I wonder if Nancy will step in, since there are Democrats who want to vote for this:
The Obama administration has forcefully urged the defeat of a legislative measure to curb its wide-ranging collection of Americans’ phone records, setting up a showdown with the House of Representatives over domestic surveillance.
A statement from the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, late on Tuesday evening capped an extraordinary day of near-revolt on Capitol Hill concerning the secret National Security Agency surveillance programes revealed by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by the Guardian and Washington Post.
The White House urged House members to vote against a measure from Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, that would stop the NSA siphoning up the telephone records of millions of Americanswithout suspicion of a crime.
The White House argument is that the bill is too blunt an instrument. I may have missed it, but I haven’t heard their counter-proposal.
Edited to add: Totally unrelated, but goddam I’m sick of newspapers auto-hyperlinking proper nouns. What fucking good does it do to link “Obama Administration” to their coverage of the Obama Administration? I weeded out the shit links in this post but it’s a dumb, spammy and useless and the Guardian, which I think is one of the best online newspapers, should cut it the fuck out. End of rant.
Linda Featheringill
Maybe we shouldn’t kill this particular bill.
On the other hand, it might be a reaction and not fully thought out. Let’s discuss it and maybe change it.
Although whether there is anything Congress can do to prevent The Government from snooping on the citizens is an interesting question.
Figs
It’s entirely possible for the White House to be correct about this bill being too blunt an instrument, and simultaneously not have a better idea. It’s perilous to start getting into the “doing anything is necessarily better than doing nothing” zone.
kindness
I as a liberal support this bill. I don’t care if that puts me along side TeaHaddists and against the wishes of my party’s leaders.
Violet
Yes! Totally agree. Utterly crappy use of hyperlinking. They’re uninformative, bothersome, and generally useless.
Alex S.
Kill it with fire. Finally, here’s an issue libertarian republicans could be useful for.
Seanly
Why would we want this bill to fail? If we use the right’s irrational hatred of all things Obama to curb the runaway survelliance state, I am frankly all for it. I’ll be sad if my support for this bill means I need to turn in my liberal decorder ring.
I hate, hate, hate this post 9/11 security theater. It’s stupid, inefficient & a waste of valuable resources for minimal impact. Clipping the secret wings of NSA is a win for the American people.
Also, if this amendment goes about this the wrong way, then let’s get an amendment or bill that does it in the right way. Hard with this repeal happy Congress, yes, but let’s take advantage of the mood to right the wrongs (not just of the terrible Patriot Act, but also of the last 60 years of the burgeoning survelliance state).
Zifnab
@Figs:
Not sure if being ironic…
Seriously, isn’t that the entire mentality of the current PRISM NSA data collection scheme? “Better to have all the information on everyone, than to find out we missed a piece of critical data because someone’s privacy went unviolated”.
I’m sorry, but if the bill seems like a giant overreaction… perhaps the Obama Administration needs to run its intelligence gathering services with a lighter touch. If we’re going to overreact, it’s nice to see us moving in the other direction for a change.
Xantar
Booman has a pretty good idea: pay the telco companies to store the call records. The problem right now is after 6 months, telephone companies delete their metadata and that’s why the NSA has been gathering it up for later analysis (they claim they only do that after getting a warrant, but we can all agree there needs to be more oversight of that).
So instead of having the NSA grab that stuff and store it, just give the telco companies money to do it. And then if the NSA needs to go snooping around, they can get a warrant and then get those records from the phone companies.
Edited to add: it would be nice if the media would explain that what we’re talking about are call records and not actually recordings of conversations. Because it seems like a lot of people still don’t get that. Ah well.
Figs
@Zifnab:
I just think it’s a poor argument. It’s the same argument conservatives were using in 2005 for dismantling Social Security. They put up their bullshit privatization argument, and then said, “Well, you might not like the idea, but you don’t have an idea of your own to fix Social Security.” It’s not to say that the situations are identical, but in this facet of their arguments they are. I’d rather see someone argue this on the merits rather than say “Anything is better than nothing!!1!”
