Does Obama's Endorsement of the Rewritten F.I.S.A. Bill Trouble You?

[QueenOfCalifornia]

Then - -- Obama spokesman Bill Burton, Oct. 24, 2007
"To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.":patriot:

Now --- Obama says he will vote in favor of the new FISA Bill that grants blanket immunity for post 9/11 warrantless spying on Americans by the Telecomm industry.:shrug:

BLANKET IMMUNITY

No, there will never be accountability and forever our freedoms will be taken from us if we do not take a serious stand against the onslaught against our Constitutional Rights & Freedoms.

I am interested in finding out how many people here find this TROUBLING.
(edit to add the category No and i don't know why or what it means.)

[elocs]

1. So you thought it best to slant your poll and not offer a simple "no" choice? n/t

[QueenOfCalifornia]

4. You are stretching

Other, Other, other... It's a poll - Slanted my ass.

[Occam Bandage]

2. I would like to vote "no." That is not an option.

I do not wish to claim that Obama can do whatever he likes to be elected, nor do I wish to claim that FISA is not an issue at all.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

5. Nice fence you have.

So, I am asking if it is troubling. Occam, usually you are way more perceptive.

I may just be unable to comprehend what you want. Can't ya' just pick one of the many things or click on other? :bounce:

[Occam Bandage]

8. Here's my deal.

I picked #2. I believe neither of these things, but it was the closest. (I try to avoid picking 'other' in polls.)

I don't particularly find his stance troubling, because I really don't care either way about telecom immunity (gasp and horror!). Similarly, I am not entirely opposed to FISA wiretapping, which has existed since Carter signed it into law in 1978 in the Watergate aftermath; I am only opposed to wiretapping that is done without FISA court approval and/or without knowledge of Congress. My problem with Bush and FISA is not that he 'spied on people,' it is that he acted with complete disregard to the law.

However, I certainly do not believe that FISA is 'not a big deal.' FISA is certainly near the boundaries of what is legal and ethical for a government to do, and any time our government edges up against that gossamer line, care must be taken to ensure that we do not in laziness, fear, or incompetence forget where responsibility ends and petty despotism begins. FISA is certainly a big deal, and I appreciate and understand those who find its very existence unethical and unacceptable. While I find much the vitriol aimed at Sen. Obama to be hypocritically political and pragmatically unprincipled, I have no quarrel with those who are troubled by the recent FISA bill.

[John Q. Citizen]

11. You do realize that the bill in question isn't the same bill passed in '78? It allows

wire tapping without a warrant and without meaningful court oversight.

It makes a joke of the 1978 legislation.

I just want to be clear on this.

[Occam Bandage]

13. Of course I'm aware it allows for retroactive warrants.

I do not really see a meaningful difference between secret wiretapping of a line 24 hours after a secret court grants a warrant, and secret wiretapping of a line 24 hours before a secret court grants a warrant, so long as the warrant is granted.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

36. The people who find

this revamped bill to be okay are oblivious to what the cost will be in the future. It is making me want to bang my head against a wall. :banghead:

[Occam Bandage]

44. The 'revamped' bill brings FISA back to where it was before Bush.

Were you complaining of the impending police state under Clinton?

[dailykoff]

45. Sez who?

The "compromise" doesn't even require individual warrants, just approvals (when convenient to apply for them) for methodologies, whatever the hell those are.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

46. And where did you

come up with this?

This is not so at all. This bill does not require a warrant. FISA required a warrant unless it was considered to be an emergency and then, after the fact, a warrant had to be obtained.

The proposal grants an expansion of warrantless surveillance powers from last year's Protect America Act until 2012, and requires that Inspectors General inquire into the warrantless surveillance program. Senators Leahy and Feingold have expressed deep opposition. (June 19)
http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/fisa/

[Imagevision]

3. ReallY poster should have added "no"...

[QueenOfCalifornia]

6. Added but what does it mean?

No it does not trouble you?

That is the question. Does it trouble you.... No it does not????

