Permanent Security State Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! We might take a moment, amid discussions of the USA PATRIOT Act and its renewal, as well as an alternative called the USA FREEDOM Act (because we apparently need freedom to save us from patriotism, which isn't actually a surprise), to remind that our conservative tinfoil wing is not entirely wrong to fret about a permanent security state: While their clout has diminished since the devastating Edward Snowden leaks— as recently as 2011, the majority of Democratic senators joined Republicans in reauthorizing key provisions of the Patriot Act —these senators' actions have thrown into doubt the outcome of a bill to reform the National Security Agency with only days to spare before a drop-dead deadline at the end of the month. Driving that strategy are Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, and a handful of others. Their ranks include Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a freshman Republican who voted for a version of the reform bill—known as the USA Freedom Act—last year but has since come out strongly in favor of the NSA's authorities due in part to "hours and hours" spent with members of the intelligence community and increased access to information as a new member of the Intelligence Committee. "My preference would be to permanently extend all three authorities," Cotton said in an interview, referring to the bulk-collection power as well as a provision allowing surveillance of "lone wolf" suspects not linked to any formal terrorist group or government, and another allowing "roving wiretaps" to target individuals instead of a specific device. "But if that's not the will of the Senate, I certainly don't want to see them die on May 31, whether they die a natural death because they expire with no action taken or whether they die because the USA Freedom Act functionally ends the operational effectiveness of them." Cotton blocked a move Tuesday by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah to proceed to the House's NSA-reform bill, which would effectively end the NSA's bulk collection by forcing the agency to request access from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to obtain records retained by phone companies. Cotton argued that the Senate needs to complete its work on trade legislation, which could lead to major pacts with European and Asian countries but is not time-sensitive. Opponents saw the move as a way to push the NSA debate to the last minute to force a short-term extension and increase the hawks' leverage in the future. (Rogers) Yes, Sen. Tom Cotton, the freshman Republican from Arkansas who refuses any notion of backbenching, the ringleader of the #GOP47, has decided that this is an opportune time to permanently extend the most ferociously disputed aspects of our domestic espionage programs. True, some of us could have guessed, and the book would have given decent odds to Mr. Cotton being the one. But while conservatives wail in lamentation over the Democratic surrender to the issue, they hope to distract attention from the fact that what Democrats have been doing is coming around to the conservative argument. And then along comes Tom Cotton to remind us all what really drives this sort of paranoid domestic surveillorama. It always was conservatives. Labor. Civil Rights. Drug War. Terror. Peace? Environment? Seriously, conservatives get bent out of shape when their revolutionary tendencies are finally noticed after years of trying to get people's attention. But, really, imagine that the American citizen who flew an airplane into a building wasn't a white guy, and wasn't protesting taxes. Guess where the precedents for TWAT came from? Those invasive tactics arose from the fight to suppress workers, women and minorities, stoners, Muslims, greenies, and peaceniks. (And now they're sure as hell arresting Christians in Alabama for exercising their religious conscience, but it's not what you think; they arrested a Unitarian for trying to perform a same-sex wedding at a local courthouse after conservative public officials refused to follow the law.) So just a reminder: It isn't that our conservative neighbors are wrong to fret about these issues, but, rather, reality informs that their worry is either misinformed or else deliberately misconstrued. That is to say, they are either ignorant or simply lying. Not that such an idea is any sort of surprise. Well, you know, unless one is a conservative. Yet I should also note how remarkable I find it that anyone would put themselves in a situation where the coin toss says, "Heads, you're stupid. Tails, you're a liar." But, you know―conservatives. Maybe this really is how God made them. ____________________ Notes: Rogers, Alex. "The Patriot Act's Last Defenders". National Journal. 20 May 2015. NationalJournal.com. 23 May 2015. http://bit.ly/1INpAk9
Definitely patriots with the obligatory three cornered tinfoil hats. Why don't we do this the GOOGLE way? If someone wishes to perform a COMPUTER ASSISTED SEARCH of any database with records THAT ARE NOT PUBLIC, then they must PRESENT A CASE for doing so to a judge who will restrict such searches to those records which are relevant to any ongoing investigation, not an ocean wide fishnet looking for suspicious activity. Searches related to investigations of potential terrorist activity would be the LEAST LIKELY to be issued a warrant except in cases with reliable corroborating intelligence about the likelihood of finding useful evidence, based on past convictions or past associations of individuals eligible to be surveilled, as well as the scope of any criminal act that may be possible if the available records are not scrutinized. Even a surveillance state must be subject to reasonable limits to safeguard the rights of its citizens. The principle of reasonable doubt needs to be applied to any such surveillance, because if it isn't, then these patriots become the terrorists.