RSA
What’s even worse is hyperlinks that produce a pop-up if your pointer even happens to cross their boundary.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
I’d be happy if this bill goes through. I trust President Obama, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think he might be wrong about something now and then. I know that the only reason the Republicans are bringing this up is that it’s a way to stick their thumbs in the president’s eye, but on the whole, I’ll take the chance to whittle away a little at what the N.S.A. does. After all, even if President Obama and his administration never made a mistake with all this stuff, he won’t always be president.
Burnspbesq
The good thing about the Amash Amendment is that it further undermines Boehner’s authority as Speaker.
But it’s a bullshit second-best solution. If you don’t like what the Administration is doing under the authority of Section 215, amend or repeal Section 215, FFS.
Violet
@RSA: Exactly. That’s why I hate them. I tend to go to newspapers that do that a lot less once I find out they do it. Can’t see how that helps their click rate.
Comrade Dread
So if Congress fails to act on curbing this and we continue to elect the same idiots every election as we have consistently done, can we all finally drop the self-righteous rage and admit that this is pretty much our own damn fault?
rb
I’m sick of newspapers auto-hyperlinking proper nouns.
Yes. This is what tags are for.
catclub
Isn’t the likely route to kill this the senate, where there are far more Democrats like DiFI who will be happy to back the NSA?
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
I know it’s kind of dickish to slam somebody for their looks, but I just looked up this Amash dude, and, what the fuck, why do all Republican politicians just look like assholes?
Sloegin
Kill the bill because it would count coup on Obama? Or kill the bill because we loves NSA trolling all our metadata all the time?
This shouldn’t be about political winners and losers. This should be about the policy.
Seanly
Also too, can we dial back the absurd security theater at the airport? I want to go through the airport without having to take off my fugging shoes.
Burnspbesq
ETA: the Amash Amendment is also symptomatic of a larger evil: House Republicans’ abuse of the appropriations power to achieve policy outcomes that they couldn’t achieve if their hairbrained schemes were actually put to a vote. Have you looked at the House version of the FY 2014 appropriations for the EPA?
ruemara
I’m rather for it on the surface, but as it was submitted by a Republican, I would look for the details before I jump in. There’s a lot of unintended consequences and intended consequences you may not be aware of.
Belafon
Does anyone have an idea of what they mean by it being too blunt? I can’t go clicking on every link at work, so is the amendment just saying “don’t collect American’s data”?
schrodinger's cat
Speaking of newspapers, NYT is no newspaper for math whizzes.
Ted & Hellen
Only the Establishment Democratic Elite could manage to make themselves the bad guys in a dispute with fucking Republicans over Big Brother government overreach.
In this situation, screw Nancy Smash AND Barack. I hope the Republicans win this one. Maybe the Dems will grow a spine in response.
Oh wait…HAHAHAHAHA…sorry…
Burnspbesq
@Ted & Hellen:
Drunk before lunchtime again, I see.
You have a problem. Get help before it’s too late?
KCIvey
Agreed about “dumb, spammy, and useless”, though it’s funny to see it on BJ right above an ad saying “MEN OVER 40: WATCH THIS VIDEO! This Shocking Video Went Viral in Days” under a photo of a young woman.
TooManyJens
@Seanly:
Seriously. We might as well get something worthwhile out of 8 years of ODS.
Ash Can
I have no idea whether this bill should be killed or not. I don’t know its details or practical ramifications. What I do know is that I don’t want to see our government unable to foil any future attacks by terrorists, domestic and other, or unable to apprehend attackers, because it’s hamstrung its own information-gathering capabilities. Furthermore, I can see how the nation’s first black president would want government law enforcement to retain all the crimefighting tools available to it in the face of the myriad threats his wife and daughters have been facing from domestic terrorists. Maybe a better first step would be to make the warrant-granting process more transparent, rather than shutting a crimefighting capability down altogether.
Ted & Hellen
@Burnspbesq:
No, for better or worse the drunk before noon days are long, long past. :)
I do all of this cold sober!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
When I first read the beginning of this post, I saw
and I was very confused. It makes more sense now that I read the words that are actually there.
Anybodybuther2016
@ruemara: I’m rather for it on the surface, but as it was submitted by a Republican, I would look for the details before I jump in.
