Score another one for the terrorists.

[CCTAU 3,336]

And don't start with the crap about your rights. None of your rights were violated by this happening to you. Unless you are a terrorist engaging in terroristic behavior, you had nothing to worry about.

Senate to pass bill overhauling eavesdropping regs

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 46 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Senate finally is expected to pass a bill overhauling rules on secret government eavesdropping, completing a lengthy and bitter debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks.

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The vote, planned for Wednesday, would end almost a year of wrangling between the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, and Congress and the White House over the president's warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The fight over the bill has centered on one provision: shielding from civil lawsuits telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on American phone and computer lines, without the permission or knowledge of a secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The White House had threatened to veto the bill unless it immunized companies like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. from wiretapping lawsuits. About 40 such lawsuits have been filed. They are all pending before a single federal district court.

The lawsuits center around allegations that the White House circumvented U.S. law by going around the FISA court, which was created 30 years ago to prevent the government from abusing its surveillance powers for political purposes, as was done in the Vietnam War and Watergate eras. The court is meant to approve all wiretaps placed inside the U.S. for intelligence-gathering purposes. The law has been interpreted to include international e-mail records stored on servers inside the U.S.

The Bush administration brought the wiretapping back under the FISA court's authority only after The New York Times revealed the existence of the program. A handful of members of Congress knew about the program from top secret briefings. Most members are still forbidden to know the details of the classified program, and some object that they are being asked to grant immunity to the telecoms without first knowing what they did.

Opponents of letting telecommunications companies off the hook have proposed amendments that would delay immunity until the full extent of the wiretapping program is revealed by a government investigation, or strip the provision from the bill entirely. They argue that only in court will the full extent of the program be understood, and only a judge should decide whether the program broke the law.

The bill tries to address those concerns by requiring inspectors general inside the government to conduct a yearlong investigation into warrantless wiretapping.

Beyond immunity, the new surveillance bill also sets new rules for government eavesdropping. Some of them would tighten the reins on current government surveillance activities, and others loosen them compared with a law passed 30 years ago.

For example, it would require the government to get FISA court approval before it eavesdrops on an American overseas. Currently, the attorney general approves that electronic surveillance on his own.

But the bill also would allow the government to obtain broad, yearlong intercept orders from the FISA court that target foreign groups and people, raising the prospect that communications with innocent Americans would be swept up. The court would approve how the government chooses the targets, and how the intercepted American communications are to be protected.

The original FISA law required the government to get wiretapping warrants for each individual targeted from inside the United States, on the rationale that most communications inside the U.S. would involve Americans whose civil liberties must be protected. But technology has changed. Purely foreign communications increasingly pass through U.S. wires and sit on American computer servers, and the law required court orders be obtained to access those as well.

The bill would give the government a week to conduct a wiretap in an emergency before it must apply for a court order. The original law only allowed three days.

Yearlong wiretapping orders authorized by Congress last year will begin to expire in August. Without a new bill, the government would go back to old FISA rules, requiring multiple new orders to continue those intercepts.

The House approved the surveillance overhaul last month.

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[autiger4life 3]

And don't start with the crap about your rights. None of your rights were violated by this happening to you. Unless you are a terrorist engaging in terroristic behavior, you had nothing to worry about.

It is not about being worried about being caught, it is about liberties being stepped on. All dictatorships start with taking away liberties and justifying it by saying that as long as you are not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about. However, it is a slippery slope that can turn worse and worse.

The title should be score another one for the US because what the terrorists wanted was to take away our freedoms and our way of life, well we are getting freedoms back and that is not what the terrorist want.

[Justin5 20]

Odd you are complaining about this, but whatever...

It's more than fair to the right. Most against this bill are on the left.

[autiger4life 3]

It is strange that a republican wants big brother increased. I thought we were the socialist.

Though you will never agree, you are being fooled by them masking big brother with fears of terroist

[Tigermike 3,046]

And don't start with the crap about your rights. None of your rights were violated by this happening to you. Unless you are a terrorist engaging in terroristic behavior, you had nothing to worry about.

It is not about being worried about being caught, it is about liberties being stepped on. All dictatorships start with taking away liberties and justifying it by saying that as long as you are not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about. However, it is a slippery slope that can turn worse and worse.

The title should be score another one for the US because what the terrorists wanted was to take away our freedoms and our way of life, well we are getting freedoms back and that is not what the terrorist want.

Wouldn't that same argument hold with this?

[autiger4life 3]

Wouldn't that same argument hold with this?

Yes, same could be said. I agree with you on the required service which is why I didn't post, because I did not want to repeat. I don't think it is a problem with slavery, but more with communism or socialism. But yes, both can be slippery slopes and shouldn't be something the government is doing.

