On Saturday, President Biden signed a bill into law extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which gives the federal government the power to spy on Americans without a warrant.
The Senate passed the Section 702 extension at 11:45 pm on Friday night, 15 minutes before the spy tool was due to expire. The legislation President Biden signed into law extends Section 702 until April 2026.
The bill passed through the Senate in a vote of 60-34, with 17 Democrats, 16 Republicans, and one Independent voting against the spying powers. A week earlier, the legislation passed the House in a vote of 273-147.
Section 702 gives the federal government the ability to spy on Americans by allowing warrantless surveillance of foreign citizens and any US citizens they communicate with. The surveillance allows the collection of emails, texts, and other types of digital communications.
Lawmakers in both chambers opposed to the sweeping power attempted to include an amendment that would require a warrant for the collection of Americans, but the efforts failed.
One change that was included in the legislation requires members of Congress to be notified if they become subject to Section 702 surveillance. The requirement does not extend to ordinary Americans.
“I think the American people would be a little concerned if they knew that there was a notification exception for a member of Congress that didn’t apply to regular citizens,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said when the bill was being debated in the House. “I think we all deserve protection under the Constitution.”
If everything everyone does and says is recorded from birth, is anyone going to be able to move against these people?
That’s the intent.
“Oh, that’s AI created.”
Maybe everyone’s future defence.
“All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.”
Did I tell you how much I hate Orwell!? Why does he have to be right all the fu@king time?
The lawmakers make all kinds of stupid law without knowing anything about Law…!
And yet almost all of them are lawyers.
Panopticon
The panopticon is a design of institutional building with an inbuilt system of control, originated by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single corrections officer, without the inmates knowing whether or not they are being watched.
Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates’ cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched motivates them to act as though they are all being watched at all times. They are effectively compelled to self-regulation
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
I saw that in a movie before. It was called The Matrix.
Yes, … and there’s Foucault, … and now Google et. al. with AI. The Resistance should answer with “legislation” boycotting smart phones.
Paradoxically, the effect can also be seen where since there is only a small chance of operators looking at an individual at any one time prisoners act as though no one is ever watching.
The ability of humans monitoring video for active events is surprisingly poor. With access to over 2 1/2 million cameras the British police credit their system with stopping dozens of crimes over a five year period. Not thousands or hundreds, or even scores, a couple of dozen. Tests show that one person can watch as many as 8 screens for as long as 12 minutes before losing the ability to effectively track anything going on in any one of them, and then they need a 15+ minute break since their brain has turned to mush. Tests include have a guy in a sasquatch costume come into the screen and do a jig (imitating a more famous psychological experiment) without being noticed.
Everyone in the security field will tell you that cameras are for forensics, monitoring an ongoing event is only a distant second use. Even something as simple as following a person across a college campus through multiple cameras is too complex a task for a live operator, while doing it on recorded video is almost routine.
So as always, forget everything that you see on TV, the real world is very, very different.
My parallel was to FISA. Not necessarily cameras.
“Biden Signs Bill Into Law Extending Warrantless Spying Powers” Of course he DID! Trump would too and so would RFK Jr.!
Because they don’t run the country.
Well, Putin’s spying laws are worse and the dictator lovers here have zero issues with it.
So shove it.
Call out everyone or shut up.
Last I checked, you don’t live in Russia. Nor do we care about the internal governance of a foreign adversary. It is unbelievably stupid to equate a country with a bill of rights to another that doesn’t have such bill of rights. So please take your own advice.
The Senate passed the Section 702 extension at 11:45 pm on Friday night, 15 minutes before the spy tool was due to expire. The legislation President Biden signed into law extends Section 702 until April 2026.
Thak goodness. I was on my hand and knees saying my nightly prayers asking the great sky fairy in the sky to make sure I could go beddy bye and feel safe. Lo and behold my prayers were answered. And to think I was 15 minutes away from the terrorists storming our shores.
Picked the quietest moment of the news cycle.
Two of the largest telecom operators had threatened to stop ongoing monitoring if the law was allowed to expire (apparently the rest were happy to keep violating our rights, law or no law.)
Another win for the unelected federal agencies. The only who seems to match their clout these days is the donor class.
MkUltra like black projects are still going on. They have lists of many innocent Americans (and others) and they never tell them they’re targeted or on that list.