Abram
So this is just a random idea, but what if PRISM is changed such that all meta data can be collected from the telco’s, but that data is encrypted with a key specific to each individual. When the NSA has a legit reason to look into records, they can get a warrant to receive that individual’s key.
What you y’all think?
Chyron HR
@Ted & Hellen:
You misspelled “every”.
Culture of Truth
Well I am glad to see the GOP suddenly care about civil liberties, after decades of railing against “card-carrying members of the ACLU” Oh and warrantless wiretapping. Almost forgot about that. All it took was a guy with Hussein in his name in the White House.
Yes, the NSA is collecting and storing a big haystack. Which they then access (so they say) with reasonable suspicion. I’m not a huge fan of these programs, and it probably goes beyond Section 215, but the phone company already collects this information, and it’s not protected by the 4th Amendment. What standards do the local police in your town follow before they access your metadata? Do you know?
So good, here we are. But the GOP still, *still* attacks Obama for *not collecting enough* information on possible maybe terrorists, while attacking him for this. Ted Cruz has styled himself a a critic on this issue, while railing against Obama for practically supporting terrorism, and others say he dropped the ball and didn’t connect the dots.
No one should be under any illusions, if privacy rights are further eroded, it will be because Ted Cruz demanded it.
Ted & Hellen
@Chyron HR:
Hmmm…actually, I think “almost every” would be the best descriptive of my general position on the two sellouts.
Anybodybuther2016
@Ash Can: careful now, you’re not allowed to think rationally about this stuff. The cool kids are going to start accusing you of worshipping dear leader.
Mandalay
You are choosing to excerpt from an article which has a primarily British audience, and the term “Administration” does not have the same specific meaning there as it does here. The only people who refer to the “Cameron Administration” are American writers who do not know any better. What is obvious to you is not obvious to a British audience.
They are only links. They are not spammy and they are not useless. Nobody is forced to click them. The Guardian is doing a far better job of educating the world about what the NSA is up to than any other paper, and they are posting a lot of articles. Not everyone can afford the time to read what’s happening with the NSA every day. The links are helpful.
When ABL used to post regularly some folks here went into meltdown mode about her posting links. The correct answer then, and now, is that if you don’t want to click a link then don’t fucking click it. And don’t be a fucking crybaby about it.
muddy
@Violet: The wikipedia-ification of articles.
Culture of Truth
The amendment would prevent the NSA, the FBI and other agencies from relying on Section 215 of the Patriot Act “to collect records, including telephone call records, that pertain to persons who are not subject to an investigation under Section 215.”
So in 2011 Osama bin Laden’s courier calls someone in America. Can we get those phone records? The person on the receiving end is not subject to an investigation. Or is he? Or does this mean every number called by the courier is under investigation? What about who they call?
They would be better off addressing relevancy to specifically look at bulk collection. I wouldn’t trust Congress too much. They wrote, and then ignored, the Patriot Act for years. They’re not all the sharpest tools in the shed.
piratedan
and when the flip is switched and we stop the spying (great timing btw, with the huge Iraqi fail regarding that huge prison break of just about the entire Iraqi Al Qeida entourage) what will be the expected outcry if these guys manage to pull something off in the US or elsewhere…. oh yeah, Obama didn’t keep us safe, he’s just as bad as Bush.
I want the laws tightened and more procedures and protocols put in place, that requires discussion and precision, not exactly something this Congress is known for unless vaginas are involved.
Burnspbesq
Has anyone actually seen the text of Amash’s supposed amendment? I can’t find it in THOMAS.
Amash cooked up a standalone bill, H.R. 2399, that in my view goes too far in reining in the NSA. As I read it, if NSA was validly investigating alleged terrorist A, and found that he had made numerous calls to person B, NSA would be precluded from looking at B’s phone metadata unless the FBI formally opened an investigation of B.
YMMV.
Miki
There is other proposed legislation out there that would “tweak” instead of “gut” metadata collection, including Senator Leahy’s bill. The Amash/Conyers proposed amendment is pretty much all or nothing.
Xantar
@Mandalay:
Wow. Really? You’re going to defend The Guardian’s link spamming? Didn’t get enough contrarian fiber in your cereal this morning?
