Good Article: Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX 2): "We Will Keep Fighting Against NSA!"

[Spoa]

The fight is not over to limit the National Security Agency’s controversial collection of ordinary Americans’ telephone calling data as part of the campaign to intercept potential terrorists’ communications.

Texas Congressman Ted Poe, a former criminal court judge in Houston’s Harris County, is vowing follow-on attempts to restrict the program.

“I suspect there will be more legislation offered to rein in NSA abuses of the section of the Patriot Act that NSA claims permits collection of these records,” says Poe, a Republican from Humble. “There are several of us who are not through with this fight.”

Poe was among the 14 Texans who voted in the House last night to halt NSA’s authority to gather telephone calling records. Twenty-two other Texans voted to protect continued collection by the NSA.

Lawmakers favoring continuation of the program narrowly beat back an effort to set limits on a vote of 217 to 205.

“The problem with the NSA is that it is using the dragnet approach,” Poe said. “It’s like police searching every house on the block to find a bad guy instead of getting a warrant from a judge to search a specific house. The NSA is using a dragnet approach to try to catch a few terrorists.”

Texans who voted to continue NSA surveillance “will have to justify it to their constituents,” Poe said. “The people I represent are in favor of protecting the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure and they expect me to protect that right.”

http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2013/07/rep-ted-poe-nsa-surveillance-critics-will-try-again/

[ZENemy]

I cannot believe there is going to be a FIGHT

It needs to end IMMEDIATELY!! We the people need to stop ASKING and start demanding.

"Keep fighting" Means its never going to end and was never going to end, its now a part of the duality.

[Bern]

Thank you Ted Poe. I also need to write a thank you note to my Rep Randy Weber (who took Ron's TX-14 seat) and thank him for voting for the amendment.

[better-dead-than-fed]

It’s like police searching every house on the block to find a bad guy instead of getting a warrant from a judge to search a specific house.

It is really not like that, since metadata-collection is not a search under the 4th Amendment.


The people I represent are in favor of protecting the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure and they expect me to protect that right.

But metadata-collection is not really a search under the 4th Amendment, so Poe is confusing the issues, to the disadvantage of his constituents.

[jkr]

SO they are NOT spying on us?

PHEW that was close, I thought i might have to GET OFF MY FAT ASS AND DO SOMETHING FOR A CHANGE

[Zippyjuan]

He did vote to re-authorize the Patriot Act in 2011. http://educate-yourself.org/cn/patriotact20012006senatevote.shtml which greatly expanded NSA powers.


All wiretapping of American citizens by the National Security Agency requires a warrant from a three-judge court set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. After the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed the Patriot Act, which granted the President broad powers to fight a war against terrorism. The George W. Bush administration used these powers to bypass the FISA court and directed the NSA to spy directly on al Qaeda in a new NSA electronic surveillance program. Reports at the time indicate that an "apparently accidental" "glitch" resulted in the interception of communications that were purely domestic in nature.[5] This action was challenged by a number of groups, including Congress, as unconstitutional.

The exact scope of the program is not known, but the NSA was provided total, unsupervised access to all fiber-optic communications going between some of the nation's largest telecommunication companies' major interconnected locations, including phone conversations, email, web browsing, and corporate private network traffic.[6] Critics said that such "domestic" intercepts required FISC authorization under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.[7] The Bush administration maintained that the authorized intercepts were not domestic but rather foreign intelligence integral to the conduct of war and that the warrant requirements of FISA were implicitly superseded by the subsequent passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF).[8] FISA makes it illegal to intentionally engage in electronic surveillance under appearance of an official act or to disclose or use information obtained by electronic surveillance under appearance of an official act knowing that it was not authorized by statute; this is punishable with a fine of up to $10,000 or up to five years in prison, or both.[9] In addition, the Wiretap Act prohibits any person from illegally intercepting, disclosing, using or divulging phone calls or electronic communications; this is punishable with a fine or up to five years in prison, or both.[10]

After an article about the program, (which had been code-named Stellar Wind), was published in The New York Times on December 16, 2005, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales confirmed its existence.[11][12][13] The Times had posted the exclusive story on their website the night before, after learning that the Bush administration was considering seeking a Pentagon-Papers-style court injunction to block its publication.[14] Critics of The Times have alleged that executive editor Bill Keller had withheld the story from publication since before the 2004 Presidential election, and that the story that was ultimately published by The Times was essentially the same as reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau had submitted in 2004.[15] In a December 2008 interview with Newsweek, former Justice Department employee Thomas Tamm revealed himself to be the initial whistle-blower to The Times.[16] The FBI began investigating leaks about the program in 2005, with 25 agents and 5 prosecutors on the case.[17]

Gonzales said the program authorized warrantless intercepts where the government had "a reasonable basis to conclude that one party to the communication is a member of al Qaeda, affiliated with al Qaeda, or a member of an organization affiliated with al Qaeda, or working in support of al Qaeda" and that one party to the conversation was "outside of the United States."[18] The revelation raised immediate concern among elected officials, civil right activists, legal scholars and the public at large about the legality and constitutionality of the program and the potential for abuse. Since then, the controversy has expanded to include the press' role in exposing a classified program, the role and responsibility of Congress in its executive oversight function and the scope and extent of presidential powers under Article II of the Constitution.[19]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(2001%E2%80%9307)