"Wyden has also warned about a classified interpretation of Section 702 that he says multiple administrations have relied on and refused to declassify. “When it is eventually declassified,” he said in March, “the American people are going to be stunned that it took so long and that Congress had been debating this authority with insufficient information.”"
Spying on American citizens is a bipartisan point of agreement.
That's Wyden as Wyden, not because he is a Democrat. Some of the strongest proponents of these intelligence authorities, and in many cases the literal authors of bills expanding these powers, have been leading Democrats e.g. Feinstein.
There is no credible version of history where Democrats as a party are not enthusiastic supporters of these surveillance powers. They've been actively complicit the entire time.
There’s still a sizable portion of the party as of right now that is against surveillance powers in a way that doesn’t really exist on the other side.
The Republican Party doesn’t really have an equivalent to a progressive caucus. AOC and Bernie Sanders are highly influential Democratic caucus members on record against state surveillance, with one of those two being a top candidate for the 2028 presidential elections. There is no such dynamic in the Republican Party.
Give data, please. Without it, this assertion is useless:
> There’s still a sizable portion of the [Democratic] party as of right now that is against surveillance powers in a way that doesn’t really exist on the [Republican] side.
Wyden is the ranking D member of the intelligence committee (ie would be chair under a D senate). He's not some maverick bucking his party, this is the expression of the party position.
Fun fact, parties, and more importantly the people in them change and evolve over time. They aren't stagnant. For example, we see this with the Republican party which use to hold claim to things like law and order. But times change, and so do parties.
So just because something was a certain way 20 years ago doesn't mean it's still that way today. That would be CRAZY to suggest that.
You know what I love? We have spent over 100 years going back and forth on party politics. It has done nothing to move the bar on justice. The democrats silently allow the same things under the radar while the republicans do things out in the open. Its the carrot and the stick approach. Populism isn't working. We need to focus on systemic change. Both parties are filled with institutionalists that will do nothing to stop the real abuses because they gain significantly by keeping things they way they are..
> We have spent over 100 years going back and forth on party politics. It has done nothing to move the bar on justice.
You think there have been no advancements in "justice" since 1926? Either you are being hyperbolic, have no knowledge of history or you have a very idiosyncratic definition of justice.
How can you change anything when the system is built with a fundamental flaw, the constitution never incorporated ethics, it was supposed to be up to the people to vote in ethical people, but that failed. The ones that benefit are corrupt and won’t change it, and good luck on getting enough people voted in power with a conscience to change it and not be swayed by power and money.
It literally is both sides though. Congress, courts, and executive all love spying, have for decades. Do you have evidence that the Democrats have tried to curtail anything?
The 6th Amendment was written to prevent secret courts. The English Star Chamber was frequently secret and you could be put on trial without knowing what evidence/testimony was brought against you. The Star Chamber was also why the 5th Amendment exists.
A secret court is arguably not even a court. It provides no legitimacy whatsoever. It's a bunch of people in a room making a decision. I don't understand why they even bother. Just conduct your dictatorship by issuing decrees over a Zoom meeting.
I came to say the same thing. The secret courts and even the administrative agency courts should not exist. They are a violation of our rights. Any court where the prosecution, judge and jury are all government employees is a gross abuse of authority.
The difference is willingness to act on said spying. Luckily, despite the massive surveillance capabilities the U.S. "Intelligence" Community has, they don't seem to really mess with regular citizens all that much. This gives some credence to the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about" point of view, but only if you can guarantee you have nothing to hide (which can change drastically depending on who is in power, hence why I don't believe in this - the classic example being that hiding one's religion in and around Germany in the 1930s and early 40s was not seen as important until it was really important).
China and Russia (and to some extent, the UK now) will absolutely act on the spying they do. Or just act and say they had a good reason. China and Russia are dictatorships. One of them has a very competent and hard-working population which succeeds in spite of the dictator, the other is a gas station with nukes that survives solely because of said nukes.
> they don't seem to really mess with regular citizens all that much.
