mcgrew's Journal: Senate Democrats propose surveillance law changes

The AP is reporting (via yahoo) that Senate Democrats are actually trying to restore some of Americans' rights and freedoms that were lost when government panicked after 9-11.

In making standards tougher for the government in secret requests to a special foreign surveillance court, the bill would require that the records sought be relevant to an investigation. At a minimum, the records must be linked to a suspected agent of a foreign power.

The bill also would modify the current standard for a national security letter. It would require a statement of facts showing reasonable grounds to believe the information sought is relevant to an authorized investigation.

Democrats accused the Bush administration of using these letters to skirt the special foreign surveillance court. All three of the expiring sections require approval of the special court.

In my opinion the misnamed "PATRIOT" act should simply be repealed, but this is at least a tiny step in the right direction.

YRO

[mcgrew]

Once again I have to submit this via journal, as the submissions page has been rebroken. I don't want my email address to be shown publically, yet that's automatic in the submissions page, with no way to change it to a URL (I usually link my journals in my submissions).

There are no dropdowns for subject or section there. When I hit preview I can preview it, but there is only a "preview" and "reset" button; no "submit" button.

Oddly, I journaled [slashdot.org] about this horrible bug and it was fixed, only to be broken again.

1/3 of the stories I've submitted have been accepted, but not a single one that I've submitted as a journal. I guess I'll have to stop submitting stories; sad. I wonder how many others are affected by this terribly written idle-CSS?

Re:

[Jimmy_Slimmy]

Not going to help us? Excuse me? Did you renounce torture on your first day in office?

I thought not.

da.

Re:

[mcgrew]

Plus, it's Senators that are pushing this, not the President.

But they're still evil, right?

[damn_registrars]

Because they are, after all, rumored to be considering holding a meeting about starting a discussion about gathering a committee to start a motion about holding a committee session for possibly starting to write a bill that could consider allowing for the federal government to consider pressuring large insanely profitable corporations to sell their products to people directly at reasonable costs.

I heard all this from a highly reliable source who was warning me about these terrible actions that might or mi