anything illegal, unless masturbating excessively into one's sheets is a crime now.

Read this essay. It's about privacy, and why it's important, it's only 28 pages (that count includes citations, so about 26 pages of writing).

[DEALUX]

Am I the only one who really doesn't give a sh*t about being watched or monitored? Watch me all day f*cker, I'm not doing anything illegal, unless masturbating excessively into one's sheets is a crime now.

What you consider legal could be used against you by someone from the government agencies that have access to the information, if they wanted to screw with you for whatever reason. Maybe you downloaded a song or YouTube video illegally or something minor like that. Technically you could go to prison or get fined for something like that.

[sivispacem]

Am I the only one who really doesn't give a sh*t about being watched or monitored? Watch me all day f*cker, I'm not doing anything illegal, unless masturbating excessively into one's sheets is a crime now.

What you consider legal could be used against you by someone from the government agencies that have access to the information, if they wanted to screw with you for whatever reason. Maybe you downloaded a song or YouTube video illegally or something minor like that. Technically you could go to prison or get fined for something like that.

I don't like this argument because it needs a far more fundamental change than just making something illegal. You'd have to repeal the laws that prevent people from being prosecuted for offences that take place before they became criminal. And if that goes then I think you've got far bigger things to worry about than your Internet browsing.

[P2FX]

[Bellic 4 life]

I love how all of the brony supporters followed me into this thread, how convenient, I'm sure you guys definitely wouldn't want any of your recent web searches reviewed but the government. You are the same babies that would cry why the government didn't do more to prevent a future terrorist attack that harmed many people and despite your feelings there are many more of you out there than there are me, do a web search and you'll find several fellow freakazoids who are very "up in arms" about being potentially spied on.

If you think that's what this is about, you're demented. We have the right to privacy sir, and you acting like a sheep when it is violated is atrocious. I believe this quote from Benjamin Franklin expresses my opinion quite well:

 

 

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

 

I hope you understand, you don't deserve your liberties or safeties. You deserve to be put into a hard labour, and never be released, because as of right now, my personal opinion of you is low.

[Triple Vacuum Seal]

Common sense will tell you that this changes nothing. These controversial programs were top secret for a reason. The NSA does what it wants when it wants.

[Mr_Leone]

First of all Infowars is the most ill-informed source you can possibly cite, the sh*t they spew out of their asses is worse than a heavily edited wikipedia page on crack. There is absolutely nothing to be seen here, several congressmam had already stated that the surveillance conducted by the NSA wasn't within the legal boundaries of the patriot act, but there is in no way a general aknowledgement by Congress that it was in fact wrong.

Jones is hit or miss. If you actually listen to him (his older stuff) he can be accurate. Nowadays he's just a blow-hard turning nothing into something.

[Mr.Mordecai]

I love how all of the brony supporters followed me into this thread, how convenient, I'm sure you guys definitely wouldn't want any of your recent web searches reviewed but the government. You are the same babies that would cry why the government didn't do more to prevent a future terrorist attack that harmed many people and despite your feelings there are many more of you out there than there are me, do a web search and you'll find several fellow freakazoids who are very "up in arms" about being potentially spied on.

If you think that's what this is about, you're demented. We have the right to privacy sir, and you acting like a sheep when it is violated is atrocious. I believe this quote from Benjamin Franklin expresses my opinion quite well:

 

 

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

 

I hope you understand, you don't deserve your liberties or safeties. You deserve to be put into a hard labour, and never be released, because as of right now, my personal opinion of you is low.

Besides bitching about it on a video game forum, what are YOU doing to stop this?

[Finn 7 five 11]

Besides bitching about it on a video game forum, what are YOU doing to stop this?

You know it does sound silly, but he is actually making a difference.

 

He bitches here, then one of us goes and tells our friend about it, the other goes and posts on another forum and so forth, a snowball effect, just like memes. Then it ends up on the news/it stays relevant and gets covered for longer and more people see it and kick up a bigger stink and so forth.

 

So yeah, complaining on a forum isn't the most pro-active thing you could go do, but it certainly does make a difference.

[sivispacem]

First of all Infowars is the most ill-informed source you can possibly cite, the sh*t they spew out of their asses is worse than a heavily edited wikipedia page on crack. There is absolutely nothing to be seen here, several congressmam had already stated that the surveillance conducted by the NSA wasn't within the legal boundaries of the patriot act, but there is in no way a general aknowledgement by Congress that it was in fact wrong.

Jones is hit or miss. If you actually listen to him (his older stuff) he can be accurate. Nowadays he's just a blow-hard turning nothing into something.

No, Jones has always been a moron. A broken clock is still right twice a day.

[baguvix_wanrltw]

This whole thing is starting to get very weird. As a crazy conspiracy nut, I feel obliged to state that I'm starting to wonder what's *actually* going on when they are ready to discuss things like this so publicly. And I'm starting to believe Snowden might not have been an accident. Sigh. But if history has taught us anything it's that things are always much worse than they appear to the public.

 

As for your precious laws: lol.