[blogslut]

7. There's a lot wrong with the FISA bill

I will not pretend otherwise.

However, this bill does return the legislation to a format similar to what it was before BushCo started fucking around with it. It can always be improved upon when we have a Democratic executive and overwhelming majority in both houses.

As we all know, Obama is against the retroactive immunity clause.

I'm no fan of the longer period for warrent approval by the FISA court, as mentioned in this bill. Nor am I a fan of the approval of mass Interent/Email monitoring. Then again, I think that monitoring such a huge amount of data will be an exercise in futility and will eventually be ruled unconstitutional - especially when president Obama nominates some sane judges to the SCOUTS and assorted lower courts.

Needless to say, I voted other.

[John Q. Citizen]

9. I find it troubling but I'm not angry. I intend to organize my fellow Obama supporters to fight

it.

We are the change we seek.

Yes we can!

Not this time!

We are petitioning at the Unite for Change meetings today and we will continue to organize through http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/group/SenatorObama-PleaseVoteAgainstFISA

the myobama group site.

It's become one of the largest groups on the Obama site with over 1650 members since it was created on Thurs evening.

My hope is that it will become the largest Obama group on his site by sometime next week.

Go their and join. If you don't want a ton of emails coming into you box be sure to opt out of the list serve notices, or get them as a digest.

Obama nation wants justice and civil rights. We will get them by organizing and by grass roots neighbor to neighbor action.

[mikehiggins]

10. Mikhail Gorbachev eom

[cliffordu]

12. AH, BULLSHIT.

Do you have a credit card? Do you have an automobile registered in your name? Do you have an internet connection?

YOU HAVE NO PRIVACY. The corporations have a PRECISE illustration of everything there is to know about you, your habits both online and off, and you're sniveling about FISA???

This disconnect over the depth of readily available information about everyone in this country and this bullshit argument that somehow your freedom is impugned by wiretaps is beyond me.

I guess if you have to have a reason to fling poo at Obama about this, fine.....

So let's Blame Obama.

He wrote FISA, he starred in the FISA documentary, he is the Lord of the Fisa. He was seen snorting FISA off of Scarlett Johansson's belly at Club FISA. He pulled his FISA out and threatened the Russian ambassador.

He is the FISABOMINATOR.

What a joke.

He is playing in an infinitely larger and more delicate pool now that he is the nominee, and my ultraliberal stances have to take a back seat to "whatever it takes" to get elected.

THIS IS THE GAME BEING PLAYED. It's called POLITICS.

To ignore the idiots on the right of center is to lose the election. Or the primary for that matter. Just ask Kucinich.

Isn't this immunity for civil suits?? What about criminal???


Jesus.

[Uncle Joe]

18. I'm not flinging poo at Obama,

but the corporations didn't write the Bill of Rights.

It's the government that must abide and respect the Bill of Rights and it was an abusive government that the Bill of Rights was written to protect the people from.

The people's last redress for justice isn't corporations, it's the government and as such the government must be held to a higher standard.

Personally I believe the Republicans; "supposedly the party of less government" are paying a price for their trashing of the people's individual liberty and privacy, this is why you have people like Barr bolting their party for the Libertarians.

I believe this was an opportunity for the Democratic Party to show separation from the Republican's authoritarian view of government.

I believe today with the current corporate media's control of perception, Eisenhower would be considered an ultra-liberal and I believe this is sinking in with some in the Republican Party.

[cliffordu]

27. Well...

The corporations DID and DO violate your right to privacy every time they sell your information to another company, don't they???

My whole point of view here is the government is the LAST ones to violate the 4th. We were sold like cattle a long time ago.

If you want to see unreasonable search and seizure, go delinquent on a car payment for a couple of months...

[Uncle Joe]

30. Then we should fight those corporations as well

by working to change the laws and prohibit them from doing so.

But the Fourth Amendment is specifically aimed at protecting the people from invasive government, not corporations.

I believe invasive corporate powers to abuse my privacy have gone too far as well, but I see no reason for this to be permission for the government to join in.