Except they do. The NSA has been handing over intel over a decade ago:
> A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. “You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ And so we’d alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it,” the agent said. [1]
Sure these were criminals, but who knows how many “undesirables” were prosecuted or targeted for some crime anybody commits?
Well your assumption is that they are not using it; they weren't able to use it all before.. Times are changing; Now they can use and use it a lot.. military Ai infrastructure that is to connected political arm will read and process everything and they can target their apposition... its just matter of time. Absolute power = absolute corruption.
You give up some rights for internal stability and in theory better social benefits.
In America, our social contract allows 10 guilty men to go free rather than imprisoning one innocent.
That's the myth anyway. Back in reality America is rapidly marching towards authoritarian capitalism.
Jump outs , black sites, indefinite detention.
>Naturally the common people don't want war . . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or parliament or a communist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
-Hermann Goering
Thus we're always at War.
War on Drugs.
War on Illegal Immigration.
War on Crime.
War on you.
So what we've already deported multiple born in the US citizens. This is war!
How it is done, everybody knows how.. backdoors in servers, back door in communication equipment, decryption method for of all that goes through fiber in entire world.. Massive data storage to store everything. How is not an issue; every node and communication, hardware and software has a backdoor.
Do they have the right to tap into world communication as well as their own is the issue? They are not challenged by apposing parties and their own population or people have given up.
Perhaps there will be a disaster is waiting with all these backdoors and Ai supremacy.
> Perhaps there will be a disaster is waiting with all these backdoors and Ai supremacy.
Absolutely. AI only needs to bring the keys, and everything else will be waiting for it on a silver platter. And AI is really good at making spare keys.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that state secret classification of our law enforcement systems should only exist for a year max. We've abused the system to shield evil people from accountability and to hide evil actions by our government, and that has to change.
The debate about reapproval of section 702 is all theater. Does anyone genuinely believe the government would stop surveilling us if the authorization expired?
He would most likely not be chosen for the intelligence committee anymore if he did that, it would only be worth before retiring or for something really huge
The article could have been interesting but by fundamentally misrepresenting the structure of the American federal government they made it impossible to take seriously.
This capability virtually guarantees that the next generation of Nelson Mandellas, Julian Assanges, <insert national activist of your choice>, etc. gets nipped in the bud long before they become an actual headache to the ruling class. This is why the owners of every country come together to support these technologies, without exception and regardless of political coalition membership.
> The Trump administration has until November 6 to answer the senators.
How convenient that this is right after the midterm elections. If they maintain control, the republicans can simply decide to ignore this requirement without penalty.
Yep this authoritarian movement is much bigger than the parties. We will see, again and again, how much it matters and the go back to the same old game every election and everyone will forget about how they have been played the first time. Im so sick of this corrupt system.
"Wyden has also warned about a classified interpretation of Section 702 that he says multiple administrations have relied on and refused to declassify. “When it is eventually declassified,” he said in March, “the American people are going to be stunned that it took so long and that Congress had been debating this authority with insufficient information.”"
Spying on American citizens is a bipartisan point of agreement.
To be fair, the one raising this point, Wyden, is a Democrat.
That's Wyden as Wyden, not because he is a Democrat. Some of the strongest proponents of these intelligence authorities, and in many cases the literal authors of bills expanding these powers, have been leading Democrats e.g. Feinstein.
There is no credible version of history where Democrats as a party are not enthusiastic supporters of these surveillance powers. They've been actively complicit the entire time.
There’s still a sizable portion of the party as of right now that is against surveillance powers in a way that doesn’t really exist on the other side.
The Republican Party doesn’t really have an equivalent to a progressive caucus. AOC and Bernie Sanders are highly influential Democratic caucus members on record against state surveillance, with one of those two being a top candidate for the 2028 presidential elections. There is no such dynamic in the Republican Party.
The ones that speak up get the "if you don't have anything to hide" treatment. I rarely, if ever, hear that line come from the left.
They do. It's the entire Libertarian wing of the party.
I’ll concede that you are right, the libertarians are there. Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, they’re there.
Let’s look at the voting record.
