Democrats want to enact an new draft bill called the "Responsible Electronic Surveillance That is Overseen, Reviewed and Effective Act of 2007" or RESTORE Act that would allow the United States to conduct surveillance on communications outside the United States, even when the surveillance is conducted on U.S. soil. The bill would also allow the government to do so without a court order. The attorney general and the director of national intelligence would then have the power to ask for a warrant that would let them conduct "surveillance" of foreign targets, or groups of targets if they believe that American communications are at risk. They could do this along as the target is not a U.S. person.
This bill would also replace the "Protect America Act of 2007", which allowed the government to eavesdrop without United States communications without the court's consent. Are all these kinds of legislations actually necessary? Would we benefit from spying on other parts of the world? More importantly, do we actually NEED this?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I do not understand what William Chen means when he said that the RESTORE ACT would "allow the United States to conduct surveillance on communications outside the United States, even when the surveillance is conducted on U.S. soil." That sort of sounds like the Patriot Act to me. And as to Will's concluding questions, I think that the U.S. does NOT need this. It seems to be a huge waste of resources such as money on surveillance equipment and people to watch the tapes.
In response to Ben's question,"to conduct surveillance on communications outside the United States, even when the surveillance is conducted on U.S. soil" means that the government is basically targeting foreign communications, whether they are in the United States or not.
No, I really don't think we need any more of this. While I would agree that a certain amount of spying would be necessary for particularly dangerous people (or maybe I've just watched too many action movies), it seems like getting a warrant wouldn't be such a big problem. If the target really was such a risk, wouldn't it be easy to obtain a warrant?
I agree with both Ben and Keith. It is unnecessary to give the U.S. the power to spy on foreign countries without consent from the court. I think that if the U.S. has probable cause to do so then there wouldn't be a reason why courts wouldn't approve it. However, if the U.S. has the power to spy without consent it is an invasion of privacy, and if we were to be discovered it may provoke unwanted trouble from foreign countries.
for some reason my computer isn't letting me see the comments that other people wrote, so sorry if this is a repeat of what others said...
I think the idea of the US conducting surveillance on communications outside the US is ok (especially if it helps the war on terrorism), but the fact that they wont have to get court approval to conduct the surveillance could later be a problem if other countries find out we've been spying on them. I don't see much difference between RESTORE and the "Protect America Act of 2007" because don't both allow international communications surveillance without court approval? Before they pass RESTORE they should check to see how successful the "Protect America Act of 2007" was, because if it wasn't successful maybe RESTORE will also be a waste of time and money
Post a Comment