Technosailor.com

The JUSTICE Act, short for the Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools in Counterterrorism Efforts Act, was brought to my attention today. The JUSTICE Act seeks to put constraints on the Bush-era USA Patriot Act and FISA Act Amendment which drove national security efforts here at home post-9/11.

In the past, I have been a very vocal critic of the previous administration and their liberal assumption of power not explicitly granted to them by the Constitution. Namely, the use of these powers was, in my book, impeachable offenses. That Administration has come and gone, but the PATRIOT Act and FISA still haunt us to this day.

We in the technology community should be alarmed.

In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (50 USC § 1801) which was temporarily overridden by the Protect America Act of 2007 (PL 110-55). The Protect America Act was passed as a short-term bill that would legalize what the President was doing illegally by extending Executive powers over wiretapping to allow for wiretaps without warrant. The clarification on this was that warrentless wiretaps were allowed when the target was a non-US citizen outside the United States.

Still avoiding blogging on politics, I’ll merely link instead. It’s Saturday after all. Mark nails the principles at play in the new law passed by the House to legalize wireless wiretaps without a warrant.
Republicans can call it whatever they want. All that does is make them liars, in addition to being traitors to [...]