>>12226250 (lb)
>Fuckers cant even get the breads sorted out properly and they wonder why POTUS is getting his ass kicked by the MSM.
Total coincidence chaos in the kitchen + suicidal "anons" trying to spread despair and discouragement. Absolutely organic.Yeah.
>>12222805 (pb)
repost
Sunset
Section 215 Expired: Year in Review 2020
On March 15, 2020, Section 215 of the PATRIOT Actasurveillance law with a rich history of government overreach and abuse expired due to its sunset clause. Along with two other PATRIOT Act provisions, Section 215 lapsed after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement on a broader set of reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
In the week before the law expired, the House of Representatives passed the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act, without committee markup or floor amendments, which would have extended Section 215 for three more years, along with some modest reforms.
As any cartoon viewer knows, in order for any bill to become law, the House and Senate must pass an identical bill, and the President must sign it. That didn’t happen with the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act. Knowing that House’s bill would fail in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brought a bill to the floor that would extend all the expiring provisions for another 77 days, without any reforms at all. Senator McConnell's extension passed the Senate without debate.
But the House of Representatives left town without passing Senator McConnell’s bill. That meant that Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, along with the so-called lone wolf and the roving wiretap provisions expired. Section 215 is best known as the law the intelligence community relied on to conduct mass surveillance of Americans’ telephone records, a program held to be likely illegal by two federal courts of appeals. It has other, largely secret uses as well.
But is it dead?
Although Section 215 and the two other provisions have expired, that doesn’t mean they’re gone forever. For example, in 2015, during the debate over the USA FREEDOM Act, these same provisions were also allowed to expire for a short period of time, and then Congress reauthorized them for another four years. While transparency is still lacking in how these programs operate, the intelligence community did not report a disruption in any of these “critical” programs at that time. If Congress chooses to reauthorize these programs early in the new Congress, this lapse in 2020 may not have much of an overall impact.
In addition, the New York Times and others have noted that Section 215’s expiration clause contains an exception permitting the intelligence community to use the law for investigations that were ongoing at the time of expiration or to investigate “offenses or potential offenses” that occurred before the sunset. Broad reliance on this exception would subvert Congress’s will when it repeatedly included sunset provisions to cause Section 215 to expire, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court should carefullyand publiclycircumscribe any attempt to rely on it.
EFF has repeatedly argued that if Congress can’t agree on real reforms to these problematic laws, they should be allowed to expire and stay that way. While we are pleased that Congress didn't mechanically reauthorize Section 215, it is only one of a number of largely overlapping surveillance authorities. And with a new Congress and a new Administration, the House and the Senate should take this unique opportunity to learn more about these provisions and create additional oversight into the surveillance programs that rely on them. The expired provisions should remain expired until Congress enacts the additional, meaningful reforms we’ve been seeking.
To be clear, even the permanent loss of the current version of the law will still leave the government with a range of tools that are still incredibly powerful. These include other provisions of FISA as well as surveillance authorities used in criminal investigations, many of which can include gag orders to protect sensitive information.
But allowing Section 215 and the other provisions to expire in 2020 means that Congress has the opportunity to discuss whether these authorities are actually needed, without the pressure of a ticking clock.
You can read more about what EFF is calling for when it comes to reining in NSA spying, reforming FISA, and restoring Americans’ privacy here.
This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2020.
Tuesday 29th December 2020 5:41 pm(Check it out they are time traveling er…where is this server? Dasting)
https://www.peeto.net/eff/Section%20215%20Expired%3A%20Year%20in%20Review%202020?page=1
>>12222805 (pb)
Jewel v. NSA
In Jewel v. NSA, EFF is suing the NSA and other government agencies on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal unconstitutional and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records.
Filed in 2008, Jewel v. NSA is aimed at ending the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA.
It also includes declarations from three NSA whistleblowers along with a mountain of other evidence, including secret government documents recently published in the Guardian and Washington Post that confirm our allegations. Two of the most critical documents directly reference the “upstream” collection of communications from fiber optic cables and the domestic telephone records collection program, which was subsequently confirmed by the government in June 2013.
In addition to suing the government agencies involved in the domestic dragnet, Jewel v. NSA also targets the individuals responsible for creating authorizing and implementing the illegal program including DIRNSA Keith Alexander and former Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance.
The Obama administration moved to dismiss Jewel in 2009, claiming that litigation over the wiretapping program would require the government to disclose privileged “state secrets” and that it was immune from suit. The court instead ruled that the case should be dismissed on standing grounds. Fortunately, in December of 2011, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Plaintiffs’ allegations were sufficient to provide standing and Jewel could proceed in district court.
In July 2012, EFF moved to have the court declare that the FISA law applies instead of the state secrets privilege; in September, 2012 the government renewed its "state secrets" claims and the matter was heard by the federal district court in San Francisco on Dec. 14, 2012.
In July 2013, the court rejected the government’s “state secrets” argument, ruling that any properly classified details can be litigated under the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The court did dismiss some of our statutory claims, but the other claims, including that the program violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, continue.
For the full complaint in Jewel v. NSA and the RECAP archive of the full Jewel case docket at the District Court.
Watch video of the Dec. 14, 2012 Hearing here and read the most recent court ruling rejecting the government’s “state secrets” argument here.
Oral argument on the Government's Motion to Dismiss the Appeal was held on October 28, 2015 at 2:00 in Courtroom 1 of the Richard H. Chambers US Court of Appeals, Pasadena, CA. You can watch the oral argument here : http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/view_video.php?pk_vid=0000008439
https://www.eff.org/cases/jewel