The majority of house Democrats opposed being up debate on the FISA section 702 extension.
19 house Republicans joined the majority democrats in opposing the extension.
I’d say this still paints a picture of a Democratic Party being far less willing to extend FISA, and actually being majority opposed.
H. Res. 1175, 119th Congress
Give data, please. Without it, this assertion is useless:
> There’s still a sizable portion of the [Democratic] party as of right now that is against surveillance powers in a way that doesn’t really exist on the [Republican] side.
The one raising the point. Apparently standing alone amongst otherwise bipartisan support of spying on Americans.
Wyden is the ranking D member of the intelligence committee (ie would be chair under a D senate). He's not some maverick bucking his party, this is the expression of the party position.
If that were the case, they'd have done something about it before. This doesn't appear to be new.
Fun fact, parties, and more importantly the people in them change and evolve over time. They aren't stagnant. For example, we see this with the Republican party which use to hold claim to things like law and order. But times change, and so do parties.
So just because something was a certain way 20 years ago doesn't mean it's still that way today. That would be CRAZY to suggest that.
They have "evolved" to the point there is no difference between them anymore
Hopefully the party learned something from Biden’s four years.
Wyden is an aberration. He (unfortunately) does not represent the party on these issues.
I love the both siding argument springing up right before election day.
You know what I love? We have spent over 100 years going back and forth on party politics. It has done nothing to move the bar on justice. The democrats silently allow the same things under the radar while the republicans do things out in the open. Its the carrot and the stick approach. Populism isn't working. We need to focus on systemic change. Both parties are filled with institutionalists that will do nothing to stop the real abuses because they gain significantly by keeping things they way they are..
> We have spent over 100 years going back and forth on party politics. It has done nothing to move the bar on justice.
You think there have been no advancements in "justice" since 1926? Either you are being hyperbolic, have no knowledge of history or you have a very idiosyncratic definition of justice.
How can you change anything when the system is built with a fundamental flaw, the constitution never incorporated ethics, it was supposed to be up to the people to vote in ethical people, but that failed. The ones that benefit are corrupt and won’t change it, and good luck on getting enough people voted in power with a conscience to change it and not be swayed by power and money.
State an actual solution, you're just making a covert both sides argument under the guise of a longer rant.
It is both sides. Republicans accelerate it, but Democrats don't shut it down when they have the chance. Obama and Biden had 12 years to fix it.
Obama certainly was for this; he didn't shy away from extrajudicial assassination of an American citizen in a foreign land, executed by our military.
It is both sides. Wyden is a (welcome) aberration (on this topic).
It literally is both sides though. Congress, courts, and executive all love spying, have for decades. Do you have evidence that the Democrats have tried to curtail anything?
It's all one side as far as I'm concerned and always has been.
Spying on American citizens and going together on Lolita Express to Epstein island...
Secret courts are anathema to democracy and need to be abolished.
The 6th Amendment was written to prevent secret courts. The English Star Chamber was frequently secret and you could be put on trial without knowing what evidence/testimony was brought against you. The Star Chamber was also why the 5th Amendment exists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Chamber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights
A secret court is arguably not even a court. It provides no legitimacy whatsoever. It's a bunch of people in a room making a decision. I don't understand why they even bother. Just conduct your dictatorship by issuing decrees over a Zoom meeting.
I came to say the same thing. The secret courts and even the administrative agency courts should not exist. They are a violation of our rights. Any court where the prosecution, judge and jury are all government employees is a gross abuse of authority.
I will always be baffled by the dichotomy of "the US has the most freedom" and "no democratic country spies more on its citizens".
The difference is willingness to act on said spying. Luckily, despite the massive surveillance capabilities the U.S. "Intelligence" Community has, they don't seem to really mess with regular citizens all that much. This gives some credence to the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about" point of view, but only if you can guarantee you have nothing to hide (which can change drastically depending on who is in power, hence why I don't believe in this - the classic example being that hiding one's religion in and around Germany in the 1930s and early 40s was not seen as important until it was really important).