This is part of the reason, I believe the War on Drugs is bullshit, meant more to further corporate supremacy by disenfranchising the people from government and employment than anything else. It's no wonder that Orwellian concept of waging war against an inanimate object sprang from the Reagen Administration. Reagan stated quite eloquently that "government was the problem" and true to his word, he did everything he could to make it so.

I believe the fundamental problem is a government/corporate incestuous relationship and their long term inbreeding is killing the American Peoples' freedom and privacy.

If we don't draw the line somewhere, where do we draw it?

[cliffordu]

31. We draw it as soon as Obama takes the white house....

Or we go Fight Club.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

19. So

Immoral and illegal spying on you is just fine. I get it.

For me? I want to see our civil rights and liberties returned in one piece.

[cliffordu]

28. Never happen.

All the NSA or the FBI has to do is call the phone company, just like the White House did....and we'll never know about it..

They have actually been spying on you and I since the late '60's -


Google COINTELPRO. The intellegence they gathered came from many illegal sources.

Do you think they stopped just because the hippies and the Panthers went away???


And it isn't fucking fine with me.

My point still stands. If Obama doesn't play with the right, he loses the white house.

I guess we could all stand on principal and watch it happen.

I'm more interested in what happens after he gets elected.

[grantcart]

22. Its not "blanket immunity" its limited civil liability which

1) they would have been able to get automatically at the time had the simply asked for certification that it was a) a legal request and b)essential to national security (other telecoms did request and the WH refused to confirm in writing)

2) they would already have had a claim to immunity as a "sub contractor to the federal government". While the principle of subcontractor immunity is well established in the law it is not clear whether or not the telecoms would have been able to prevail in this case.

3) the real cause is not by the telecoms but by the administration. While they shouldn't have just handed it over without requiring the certification there is something unjust about making the shareholders of publicly traded companies (which include for example endowment investments of union, public and just regular people.)

All of this doesn't mean that we shouldn't have gone through with it (although I strongly believe that fines would have been better) but that it simply isn't the clear cut issue that your simplistic wording implies.

And there is no immunity for criminal charges although it seems clear that any criminal liability would be on those that misused government power and not those that thought that they were complying with a legal request having to do with national security.

[cliffordu]

29. Yep -

I agree with #1,
I understand #2, I don't know if it applies to my argument - the are complicit and guilty as hell. BUT

Nunmber THREE is the real turd in the punchbowl - the outrage and charges need to be leveled against a congress who insists on punking itself out to Bush and co. every chance it gets.

The real crime is they are going to be able to charge for "excessive downloads" pretty soon.

Internet as toll booth.

[grantcart]

32. I didn't mean the reply to you but to the OP

But since there is a whole other dimension to this.

Should the administration adopt all of the changes that we want and we have a system that has more judicial restraint that system is still only really as good as the people who run it.

In other words while it is obvious to have more judicial review, the system is still based on the people who are applying for the warrants having 'clean hands'. Bad prosecutors can abuse the system with perfectly legal warrants. The most significant change in rectifying the system is changing the actors involved.

That is why after criticzing Obama's position on the telecoms bill the next day the ACLU endorsed Obama for President.

[cliffordu]

33. Which is one of the reasons I LOVE the ACLU.

I like you, grantcart, because you make sense of crazy, complicated bullshit.


:patriot:

[QueenOfCalifornia]

35. Oh Boy!

Where's Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland when we need them? We can make a stage and sing and dance and pretend everything is okay.

"My simplistic wordings" imply a departure from the Constitution.

I strongly disagree with you. It is immunity.

I hate to say it Grantcart, you sound as though you got your talking points from the GOP website.