And if you can’t see the difference between that and ABL’s linking to her own posts to read the entire post, you’re just irretrievably lost.
Fred Fnord
@Figs:
Yes, and in that instance our argument was, ‘Social Security doesn’t need fixing. It’s fine for another 20 years. And indeed that is what Obama is saying about his spying. So clearly he thinks that any bill that curtails it in any way is too blunt an instrument. And I guess disagreeing with him… makes me like a Republican who hates Social Security? In some nebulous, hard-to-define way?
Culture of Truth
@Burnspbesq: Heck, it’s not even clear they could look at records from Terrorist A, because they would also be looking at a record “pertaining to” Person B.
Some legislators know what they are doing, but not all. Recall that Florida recently banned the internet or something.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Xantar: Prove this assertion.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
This right here. I want to read the actual wording of the actual bill and have someone smart on the left (Steve Benen?) do some analysis of it. There are always unintended consequences when Republicans write bills (and sometimes intended ones), so I want to be sure this bill actually does what people claim it does and doesn’t have some weird “all provisions void when we have a Republican president again” clause or something.
Yatsuno
@Burnspbesq: Just so I’m clear: we’ve been yelling at Congress to do their Constitutional duty and check executive power, but once they do so we decide it’s not the RIGHT kind of check so we kill it?
@muddy: And so much space on a server. No one is listening to every phone conversation in the US anywhere.
muddy
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Only so many hours in a day?
Xantar
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Let me just shortcut the argument: yes we need more oversight to ensure that really is what the NSA is doing and nothing more (at least not without proper, transparently obtained warrants).
Now prove to me that the NSA is listening to the actual content of your phone call.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
Text of H.R. 2399
burnspbesq
@Yatsuno:
Yup. A thing worth doing is worth doing right.
piratedan
@Yatsuno: The Leahy bill is the one that appears to offer an introduction to more oversight and more protocols and standards of proof, the other bill looks like a cease and desist, hence why certain folks don’t believe that a cease and desist is in our national interest.
Miki
Here’s the proposed Amendment (PDF).
AnonPhenom
“The Obama administration has forcefully urged the defeat of a legislative measure to curb its wide-ranging collection of Americans’ phone records, setting up a showdown with the House of Representatives over domestic surveillance”
Why not just ask Teh Senate to pass its own bill, then they can send the 2 bills to conference for reconciliation and then…
Oh, wait.
Chickamin Slam
I drove by the Protest Billboard the other day. The Uncle Sam caricature had fallen off but the words remained. This week it says “Do you feel safer now that Obama is listening to your phone calls?”
I’d answer … no, not really.
Except too many here and elsewhere in the country cannot wait to give Keith Alexander more power. Why not give him command of the entire military? Let him be police, judge, and executioner? What could possibly go wrong?
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
Yeah, we’re going to need someone to analyze that. When the bill is “insert these two words into subsection E of provision 2A,” you need someone to look at the existing bill, at this bill, and figure out exactly what’s being changed.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Xantar: I did not assert such a thing. But even if I did, I couldn’t, and that’s the problem. I can’t prove an assertion that they are (FWIW, I don’t think they are); equally, you cannot prove an assertion that they are not.
My point being simply this: nobody can throw around any assertions as to what these people are doing at all, because it’s secret and free of any oversight whatsoever. They could be listening to every single phonecall worldwide and reading every single email, and there is no one who could prove that they are not doing exactly that.
The Red Pen
@piratedan:
This was my thought, as well. I honestly believe there are Republicans and wingnuts praying daily for a terrible terrorist attack to happen on US soil. Look at the amount of mileage they’re trying to get out of Benghaaaaaaaaaaazi and multiply that times 1000.
@Xantar:
I thought it was actually a pretty decent defense. Also, how would you define “link spamming”? Gratuitous or trivial links? I wouldn’t use “spamming” for that; to me “spamming” has a particular SEO goal, but maybe I’m over-thinking it.
burnspbesq
@Culture of Truth:
You can imagine a committee report that says something like “Congress intends that Section xxx be construed so that cell phone metadata is treated as ‘pertaining only to’ the initiator of any particular call,” which would solve the problem you’ve pointed out. But that’s an open invitation to a liberal District Judge to say “but Justice Scalia sez that legislative history ain’t law.”