China and Russia (and to some extent, the UK now) will absolutely act on the spying they do. Or just act and say they had a good reason. China and Russia are dictatorships. One of them has a very competent and hard-working population which succeeds in spite of the dictator, the other is a gas station with nukes that survives solely because of said nukes.
> they don't seem to really mess with regular citizens all that much.
Except they do. The NSA has been handing over intel over a decade ago:
> A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. “You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ And so we’d alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it,” the agent said. [1]
Sure these were criminals, but who knows how many “undesirables” were prosecuted or targeted for some crime anybody commits?
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/us-drug-agency-g...
Well your assumption is that they are not using it; they weren't able to use it all before.. Times are changing; Now they can use and use it a lot.. military Ai infrastructure that is to connected political arm will read and process everything and they can target their apposition... its just matter of time. Absolute power = absolute corruption.
I bet you that China, Russia and the UK rank higher
>China, Russia
both notorious for bragging about being the most free country on earth
Are China and Russia democracies?
In China the social contract is different.
You give up some rights for internal stability and in theory better social benefits.
In America, our social contract allows 10 guilty men to go free rather than imprisoning one innocent.
That's the myth anyway. Back in reality America is rapidly marching towards authoritarian capitalism.
Jump outs , black sites, indefinite detention.
>Naturally the common people don't want war . . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or parliament or a communist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
-Hermann Goering
Thus we're always at War. War on Drugs. War on Illegal Immigration. War on Crime. War on you.
So what we've already deported multiple born in the US citizens. This is war!
How it is done, everybody knows how.. backdoors in servers, back door in communication equipment, decryption method for of all that goes through fiber in entire world.. Massive data storage to store everything. How is not an issue; every node and communication, hardware and software has a backdoor.
Do they have the right to tap into world communication as well as their own is the issue? They are not challenged by apposing parties and their own population or people have given up.
Perhaps there will be a disaster is waiting with all these backdoors and Ai supremacy.
> Perhaps there will be a disaster is waiting with all these backdoors and Ai supremacy.
Absolutely. AI only needs to bring the keys, and everything else will be waiting for it on a silver platter. And AI is really good at making spare keys.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that state secret classification of our law enforcement systems should only exist for a year max. We've abused the system to shield evil people from accountability and to hide evil actions by our government, and that has to change.
The debate about reapproval of section 702 is all theater. Does anyone genuinely believe the government would stop surveilling us if the authorization expired?
This kind of thing will never stop. And those who control it have all the leverage and power.
Perhaps all the spying data should just be publicly accessible and easily accessible for all to use and abuse.
Would democratizing it all so there is never an expectation of privacy from the public vs a select few in power be better in the long run?
Yes, if it truly all data, available to all.
No.
[delayed]
He should go further and describe or read these secret rulings on the Senate floor, where the speech and debate clause protects him.
He would most likely not be chosen for the intelligence committee anymore if he did that, it would only be worth before retiring or for something really huge
They don't want the public to see the big green "APPROVED" rubber stamp that the FISC uses.
The article could have been interesting but by fundamentally misrepresenting the structure of the American federal government they made it impossible to take seriously.
This headline has been relevant since 2001.
This capability virtually guarantees that the next generation of Nelson Mandellas, Julian Assanges, <insert national activist of your choice>, etc. gets nipped in the bud long before they become an actual headache to the ruling class. This is why the owners of every country come together to support these technologies, without exception and regardless of political coalition membership.
They are only doing it for the children.
So grateful to have Wyden in my corner. Especially for the last decade or so it sparks joy to fill his bubble in on the ballot.
> The Trump administration has until November 6 to answer the senators.
How convenient that this is right after the midterm elections. If they maintain control, the republicans can simply decide to ignore this requirement without penalty.
Remind me in February to look back at how much the Democrats have done about it.
If it's simply not blocking this answer, then it's a win. Doing nothing is better than actively breaking the law.
Yep this authoritarian movement is much bigger than the parties. We will see, again and again, how much it matters and the go back to the same old game every election and everyone will forget about how they have been played the first time. Im so sick of this corrupt system.