Congress passed and President Biden signed a reauthorization of Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), approving a bill that opponents say includes a “major expansion of warrantless surveillance” under Section 702 of FISA.
Over the weekend, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act was approved by the Senate in a 60-34 vote. The yes votes included 30 Republicans, 28 Democrats, and two independents who caucus with Democrats. The bill, which was previously passed by the House and reauthorizes Section 702 of FISA for two years, was signed by President Biden on Saturday.
“Thousands and thousands of Americans could be forced into spying for the government by this new bill and with no warrant or direct court oversight whatsoever,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said on Friday. “Forcing ordinary Americans and small businesses to conduct secret, warrantless spying is what authoritarian countries do, not democracies.”
Wyden and Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) led a bipartisan group of eight senators who submitted an amendment to reverse what Wyden’s office called “a major expansion of warrantless surveillance under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was included in the House-passed bill.” After the bill was approved by the Senate without the amendment, Wyden said it seemed “that senators were unwilling to send this bill back to the House, no matter how common-sense the amendment before them.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he voted against the reauthorization “because it failed to include the most important requirement to protect Americans’ civil rights: that law enforcement get a warrant before targeting a US citizen.”
All that is literally and precisely what Biden has done, too (except net neutrality I guess, but you’re also leaving out Biden signing off on the biggest expansion of the surveillance state since the Patriot Act).
Lots of queer people on Hexbear, ask them if the barest crumbs Democrats throw to queer people (i.e. doing nothing to stop anti-queer actions, but not being the ones to propose the laws) is worth supporting genocide.
Imaginary number doesn’t matter.
You seem well-meaning, so let me put my cards on the table: I don’t believe in validating the invalid dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by voting for anything beyond the local school board and various propositions, so it’s not like I’d be voting for Biden anyway. But what I don’t get about when libs push leftists to vote for Biden is… at what point does someone committing heinous acts mean that not voting for them is the only moral action? If Joe Biden murdered my daughter, would I not be in the right to say I wouldn’t vote for him? Even if in this weird scenario Trump also would have murdered my daughter… at what point do we measure someone by what they do and not what the other person would have done? And it doesn’t matter if my kid isn’t actually involved, I have seen enough death and sadness from parents and children in Gaza that the fact that it’s not my kid is totally and completely immaterial to me.