Law of Unintended Consequences, how does it f’in work?
Mnemosyne
@Yatsuno:
Given recent Republican history of doing idiotic things like accidentally banning internet access, oh, hell yeah I want to make sure this bill doesn’t do something fucking stupid.
Belafon
@Yatsuno: Well, yeah. Congress can write poor laws that don’t work right. I believe the Patriot act is an example.
burnspbesq
@Miki:
Thanks for the link.
Pretty much creates the same problems that H.R. 2399 would create. Throws out the bathwater without checking for babies.
WereBear
That’s my own suspicious mind at work. I do not put it past the Republicans to let another disaster happen, blame it on Democrats, and then rush to Patriot Act II, The Matrix.
After all, Republicans have been destroying the economy for quite a while. Killing fast instead of killing slow is just a matter of adverbs to them now.
Belafon
@Chickamin Slam: Of course you don’t feel safe. Considering how little you understand of what’s actually going on, I wouldn’t feel safe with you on the road either, operating a large piece of equipment like a car.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
What you really need is a redlined copy.
Roger Moore
@Yatsuno:
If they’re doing something stupid, yes, we should try to block it even though it’s an attempt to rein in executive power. It doesn’t matter how bad a disease is, we shouldn’t accept a cure that’s worse, and that means investigating proposed cures to look at their side effects before taking them. That’s particularly true with the bunch of quacks in Congress who love to go to the medieval pharmacopoeia (and send people to their friend the pharmacist) for their cures.
burnspbesq
@Roger Moore:
I’m guessing that the irony of somebody who works with the Internal Revenue Code all day seeming to not understand the risks associated with poor legislative drafting is not lost on anyone.
Yatsuno
@Roger Moore: I’m just checking that it’s not automatic “A Republican proposed it so we’re against it!” sort of thing. I do like the Leahy approach, but with Boner deciding that conferences are for wimps, I doubt this goes anywhere.
@burnspbesq: You’re better than that. Knock it off.
Chickamin Slam
@Belafon: I don’t think you know what you think you know. That’s OK though you can cry to your picture of Obama to make the bad men go away.
piratedan
@The Red Pen: @WereBear: I think we’re of the same mind, if these people don’t give enough of a shit to not hold the country hostage financially for their ideology, then the deaths of a few thousand Americans is just collateral damage that they’re willing to accept in order to return to power. They’ve proven consistently that what they want is to be in charge, nothing else matters.
Roger Moore
@Yatsuno:
I’d say that it’s more of a “Republicans proposed it so I’m deeply skeptical” response. This may actually be an intelligent, good faith attempt to solve what most of us accept is a genuine problem, but that’s not how the smart money bets.
muddy
@Yatsuno: It would solve the unemployment problem!
Yatsuno
@Roger Moore: Well unfortunately I’m not familiar with the actual sections of the law the amendment proposes to fix and honestly I don’t have time before work to research it.
This, however:
amused me.
Mnemosyne
@Yatsuno:
The problem is more this weird valorizing of Republicans that some people on the left do, where they pay more attention to this bill than they do to Leahy’s more measured version because Fuck Obama. It’s the same way they cheered on Rand Paul’s grandstanding about drones and then ignored his later comments about being A-OK with using a drone to take out a guy who robbed a liquor store.
The Red Pen
@Chickamin Slam:
That’s an excellent point, but I think that if things get out of hand, Batman will blow everything up and save the day.
Yes, I realize that Batman is a fictional carrier, but Obama listening to my phone calls is a fictional scenario. Call detail records ≠ call content.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
I’m not sure that it’s so much valorizing what the Republicans do as the soft bigotry of low expectations. We’re so used to Republican craziness that even the tiniest hint of sanity is treated as a major step forward. Meanwhile, we expect the Democrats to be sane and sensible, so they only attract attention when they do something stupid or awful.
