Open Government Dialogue
« Back To OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

steinlaura

User Profile Image steinlaura
Member since : May-26-2009 (Verified)
1 Ideas, 8 Comments, 48 Votes

User Activity Stream

Ideas Posted

by restoring FISA protections that require warrants before surveilling communications between U.S. citizens. The "Cybersecurity Czar" Pres. Obama appointed resigned in protest because he claimed the NSA was refusing to pass on his recommendations for protecting the privacy of citizens using the Internet, and was creating a situation that threatened to treat all Internet communications, including communications with journalists as open to surveillance w/o distinction.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 4205 Ideas
12345678910….168169Next »

Comments Posted

steinlaura 9 months ago
Thanks, KD. Writing my Senators today.
steinlaura 9 months ago
Do you have a proposal in this pile of verbiage somewhere? And do you honestly think you are the only one outraged over the financial thieves being rewarded for their crimes and the lack of trust in the U.S. financial system that has caused globally? Where were you during the bailout debate of Sep 2008 when ir was almost impossible to get through to Congressional phone #'s and faxes due to the outrage?

The financial mess could be tied into open gov't in the sense that not putting the cards on the table and allowing good advice from all the top experts has created this non-viable situation of substituting gifts backed by endless promises of future taxes and loans of piles and piles of less and less valuable money to financial institutions to substitute for rescuing the real economy so those institutions could make an honest living. But your confused essay doesn't do it. So not only doesn't it advocate anything, but as written, it is off-topic, and a lengthy waste of readers' time.
steinlaura 9 months ago
We already do this in Soc. Sec. The only problem w/ that was that the Bush Admin. stole the trust fund to pay for an illegal war of aggression. The solution is Gore's "lock box" for the trust fund, which everyone is too ashamed to admit they shouldn't have been laughing at when he proposed it. Lacking it, when can expect every Administration going forward to piss it away for whatever grandiose black hole they favor--war, Wall Street, whatever.

And I echo chenvertjd --what does this have to do w/ open gov't?
steinlaura 9 months ago
And then, what? Petitions from other avenues would not be accepted or read? What if the government site started rejecting whole categories of demands? Good-sounding, bad idea.
steinlaura 9 months ago
Unlike "Collaborative groups" agencies have to be at least somewhat heirarchical if only for the sake of accountibility. So only some of the "7 Core Principles" could be applied. For instance, who would the "organizers" and "sponsors" of an agency action or proposal be? This doesn't fit very well, but I'm thumbs upping it anyway, because I can imagine great value if the intentions behind the principles were adapted for agency use.
steinlaura 9 months ago
Oh, and I forgot to add, there was overwhelming public support for retaining the safety provisions of the FISA and the culpability of the telecommunications cos. before the June and July 2008 votes in Congress. 100's of thousands of people signed the many online petitions opposing the changes. See www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/09/fisa_vote/
steinlaura 9 months ago
Reopening FISA would be a smaller change than overturning the entire Patriot Act, so actually easier and less controversial. The decimation of FISA, and the chilling effect of lack of court oversight of gov't surveillance, also has direct relevance to the topic of gov't transparency, which is why I posted the above proposal on this site.

The problems caused by the Patriot Act are a knotty, but very important, issue to be discussed elsewhere.
steinlaura 9 months ago
All the authoritative sources either only describe FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) after its latest amendment (or destruction, according to many civil libertarians) in Feb 2008, (like the doj.gov site) or they require following a lot of links to learn what it was originally and how it changed the 3 times it was amended.

The only succinct, self-contained explanation I could find is a blog post with a clearly stated point of view. The opinions in the post are well-distinguished from the facts and the facts as posted are an accurate condensation of those in all the lengthy articles + links. It is a good place to start. Here's the URL: http://liam-and-janet.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-is-fisa-anyway.html

If you want more detailed information, follow the links and external-sourced footnotes in the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" article in Wikipedia. They are extremely lengthy and complete.