[Undercurrent]

14. No

From my understanding there is civil immunity, but no criminal immunity. The prospect of locking up pig corporation heads makes me happy.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

38. Then your understanding is wrong

It is immunity. Blanket immunity. Criminal immunity. Retroactive criminal immunity.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/06/eff-obtains-new-fisa-bill-containing-telecom-immun
http://www.eff.org/files/AnalysisHR6304-v5.pdf

But, but... Michelle Malkin says it's okay. She likes it and gives it a thumbs up. Glad she is now the voice of about 30% of the people on this message board. You can read her finger wagging at the Democrats who sound stunningly like a lot of you guys here. In fact, the comments after her BLOG entry include references to the DU: http://michellemalkin.com/2008/06/20/fisa-reform-finally/

In case you think it is a harmless, do nothing bill...
<snip>
Speaking at National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland on September 19, 2007, President George W. Bush urged Congress to make the provisions of the Protect America Act permanent. Bush also called for retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies who had cooperated with government surveillance efforts, saying, "It's particularly important for Congress to provide meaningful liability protection to those companies now facing multibillion-dollar lawsuits only because they are believed to have assisted in efforts to defend our nation, following the 9/11 attacks."<41>
On October 4, 2007, the bipartisan Liberty and Security Committee of the Constitution Project, co-chaired by David Keene and David D. Cole, issued its "Statement on the Protect America Act." <2> The Statement urged Congress not to reauthorize the PAA, saying the language of the bill "runs contrary to the tripartite balance of power the Framers envisioned for our constitutional democracy, and poses a serious threat to the very notion of government of the people, by the people and for the people." Some in the legal community have questioned the constitutionality of any legislation that would retroactively immunize telecommunications firms alleged to have cooperated with the government from civil liability for having potentially violated their customers' privacy rights.<42><snip>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act

[dailykoff]

15. Very troubling, very angry.

This isn't just a little demagoguery like Sista Souljah or the death penalty statement, this is serious criminality and abuse of our fundamental liberties, and he condoned it. Is he also going to give them a free pass on torture and habeus corpus? I suspect the answer is yes. :grr:

[oviedodem]

16. Not really because we were walking around with an un-constitutional bill

now it is at least constitutional even though there is immunity for CIVIL CASES NOT CRIMINIAL!!

There has to be some sort of meeting halfway on the issue.

[dailykoff]

17. Legal doesn't mean constitutional.

Nobody's successfully challenged FISA and they're making sure no one will.

[Milo_Bloom]

20. I think the immunity for the companies is correct... BUT

Other parts of the bill are very disturbing and it SHOULD leave the government expliciitly liable for ordering the telcoms to spy.

I am disturbed he didn't shift the accountability where it belongs.

[TheDonkey]

21. It does not trouble me, sorry to ruin the fun.

I trust Obama will go after those that behaved in a criminal manner and it is MUCH more important to get him in the WH than to have him cast a vanity vote.

[PBS Poll-435]

23. My Concern Cup Runneth Over

:shrug:

[MercutioATC]

24. Other: Yes, but that's politics.

There are degrees of "change". Obama is far and away the best choice for change and I will continue to support him.

Anybody who expected Obama (or any politician) to be an unwavering bastion of liberalism is a fool.

[LWolf]

25. Yes.

A better response would have been "I told you so," but then, that's so "bitter."

[RichardRay]

26. No, It doesn't trouble me.

Yes, I wish he'd done something else.

Therefore, the best answer out of the list is the simple No vote, I'm glad it was added.

In the immortal words of Larry Ellison

Privacy is a myth, get over it.

[Eyes_wide_ open]

34. Seems to me y'all are missing the point

The bill is troubling enough all on its own IMO, but I'll concede that perhaps it can be fixed later or even that it may not be as bad as I happen to think.

However what I find even more troubling is "the end justifies the means" mentality that I'm witnessing here. That our candidate can do anything, say anything that it takes to get elected and it's perfectly okay because "thats politics". That is the way the game has been played for time untold, but I support Barack Obama because he says that it doesn't have to be that way, that he wouldn't play that way. His actions have backed up his words until now.

"To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."