Xantar
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
We agree that there needs to be more oversight. But remember that my original post was about what the media is reporting. Too often they fail to make the distinction between gathering metadata and actually wiretapping phone calls. We only know about the former, and that’s also probably what the Amash amendment deals with. I think the media is not doing a good job informing the public about this issue and as a result people will come out of this debate thinking that Amash is trying to ban the NSA listening to my phone call to set up a haircut.
Elie
@Culture of Truth:
Thanks for the note of caution… I don’t think that legislation could possibly deal with the specific scenarios and situations — hence the administration’s use of the term “blunt instrument” or whatever. It would be like trying to have legislation on how to do an appendectomy… Legislation is good for some things but not others. For example, there is no legislation on the criteria for evaluating whether and by what meat is contaminated..too difficult to do and too contingent on technical specifics not in the expertise or perview of the legislature.
I know everyone is just burning to reign in the NSAs knowledge of their personal information, but lets be clear and have a little thought about how that should be done first. Point two: do you think our allies and foes are doing the same thing right now — looking for ways to get less information? My guess is that no one is doing that.
Pinkamena Panic
Good to know that despite all that’s happened lately, we can have a conversation that consists of nobody actually talking to each other.
Ted & Hellen
@Yatsuno:
oooh…
…and no, he’s not.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@The Red Pen:
Sorry, no- it’s apples to oranges. Imani links to specific posts that she thinks are pertinent to the discussion at hand. The Graun auto-links lead to a search page, so that the if there’s a hyperlink embedded within the words “Obama administration” in an article about the NSA, you get a list of every story in which “Obama administration” is listed, whether they have anything to do with the NSA or not.
Elie
@Pinkamena Panic:
Its a complex issue. Just deciding on what to focus on is difficult — hence some of the reason for talking past each other.. how to define the problem is not trivial and forms how you try to solve it.
Ted & Hellen
Pretty sparse comment thread as per usual when shit goes down that shows Nancy Cash, Obama, et al as the corporate, security state tools they are.
The Silence of the Bots
Ted & Hellen
@Elie:
Oh yessss…when Obama is culpable, it’s oh so very complicated to figure out why and how and oh dear lord the smelling salts whatever can be done about it.
Whereas when Repukes are culpable it’s because they are eeeeeevil.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Amash is my representative. I don’t trust this ALEC member at all.
Elie
@Ted & Hellen:
No silence from me due to that. Its hard to comment when there is so much stupidity… It IS complex — whether YOU think so or not.. Folks want an easy one size fits all solution. Not possible. We also do not have all the necessary facts, rendering a complex effort to be even more difficult.
You of course just want to piss on Obama.
NR
@Xantar: Or how about this: We pass a law forbidding anyone from collecting data on people’s phone calls, because it’s none of their fucking business.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@NR:
Sure. That won’t come back and bite anyone in the ass when they’re trying to figure out why their phone bills almost doubled for one month. “Sorry, ma’am, we’d like to give you an itemized list of your calls, but it’s illegal for us to collect that information.”
Paula
@Burnspbesq:
Why is this not the default solution? Why you gotta cook up an entire new bill when you’ve got one that you can amend? LIKE FOR REALS. CAPSLOCK CONFUSION.
The Red Pen
I said:
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Sorry, no, I didn’t think it was a pretty decent defense? I’m pretty sure I did. Let me check. Yup.
Ooooh… you’re trying to tell me why you didn’t think it was a decent defense. It’s adorable that you think I would care.
LAC
@Ted & Hellen: Be a stupid asshat? Congrats on that…
LAC
@Ted & Hellen: More like work and the fact that we do not react to everything written here like the moron you are. What’s you next painting? “Scenes of a playground from 50 feet away?”
LAC
@Mnemosyne: And given the repukes would love of a real (i.e. not libertard fantasy) police state, how far is this going to go anyway? This is just some spite laden piece of shit that will probably die a death. Because, who wants to actually address the Patriot Act?
Ronnie P
So it failed, with the majority of Dems voting in favor and the majority of GOPers voting against.
David Koch
If analyzing disembodied metadata with algorithms is sooooo bad, then why does Elizabeth Warren support it?
Jess Sane
The bill also would have prevented Gitmo from ever closing.