Senate Votes To Extend Warrantless Wiretapping Powers

[Purveyor]

Source: Rawstory

The U.S. Senate passed a bill on Friday that reauthorizes and extends the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, a law that was originally meant to retroactively grant legal immunity to the Bush administration and telecoms, along with temporary authorization to wiretap non-Americans inside the United States without first having to acquire a warrant.

The law was set to expire at midnight on Friday, but the Senate’s vote means it will almost certainly be extended through December 2017.

Before passing the extension by a vote of 73-23, lawmakers blocked amendments by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Jeff Merkley (R-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) that would have narrowed the window of reauthorization, added more oversight to the program and required annual reports to Congress on the privacy impacts of the program.

The extension continues warrantless wiretapping powers that apply even in the event that one person participating in the communication is an American citizen, despite the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for court oversight. It was originally passed in 2008 as a means of granting top Bush administration officials and the telecommunications companies legal immunity against suits over wiretaps that even the former president once claimed to be illegal.
Raw Story (http://s.tt/1xKlt)

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/12/28/senate-votes-to-extend-warrantless-wiretapping-powers/

[Mojorabbit]

1. This a travesty. 73-23. Holy Moly. nt

[Kolesar]

2. Britons presume that their phones are tapped

They never had this protection.

[KansDem]

3. And why is Bradley Manning being held?

Maybe he could get "retroactive immunity?"

[progressoid]

4. Whew! I was afraid they would expire and then what would happen?!?!

[dhill926]

5. truly a WTF........

[aandegoons]

6. Keep us safe Big Brother.

Now lets get back to the two minutes of hate ... aka the fiscal cliff.

[Octafish]

7. Frank Church warned us.

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

"I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3510598

[Puzzledtraveller]

8. it's awfully quiet in here...

No outrage? I'm waiting.