Republican Senators Use Orlando Shooting to Push for Increased Government Spying Powers

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“This production, which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement.

FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) pursuant to the PCJF’s Freedom of Information Act demands reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges in documents that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did “not condone the use of violence” at occupy protests.

– From the post: It’s Official: The FBI Classifies Peaceful American Protestors as “Terrorists”

*Update (6/22/16): This amendment was just voted on in the U.S. Senate and was very narrowly defeated. This post received a pathetic amount of reads yesterday, so please share it widely. These cretins plan on bringing it back for another vote. Just like the banker bailouts.

As I just tweeted:

Well we knew this was coming, and it’s no surprise to see Mitch McConnell leading the charge. A man who never saw a 4th Amendment violating piece of legislation he didn’t like.

Reuters reports:

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set up a vote late on Monday to expand the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s authority to use a secretive surveillance order without a warrant to include email metadata and some browsing history information.

The move, made via an amendment to a criminal justice appropriations bill, is an effort by Senate Republicans to respond to last week’s mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub after a series of measures to restrict guns offered by both parties failed on Monday.

“In the wake of the tragic massacre in Orlando, it is important our law enforcement have the tools they need to conduct counterterrorism investigations,” Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and sponsor of the amendment, said in a statement.

The bill is also supported by Republican Senators John Cornyn, Jeff Sessions and Richard Burr, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Privacy advocates denounced the effort, saying it seeks to exploit a mass shooting in order to expand the government’s digital spying powers.

The amendment would broaden the FBI’s authority to use so-called National Security Letters to include electronic communications transaction records such as time stamps of emails and the emails’ senders and recipients.

NSLs do not require a warrant and are almost always accompanied by a gag order preventing the service provider from sharing the request with a targeted user.

The letters have existed since the 1970s, though the scope and frequency of their use expanded greatly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The amendment filed Monday would also make permanent a provision of the USA Patriot Act that allows the intelligence community to conduct surveillance on “lone wolf” suspects who do not have confirmed ties to a foreign terrorist group. That provision, which the Justice Department said last year had never been used, is currently set to expire in December 2019.

Once the next collapse gets under way and we witness an inevitable rise in domestic protests movements, you can guarantee these powers will be primarily used against U.S. citizens protesting government abuse and criminality. Such citizens will be quickly relabeled “domestic terrorists,” and endlessly targeted and demonized by the state.

Let’s not forget:

It’s Official: The FBI Classifies Peaceful American Protestors as “Terrorists”

FBI Documents Show Plot to Kill Occupy Leaders If “Deemed Necessary” – Yet Details Are Kept From the Public…Why?

The National Guard Referred to Ferguson Protesters as “Enemy Forces” and “Adversaries” Ahead of Deployment

The “War on Terror” Turns Inward – DHS Report Warns of Right Wing Terror Threat

New Hampshire City Requests a Tank to Deal with “Domestic Terrorist” Groups Like Occupy Wall Street and Libertarians

This is not what freedom looks like.

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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5 thoughts on “Republican Senators Use Orlando Shooting to Push for Increased Government Spying Powers”

  1. what frightens me sometimes is that in 30 years we will actually look back fondly on the patriot act and want to return to it with a nostalgia usually found amongst older russians for the good old days of the soviet union.

    by the way,

    bloomberg llp is once agian trying to simply rewrite history , this time about a tool of goldman sachs being a ‘good guy’.

    this kind of thing used to bother me. that anger was redirected for a time at the masses of people who read and believe it hook line and sinker. they have no critical thinking abilities. not only that , they have a chinese wall in their brain preventing them from listening to any measure of persuasive argument that may question the veracity of their sources.

    what can you do? mike, i applaud your hope and persistence. i think so much of the time, that this whole thing is totally worth giving up. i am starting to truly embrace the elitist mindset. if the sheep bite and kick the sheepdogs? are they not foolish to refuse wolfdom?

    people will actually read this and believe even 1 sentence of it, many will believe the whole thing. amazing right? just………amazing. where is shiela bair when you need her.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-16/gary-gensler-profile

    Reply
    • Teslark, your perspective is one I believe many of the most dedicated arrive at when they survey the indifference and hostility to fact and truth that so many Americans display.

      I am exhausted from years of trying to raise the alarm to family, friends and community. I am glad I did that in tandem with my own personal preparations because those are all I have to show for the effort: just what I have been able to understand and prepare for. The rest has been time I’ll never get back, trying to help a drowning man who thinks it’s pessimistic to believe anyone actually may die from slipping to the bottom of the sea.

      As I’ve withdrawn from personal commitments that are a waste of my time and energy, I’m doing the same now with community efforts. There is no point, it is an excruciating attempt to find the few potential needles in a vast haystack of disengaged listeners.

      I’ve joined the band that thinks collapse is, in fact, the ONLY way there is a possibility to see positive change, although a huge risk and not at all assured. There simply is no credible evidence the elites will change or the sheep will wake up in time. An exogenous shock to the system that throws everything into chaos: not to be welcomed but Rahm shouldn’t be the only one in never letting a perfectly good crisis go to waste.

  2. This is what tyranny looks like. If the people want “freedom”, they will need to fight for it. Exact same issue occurred just before the American Revolution a few hundred years ago. Freedom wasn’t free then nor is it now.

    If you want freedom, you need to take it. Waiting for someone to give it to you is voting for “hope and change” from some lying, corrupt politician over and over again. How much freedom has that gotten you?

    Reply
  3. Don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this Orwellian “doublethink” bullshit:
    —————————————————————————-

    The FOIA Improvement Act of 2016

    https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s337/summary

    Meanwhile 8 years ago:

    FOIA POST (2008): CELEBRATING JAMES MADISON AND THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT

    March 13, 2008

    https://www.justice.gov/oip/blog/foia-post-2008-celebrating-james-madison-and-freedom-information-act

    “On March 16 we celebrate the anniversary of James Madison’s birthday. Madison, traditionally viewed as the Father of the United States Constitution, is also seen by many as a defender of open government. He once wrote, “[a] popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” In a similar vein, he asserted that “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge” is “the only Guardian of true liberty.”
    ——————————————————————————–

    Of course this new FOIA Improvement Act exempts members of Congress from adhering to the Act and the “Transparent” Obama administration is against it.

    “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”

    – George Orwell (1984)

    Welcome to dystopia, folks.

    Reply

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