Author
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Topic: U.S. Congress gives Executive branch broad spying powers
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josh
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2938
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posted 06 August 2007 06:55 AM
quote: [T]he new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens. “This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation. Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States. . . . . By changing the legal definition of what is considered “electronic surveillance,” the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on those conversations without warrants — latching on to those giant switches — as long as the target of the government’s surveillance is “reasonably believed” to be overseas. . . . . The new law, which is intended as a stopgap and expires in six months, also represents a power shift in terms of the oversight and regulation of government surveillance. The new law gives the attorney general and the director of national intelligence the power to approve the international surveillance, rather than the special intelligence court. The court’s only role will be to review and approve the procedures used by the government in the surveillance after it has been conducted. It will not scrutinize the cases of the individuals being monitored.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/washington/06nsa.html?hp [ 06 August 2007: Message edited by: josh ]
From: the twilight zone between the U.S. and Canada | Registered: Aug 2002
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Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560
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posted 06 August 2007 07:32 AM
All they would have to do is grow a pair (of balls, or ovaries, really doesn't matter) and run a strong counter-campaign, telling people that if they go running scared and destroying Americans' civil liberties, then the terrorists have ALREADY won!What American patriot wouldn't respond to the idea that they're not going to let terrorists dictate the domestic agenda in the US, and that we're not going to turn the US into a police state like Iran or Soviet Russia out of fear? Wouldn't that ring true to even the most tough-guy law-and-order type in the US? What the hell ever happened to fearless Americans? I'd take them any day over the gutless, whiny wimps that Dubya has turned so many American citizens into. Live free or die!
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001
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