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The Oversold ‘USA Freedom Act’
from Consortium News:
The Oversold USA Freedom Act
June 5, 2015
Some civil liberties groups praised the USA Freedom Act for its modest nips at the Surveillance State, but whistleblowers from inside the U.S. government were more skeptical about the laws very slight accomplishments, writes Norman Solomon.
By Norman Solomon
The morning after final passage of the USA Freedom Act, while some foes of mass surveillance were celebrating, Thomas Drake sounded decidedly glum. The new law, he told me, is a new spy program. It restarts some of the worst aspects of the Patriot Act and further codifies systematic violations of Fourth Amendment rights.
Later on Wednesday, here in Oslo as part of a Stand Up For Truth tour, Drake warned at a public forum that national security has become the new state religion. Meanwhile, his Twitter messages were calling the USA Freedom Act an itty-bitty step and a stop/restart kabuki shell game that starts w/ restarting bulk collection of phone records.
That downbeat appraisal of the USA Freedom Act should give pause to its celebrants. Drake is a former senior executive of the National Security Agency and a whistleblower who endured prosecution and faced decades in prison for daring to speak truthfully about NSA activities. He ran afoul of vindictive authorities because he refused to go along with the NSAs massive surveillance program after 9/11.
Drake understands how the NSA operates from the highest strategic levels. He notes a telling fact that has gone virtually unacknowledged by anti-surveillance boosters of the USA Freedom Act: NSA approved. So, of course, did the top purveyor of mendacious claims about the U.S. governments surveillance programs President Barack Obama who eagerly signed the USA Freedom bill into law just hours after the Senate passed it. ................(more)
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/05/the-oversold-usa-freedom-act/
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The Oversold ‘USA Freedom Act’ (Original Post)
marmar
Jun 2015
OP
RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)1. And the million dollar question is...
Why was our President pushing this so hard?
Why couldn't he use the same enthusiasm for laws that would make the country and the world a better place?
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was shown the video that Bill Hicks talked about.
I have this feeling that whoever is elected president..., no matter what you promise on the campaign trail blah, blah, blah when you win, you go into this smoke-filled room with the twelve industrialist capitalist scum-fucks who got you in there. And you're in this smoky room, and this little film screen comes down
and a big guy with a cigar goes, "Roll the film." And it's a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before
that looks suspiciously like it's from the grassy knoll. And then the screen goes up and the lights come up, and they go to the new president, "Any questions?" "Er, just what my agenda is." "First we bomb Baghdad." "You got it
"
The alternative is even worse.