[CCTAU 3,336]

It is strange that a republican wants big brother increased. I thought we were the socialist.

Though you will never agree, you are being fooled by them masking big brother with fears of terroist

Not really. The subject has been defined and now is at a point where it is surviving on a stable level. It's kinda like abortion, don't mess with it due to making it worse either way. The situation with wire taps right now is under control and is a useful tool against terrorism. Now that the senate is addressing it, this will lose it's usefulness and we will be weaker in our fight against terrorism.

[TitanTiger 20,509]

And don't start with the crap about your rights. None of your rights were violated by this happening to you. Unless you are a terrorist engaging in terroristic behavior, you had nothing to worry about.

It is not about being worried about being caught, it is about liberties being stepped on. All dictatorships start with taking away liberties and justifying it by saying that as long as you are not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about. However, it is a slippery slope that can turn worse and worse.

The title should be score another one for the US because what the terrorists wanted was to take away our freedoms and our way of life, well we are getting freedoms back and that is not what the terrorist want.

Agreed. No one minds less liberty until the wrong bunch gets in power and turns it on them.

[Justin5 20]

And don't start with the crap about your rights. None of your rights were violated by this happening to you. Unless you are a terrorist engaging in terroristic behavior, you had nothing to worry about.

It is not about being worried about being caught, it is about liberties being stepped on. All dictatorships start with taking away liberties and justifying it by saying that as long as you are not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about. However, it is a slippery slope that can turn worse and worse.

The title should be score another one for the US because what the terrorists wanted was to take away our freedoms and our way of life, well we are getting freedoms back and that is not what the terrorist want.

I've got to stop this.

The terrorists don't hate us for our freedom. That is FALSE.

The rest of what you said was good though.

[AUTiger1 0]

And don't start with the crap about your rights. None of your rights were violated by this happening to you. Unless you are a terrorist engaging in terroristic behavior, you had nothing to worry about.

It is not about being worried about being caught, it is about liberties being stepped on. All dictatorships start with taking away liberties and justifying it by saying that as long as you are not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about. However, it is a slippery slope that can turn worse and worse.

The title should be score another one for the US because what the terrorists wanted was to take away our freedoms and our way of life, well we are getting freedoms back and that is not what the terrorist want.

I've got to stop this.

The terrorists don't hate us for our freedom. That is FALSE.

The rest of what you said was good though.

Uh. where did he say that the terrorist hated us b/c of our freedom? What was said was they wanted to take away our freedoms and our way of life and that is true.

[autiger4life 3]

I've got to stop this.

The terrorists don't hate us for our freedom. That is FALSE.

The rest of what you said was good though.

I agree with that. I do think they want to take away our way of life, and in a way that is our freedom.

However, my the reason I used that is because it is a common Bush speaking point, that the terrorist hate us because of our freedom, and thus showing that this is taking away our freedom, and according to Bush, that is what the terrorist want.

[autigeremt 6,661]

They want to take away our freedom because they want us to live under their rule of law or die.

Pretty easy to understand for sure.

I've said it all along......nothing wrong with this activity as long as it's for homeland defense.

[TitanTiger 20,509]

I've said it all along......nothing wrong with this activity as long as it's for homeland defense.

But that's just the point. There's nothing wrong with a lot of things in the Bill of Rights if we knew it would only be used by virtuous people for good and right purposes. But our Constitution is a document, informed partly by a Christian worldview, that was written with the understanding that virtuous people aren't always our leaders. And their purposes are not always good and right. In the hands of the wrong kind of leadership, these powers are dangerous.

You might trust this administration to use it wisely (others wouldn't), but there might be an administration in the not so distant future that it would scare the crap out of you to hand that much power to.

[quietfan 233]

I've said it all along......nothing wrong with this activity as long as it's for homeland defense.

But that's just the point. There's nothing wrong with a lot of things in the Bill of Rights if we knew it would only be used by virtuous people for good and right purposes. But our Constitution is a document, informed partly by a Christian worldview, that was written with the understanding that virtuous people aren't always our leaders. And their purposes are not always good and right. In the hands of the wrong kind of leadership, these powers are dangerous.

You might trust this administration to use it wisely (others wouldn't), but there might be an administration in the not so distant future that it would scare the crap out of you to hand that much power to.

Yes, we should remember that every freedom granted or liberty protected by the Constitution--even something so arcane as no forcible quartering of troops in private homes in peacetime--is there because it was being abused by supposedly "Christian" British and/or Colonial governments (or had been in past English history). Britain at the time of the revolution was one of the most democratic nations on earth with a representaive Parliament and a limited monarchy. Yet the Founding Fathers knew from experience that these freedoms needed to be protected in an ironclad, written social contract because even "enlighted Christian democratic" governments can slip into tyranny without checks and balances on power.