thinkprogress.org— In 20-14 vote today, the House Judiciary Committee passed the RESTORE Act, which seeks to update the hastily-passed Protect America Act and restore a balance between civil liberties and security.
Oct 10, 2007View in Crawl 4
Now that is a step in the right direction! Here's the link to the summary, it was in the article, but I don't think it would hurt to post it here too in case you guys missed it. <a class="user" href="http://thinkprogress.org/restore-act-summary/">http://thinkprogress.org/restore-act-summary/</a>They've basically made it so that warrants have to be acquired before doing any surveillance on U.S. citizens, as well as any communication stemming from a U.S. citizen to elsewhere or vice versa. They also removed the ambiguous language implying that it was legal under the patriot act to conduct warrant less searches of a person's home, place of business, computer(s), and medical records. It also provides for regular (quarterly, I think) inspections and audits on the information gathered, and the relevance and legality, as well as reports concluding legalities and relevance on the information gathered.These are the checks and balances that we should have had in the first place. This is awesome that it's been passed in the House Judiciary committee. And, the fact that telecommunications companies were denied exemption from review is also a very good step in the right direction.Dugg!
Oh man...i'm so glad they did this....you got naysayers like doomrat who posts stuff like this:"The dems will buckle on this. They always 'stand strong' (see N. Pelosi's speech the night of the last senate elections) until someone tells them to do otherwise. They have never 'not budged' unless it was budging towards the war or any legislation put in front of them by the president.'Not budge?' Have those two words ever been used together to describe THIS congressional batch of dems? Hardly."dems are doing as much as they can with the thin majority they have...I hope they don't stop here and continue to restore civil liberties
phnx0221Oct 10, 2007
Now that is a step in the right direction! Here's the link to the summary, it was in the article, but I don't think it would hurt to post it here too in case you guys missed it. <a class="user" href="http://thinkprogress.org/restore-act-summary/">http://thinkprogress.org/restore-act-summary/</a>They've basically made it so that warrants have to be acquired before doing any surveillance on U.S. citizens, as well as any communication stemming from a U.S. citizen to elsewhere or vice versa. They also removed the ambiguous language implying that it was legal under the patriot act to conduct warrant less searches of a person's home, place of business, computer(s), and medical records. It also provides for regular (quarterly, I think) inspections and audits on the information gathered, and the relevance and legality, as well as reports concluding legalities and relevance on the information gathered.These are the checks and balances that we should have had in the first place. This is awesome that it's been passed in the House Judiciary committee. And, the fact that telecommunications companies were denied exemption from review is also a very good step in the right direction.Dugg!
patscruOct 11, 2007
Oh man...i'm so glad they did this....you got naysayers like doomrat who posts stuff like this:"The dems will buckle on this. They always 'stand strong' (see N. Pelosi's speech the night of the last senate elections) until someone tells them to do otherwise. They have never 'not budged' unless it was budging towards the war or any legislation put in front of them by the president.'Not budge?' Have those two words ever been used together to describe THIS congressional batch of dems? Hardly."dems are doing as much as they can with the thin majority they have...I hope they don't stop here and continue to restore civil liberties