Get a load this. Legislation with secret details? (+TIA revamped)

[Rose Siding]

Bush Signs Bill Expanding FBI Authority

WASHINGTON -- President Bush signed legislation making it easier for FBI agents investigating terrorism to demand financial records from casinos, car dealerships and other businesses.

The changes were included in a bill authorizing 2004 intelligence programs. Most details of the bill are secret, including the total costs of the programs, which are estimated to be about $40 billion. That would be slightly more than Bush had requested.
snip>

* requires the CIA director to prepare a report as soon as possible on what intelligence agencies have learned from their experiences in Iraq. An internal review has been under way. Both the House and Senate intelligence committees have been conducting their own inquiries on prewar intelligence.

* creates a new intelligence office in the Treasury Department to improve coordination with intelligence agencies on fighting terrorist financing.

* creates pilot programs to examine whether analysts from one agency should have access to raw data from another and to improve information sharing with state and local governments.

* authorizes agencies to continue research on computerized terrorism surveillance projects formerly operated by the Defense Department. Those projects were widely criticized on civil liberties grounds, prompting Congress to remove them from the Pentagon.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-bush-intelligence-bill,0,7800436.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

Emphasis mine but What The Heck is this?!

[aquart]

1. Terrorist: anyone opposed to BushCo.

Gosh we're going to regret this.

[Voltaire99]

8. Truer words

were never spoken.

The only question is how much longer the ramping up phase will take before the nasty stuff begins.

[camero]

2. Sounds like Bush

Has to destroy the Constitution in secret.

[papau]

11. Estimate of total spent on intel no longer secret I thought

Estimate of total spent on intel no longer secret I thought.


In the 90's I thought the breakthrough in decreasing secrecy in Gov was finding out about the $30 B spent on NSA, CIA, FBI, and the other 12 or 13 spy budgets (most of the other folks are in Pentagon.)

In 2000 the budget was just over $30 b - and I thought much was wasted.

3 budgets later and it is at $40 billion! For what?

As to "authorizes agencies to continue research on computerized terrorism surveillance projects formerly operated by the Defense Department. Those projects were widely criticized on civil liberties grounds, prompting Congress to remove them from the Pentagon." - this was the compromise GOP's Tom Delay demanded in order to shut down the "1984" inspired auto track of every financial transaction done - from porn to food - for every person in the country - which was the grand idea for an airport check system - if the computer flagged your transaction history as curious - you could not fly. So it is shut down - but we continue to research the idea.

[Rose Siding]

12. Slush fund on steroids?

The Pentagon lost a billion and there's been hardly a ripple.

[Don_G]

3. Since When Has The GOP Hasn't Included Hidden Details?

In any of their Legislation? :shrug:

[Rose Siding]

4. Well, I think at least the cost

is supposed to be available. And aren't we supposed to be able to read the laws enacted by the folks we elected, and under which we are to live?

[demconfive]

5. Prepare for more legislation.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Patriot II is going to be snuck thru in the warm glow of Saddam's capture. It would fit the MO of this cabal.

[JaySherman]

6. dupe

Original thread in LBN.

[Voltaire99]

7. Geek gear for fascism

The tech will be spooky, you can be sure of that.

But it isn't the technology that Americans have to fear as much as it is the political philosophy of permanent war, and the assumptions being made about what is valuable in life, in society, by our political class.

In short, everyone can see that our leaders intend to continue running roughshod over the planet, alienating friends, hardening old enemies and winning new ones. This new eavesdropping gear -- for that is all it is, gear -- is reckoned by them (almost certainly correctly) to be necessary to fight the terrorism that their policies will engender and sustain.

If such a political philosophy makes all of one's own citizens captives of the state's ever-watching eyes, then that is seen merely seen as the new Orwellian sense of freedom: the freedom to be ever vigilant, ever alert, ever ideologically pure, ever angry, ever...protected.

Guess what that will do to society. Not hard to imagine: we have the Soviet era to use as a reference point. (My guess: in ten years we'll have something resembling a hybrid of life under the Soviets and society as dreamt of in the bowels of Wal-Mart.)

Doesn't the Bush era already seem interminably long? And Christ, we're just at the start of it all.

[cosmicaug]

9. T.I.A.

authorizes agencies to continue research on computerized terrorism surveillance projects formerly operated by the Defense Department. Those projects were widely criticized on civil liberties grounds, prompting Congress to remove them from the Pentagon.

That just means that after the uproar over the T.I.A. died down they're still going to go through with it anyways (they just won't talk about it this time). Part of the scheme might involve privatization of some T.I.A. functions. See http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel10312003.html .

As to the rest, I wish I knew what "Most details of the bill are secret, including the total costs of the programs" really means. Does it mean that only some Bush misadministration officials know what's really in this? Does it mean that only the politicians in the intelligence committees know about the details? Or does it mean all the politicians voting on this can know, in principle (that is, if they bother to read the legislation), but are forbidden from disclosing certain information due to "national security" considerations?

And wouldn't all of these situations, if secrecy is abused, constitute taxation without representation? Sure, legislators would still represent us in theory; but in actual practice, if they cannot be held accountable by the electorate, even in principle, because the electorate is forbidden from even knowing what laws are being passed in its name, how can legislators truly be said to represent the electorate? I contend that, in this scenario, they cannot be said to represent the electorate.

[Rose Siding]

10. How could they vote

for a bill they aren't allowed to see? Does the whole Congress have a security clearance?

And what about the power of the purse? This admin has DESTROYED the balance of power.