There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says

Interesting read. I highly recommend reading the full article...

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/secret-patriot-act/

You may think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says it’s worse than you’ve heard.

Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. But Wyden says that what Congress will renew is a mere fig leaf for a far broader legal interpretation of the Patriot Act that the government keeps to itself — entirely in secret. Worse, there are hints that the government uses this secret interpretation to gather what one Patriot-watcher calls a “dragnet” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden tells Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

Well, you would if there weren't quite so many folks perfectly willing to forego their allegiance to the Constitution because it's a Democrat in the White House. And there is a built-in non-accountability clause in that the courts don't want to mess with the USA PATRIOT Act, so they challenge any plaintiffs to prove that they have standing before any case can proceed. But how do you show that you have been harmed or at risk of harm if you don't know the secret provisions and interpretations of the law? Case dismissed!

Transparency is such a comforting term. Too bad it never actually applies to those areas that truly matter.

...a whacko liberal conspiracy theorist would have a problem with that.

:rofl:

now it's on the verge of raging out of control.

Feel safe yet? :(

be any different from the rest of our government? :(

Hopefully I won't be drug-tested for being a fucking retarded professional leftist...

how is it legal to have secret laws?

trains are no good either...ever see rubicon......?

of what the Obama administration is about to spring on the US. And not just in this one case.

It's devastating to watch this charming, erudite, immensely likeable President crush all the hope he so expertly conjured up.

Some DOJ legal counsel wrote an opinion saying that this is perfectly legal.

What do I win?

I would live in a place that is not google-earthed yet (my house isn't,) I would buy with cash, have no cards at all, use one of those throw-away phones, not use GPS, be as self-sufficient as possible. It is harder to spy on someone who doesn't use anything electronic.

The exact moment will also be classfied top secret, need-to-know basis.



Only those who have nothing to hide have nothing to worry about.

So their idea of an emergency wasn't something that happened to the people, but was something done by the people.

People willingly put all their personal info out there just to be "cool". All the social networking sites should have the warning "anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law, and that court of law only pertains to 2nd class peons like you gullibles. The elite are exempt".

Interesting read

of New Yorker magazine that contains an article entitled An Enemy Of The State by Jane Mayer. An employee of the NSA is being tried for revealing BUDGET IMPROPRIETIES that were taking place in the NSA. This article is an in-depth look at what many on the 'inside' of the Intelligence/Security community fear the most about our new Security State.

But most have their head in the toilet about that too.

"Democracy" Your Ass...

Basically, NSA can legally scoop up all the communications (e-mail, phone, fax, IM) made from any location (city or area) inside the United States if there is any reason to believe ANYONE within that city or area who may be a terrorist, spy, threat to defense installations, serious criminal, etc.

There is no expectation of privacy, anymore, for anyone, anywhere inside the US, particularly for int'l calls. The Bush-Cheney Administration, and then the US Congress (including then Senator Obama) with a vote in 2008, killed the 4th Amendment's protection of communications in America.

He's dead, Jim.

In the book, Gulag Archipelago, by Solzhenitsyn, he outlines the infamous Article 58.

Article 58 was as blanket charge that was very useful to the Soviet authorities.

Basically, they could charge you with anything they wanted at anytime they wished.

For example: You are walking down a street day dreaming, a police officer or even a citizen could walk up to you and ask you, "are you a good communist, comrade?" And because you had to break out of your day dream and didn't answer fast enough, the person asking the question could have you charged with being anti-soviet, anti-government for not answering fast enough.

If you made a casual statement to a fellow worker regarding Stalins mustache, that was enough to have you sent off.

Don't believe me? read the book.

Each time I see and read things regarding the degrading of our rights and privacy, I can't help but think of Article 58.

Right now, we, as a nation, have more people in prison than any other nation in the world. At what point where will that same statistic read, "we have more people in prison than we have "free". Yeah, that's hyperbole, but honestly how truly outlandish is that statement?

We are fools.

is that almost all of them are MEN, and incarceration is what we do here because we have no idea what to do with men, we've lost all sense of masculinity/ manhood, and America no longer cares -- yes, officially, ergo the rise of the prison industry.
When thinking about the vast numbers of incarcerated citizens, remember that the overwhelming majority of them are men, and then start asking yourself why. Why, for instance, are men far, far more likely to be sentenced to death for murder than are women who are convicted of the same charge? There's no correlation at all.

America doesn't know what to do with or about men. America fears men. America can't provide jobs for men. America warehouses men.

so large is the privatization of prisons. They are now a secure slave source for profit maximization. The prisons are will be work-camps in the future.

the spying was much worse than we were told. K&R

I'm going to have to Google that story to re-read it.

with a "constitutional scholar" in the Whitehouse.

Whether he uses that knowledge to defend it or circumvent and finally destroy it...

That's another matter.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Suggesting the overthrow of the government on a public website in the National Surveillance State would alarm Agent Mike.

:redbox: :tv:

this is screwy


:crazy:

No explanations needed.

1. I'm a progressive and there are global items of mutual interest
2. With so many Internet servers in the USA, America's descent into a surveillance state should concern everyone on the net.

He's my Senator.