You see a revolt, I see stagecraft. At the end of the day the law is in place and Congress apparently gives zero fucks. They're not talking about it, the news is talking about dumb shit.
And I can say they voted for it. I'm not going to give them a pass for being too stupid to see what everyone was screaming about at the time. Because that is the best case scenario. Either they are stupid or dishonest, pick your poison. The laws they voted for and now decry (because it is popular to do so) gave unprecedented powers to the executive over citizens. They knew what they were doing and the potential of that.
Then why did it require political arm twisting to prevent the vote from passing? pelosi and obama were telling people they would lose democratic support for re election and throwing them off committee seats from what I heard.
and that's not true that they voted for nsa spying the congress specifically defunded the "total information awareness program" when it was revealed which is basically what this program is the result of, Bush had to black budget it into existence.
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"On August 2, 2002, Dr. Poindexter gave a speech at DARPAtech 2002 entitled "Overview of the Information Awareness Office"[7] in which he described the TIA program.
In addition to the program itself, the involvement of Poindexter as director of the IAO also raised concerns among some, since he had been earlier convicted of lying to Congress and altering and destroying documents pertaining to the Iran-Contra Affair, although those convictions were later overturned on the grounds that the testimony used against him was protected.
On January 16, 2003, Senator Russ Feingold introduced legislation to suspend the activity of the IAO and the Total Information Awareness program pending a Congressional review of privacy issues involved.[8] A similar measure introduced by Senator Ron Wyden would have prohibited the IAO from operating within the United States unless specifically authorized to do so by Congress, and would have shut the IAO down entirely 60 days after passage unless either the Pentagon prepared a report to Congress assessing the impact of IAO activities on individual privacy and civil liberties or the President certified the program's research as vital to national security interests. In February 2003, Congress passed legislation suspending activities of the IAO pending a Congressional report of the office's activities (Consolidated Appropriations Resolution, 2003, No.108-7, Division M, ?111(b) [signed Feb. 20, 2003]).
In response to this legislation, DARPA provided Congress on May 20, 2003 with a report on its activities.[9] In this report, IAO changed the name of the program to the Terrorism Information Awareness Program and emphasized that the program was not designed to compile dossiers on US citizens, but rather to research and develop the tools that would allow authorized agencies to gather information on terrorist networks. Despite the name change and these assurances, the critics continued to see the system as prone to potential misuse or abuse.
As a result House and Senate negotiators moved to prohibit further funding for the TIA program by adding provisions to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2004[10] (signed into law by President Bush on October 1, 2003). Further, the Joint Explanatory Statement included in the conference committee report specifically directed that the IAO as program manager for TIA be terminated immediately"
