House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

**Fisherking** · 07-25-2013, 08:18

I provided a link to the vote for a reason. You can at least see how your rep voted. Pressuring them to change their minds, or just reinforce their positions is your right.

I have seen some people spin this as a party issue blaming Republicans.

Obama wanted it to fail and said so. You can see that the party leadership of both parties was on the side to defeat the amendment. People making it partisan just are not looking.

The Parties are not your friends, no matter which side you have chosen.

**Fisherking** · 07-25-2013, 10:52

Mine, a Democrat voted No, just like the Administration and the party asked him to.

Gutless Weasel! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Kilmer

At least he’s not a lawyer.

**a completely inoffensive name** · 07-25-2013, 10:58

My hometown's (where I am still registered) representative voted Nay.

But I am not surprised, my hometown literally rests under the shadow of Reagan's body. It's a Republican Mecca and it doesn't matter how corrupt or incapable the Republican candidate is, he wins.

**Fisherking** · 07-25-2013, 11:58

It won’t come up again either. Not unless it is a full bill.

The Defense bill passed shortly after the vote on the amendment failed.

This was not a party issue, it was a party line issue, and the party line won over the people. Both parties opposed the amendment and I think anyone who stood up to them should be thanked.

**Lemur** · 07-25-2013, 15:41

Originally Posted by Fisherking

You can at least see how your rep voted. Pressuring them to change their minds, or just reinforce their positions is your right.

My rep (Paul Ryan, R) voted against it, no surprise there. I've contacted him many times, I suppose I will again. Not like he listens, however. His district (and mine) is safely gerrymandered, and he's something of an authoritarian.

Congress, eh? Whatcha gonna do?

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls finds that in addition to setting new milestones for futility, Congress is also more hated than it's ever been. A full 83 percent of respondents say they disapprove of the job Congress is doing, the highest number for that question since the poll began tracking the number.

**Xiahou** · 07-25-2013, 16:57

Originally Posted by Lemur

Congress, eh? Whatcha gonna do?

Repeal the 17th Amendment and prohibit listing a candidate's party identification on the ballot. That's where I'd start.

**Fisherking** · 07-26-2013, 10:21

So, on the day the vote failed, we get a report of this:

Feds tell Web firms to turn over user account passwords

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57...unt-passwords/

**Husar** · 07-26-2013, 11:07

Passwords? That seems a bit redundant considering they wanted the SSL Master Keys so they can decrypt all communication to and from websites.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/355146

Of course passwords might be more useful in case they already have a suspect.

It's also funny because our minister of the interior said early on that we should just encrypt our communication if we don't like it. Now it turns out the NSA was whining about people encrypting their communication for a while because then they can't access it but they really should.

**Fisherking** · 07-26-2013, 13:00

Encrypted communications are a priority for the NSA, in the US or elsewhere. They made a claim a few weeks back that there was only one instance when they could not decrypt them, and they were whining about that one, but I suspect that was misinformation, and it was broken too.

The have keys for most of that software too.

**Husar** · 07-26-2013, 13:20

I'm not sure they have them, wouldn't make much sense to ask for them in that case.

Either way I thought about the issue and just wanted to throw out an idea:

How about the information continues to be collected but it not accessible by secret agencies. Instead, the agencies have to gain information through an ethics commission that consists of experts from all relevant fields, such as technology, law and ethics/philosophy which are elected by the scientific community. We already have similar commissions in medical fields and while they're not perfect, they seem to provide a relatively (considering there will always be humans involved) good way to balance interests and provide a relatively unbiased approach to subjects. And they would be elected by a community that attempts to be objective and does not favor either extreme of the available options.

I'm not saying it's going to or should happen, but what do you think about such an approach?