And then he does an about face? WTF?
That may be "politics" in your book, in mine its called lying. And being lied to makes me angry. It is not acceptable, not if you want my support. If you're going to tell me that what it takes to get him elected, I'm going to tell you it's not worth doing. The very reason most people don't bother to vote today is that they don't see any difference in voting for this lying asshole or that lying asshole. W has taught me that yes, there is a difference but I've had my eyes wide open for some time now, I don't think most of Americans have.

Party politics are not going to win this election. We need the independents, and we need those who normally would not bother. Those people don't vote for parties, they vote for people ... real people that stand up for what they believe in, not those talking in doublespeak. If he's not been truthful about this what else has he fed us a bill of goods about? And if most of us are questioning that how much more do you suppose those out there as yet undecided yet are asking the same thing?

The reason he attracts those outside your party IS his message of change in "politics as usual". If he is to reach those that are not Democrats already, it will be because the majority of America wants desperately to believe that. If he says this and does that instead he's not allowing them to.

Yes that's a higher standard than others have been held to in the past. And it's way pass time that we, as a people regardless of party, required it of our leaders. Barack Obama led me to believe he was up for that and I truly hope he is, otherwise we are doomed. He put a severe dent in my hope with this. I want to be able to speak on behalf of him, not just against McSame. I have to be able to believe him to do that.

If we don't speak up we are guilty of implied consent. Not me, not anytime soon. The end does NOT justify the means, not if we expect to change anything. I do, that's why I'm here.


edited because I'm barely computer literate and messed up the HTML codes :eyes:

[Super Soaker Sniper]

37. What Does Trouble Me

is the ones going for the "Do Anything to Win" option. I do not want my candidate cheating and lying to win. If I wanted to vote for a candidate like that I would vote Republican.

[emilyg]

39. I'm with you.

[Political Heretic]

40. Other...............

That FISA had to come up now is disappointing. The bill is also disappointing. But I don't see any way for Obama to vote against it, especially when his vote won't make the difference. The thing will pass with or without his vote. Anything he does against it will plague him for the rest of the election. So I'd rather he do the smart thing and not hand the GOP fodder for endless attacks about being "soft" on national security from now until the election by voting for a "security" bill (that's what it is called in the media) that already has the votes to pass no matter what he does.

The only ones who can't understand this are the ones who wanted him to stand up and say he would oppose it and then vote no even though his vote wouldn't stop the bill purely to stand on principle at any cost - even if that cost is the white house. That's just asinine.

If Obama alone had the ability to stop this thing dead in its tracks, then we could talk. But he doesn't, so I'm GLAD he's not handing the Republicans the white house by a CEREMONIAL no vote.

[catgirl]

41. He may know something we don't

[Arthurtheking]

42. I'm not an expert in FISA

therefore I will issue no opinion.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

43. You ARE new here, aren't you...

You're supposed to have an opinion on EVERY subject and you're expected to hold it passioniately despite any and all evidence to the contrary.

Get with the program, Bub!

Kidding.

And Welcome to DU

[Breeze54]

48. Then you better READ the 4TH Amendment before you LOSE IT!!!!

And people from Milwaukee don't seem to know :sarcasm:

they are REQUIRED (as citizens AKA CIVIC DUTY), to know WTF is going on in their Gov!!

Seems like that's the reason a lot of people voted for the R in 2000 & 2004! :grr:

Welcome to DU, Arthurtheking. (No kings are allowed in the USA)

:hi:

[Breeze54]

47. Great Poll and YES! Obama's FLIP-FLOP pisses me off royally... mutha foc....

:grr:

[johnaries]

49. No, because he explained his position which keeps getting misrepresented.

First of all, he says he is still against giving Telecoms immunity and he supports stripping that section out of the bill. However, that is a lesser concern than the major issues the bill addresses:

"It is a close call for me," Obama told reporters. But he said the addition of the "exclusivity" provision giving power to the secret court, along with a new inspector general role and other oversight additions, "met my basic concerns." He said the bill's target should not be the phone companies' culpability, but "can we get to the bottom of what's taking place, and do we have safeguards?"

This is not a flip-flop, folks. The bill has been revised to address the concerns Obama has had all along.

[ellisonz]

50. No.