[Infowarrior] - House Approves Bill To Spy On Americans By Misrepresenting Or Lying About What's In The Bill

[Richard Forno]

House Approves Bill To Spy On Americans By Misrepresenting Or Lying About What's In The Bill

from the they're-just-lying dept

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120913/23182420380/house-approves-bill-to-spy-americans-misrepresenting-lying-about-whats-bill.shtml

We recently talked about how the House voted to approve the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) by a pretty wide margin, and noted some of the more bizarre and inaccurate statements that Representatives made in support of the renewal. Julian Sanchez has put together a nice summary of some of the more outrageous claims. The key here is that many Reps. seemed to take the FISA Amendments Act at face value, that it would only be used to target foreigners in foreign lands -- in other words, those with no 4th Amendment protections. But, as Sanchez has pointed out repeatedly, former Deputy Attorney General, David Kris, more or less revealed the Act is interpreted to mean that as long as the information they get might be useful in targeting foreigners in foreign lands, it's fair game. That means -- contrary to the direct claims of many FAA supporters -- the law is used to spy on Americans.

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So... if you're keeping track at home, the reasons the House approved this horrible bit of legislation with massive loopholes that allows the NSA to spy on us is because it can't be used to spy on us (even though it can), it bars the collection of domestic communication (except in nearly every case that it does not), it's barely been used on Americans (except that the NSA claims it's impossible to tell how many Americans it's been used on) and we need it to "connect the dots" on terrorism (even though it doesn't help connect the dots, but merely to provide even more dots, many of which will distract from the important dots). 

How do these people get elected?

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Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.