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from the but-at-least-we-get-an-official-burial-of-the-bulk-phone-records-program dept

The Senate voted today to give us five more years of pretty much unaltered surveillance. The reauthorization of key spy powers is back on again, after Congressional inaction ran head-on into a global pandemic, allowing these to (briefly) expire. Not that this temporary expiration resulted in any less surveillance. And with this overwhelming vote in favor of resumed spying, it will probably only be a matter of days before a consolidated bill ends up on Trump's desk. Despite his continual agitation against the "Deep State," Trump is expected to give these powers his official blessing.

The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly voted to reauthorize three national security surveillance authorities that have been expired since March.

The chamber voted 80-16 to extend the surveillance authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The vote occurred after the Senate adopted a bipartisan amendment on Wednesday from Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont to provide additional legal protections in the FISA court for targets of surveillance warrants. The Senate's amendment means the House will have to pass the new version of the legislation before it goes to the President's desk.

The additional protections in the amendment would expand outside review of FISA surveillance cases. The USA Freedom Act allowed for the appointment of amicus curiae (outside, neutral advocates) at the court's discretion. This amendment makes it a bit more mandatory, requiring the court to appoint one in any case involving "sensitive investigative matters." That covers a lot of ground, but the amendment was written with the targeting of US persons in mind.

More importantly, it grants the amicus the power to raise any issue at any time and gives them access to all pertinent court documents, including underlying warrant applications.

Unfortunately, this bill moved forward without stronger surveillance reforms, including an amendment written by Senators Ron Wyden and Steve Daines that would have added a warrant requirement for the collection of internet browsing history and search data. This fell one vote shy of passing -- something that any of the four missing senators that supported the amendment could have fixed by showing up and voting.

The Senate's approved version reauthorizes authorities affected by 2015's USA Freedom Act and parts of Section 215, like the infamous "roving wiretap" authority and the apparently never-used "lone wolf" provision that allows for the surveillance of people with no known ties to any terrorist group.

If it remains intact before passage, the bill would also formally end the NSA's bulk phone data collection. The NSA voluntarily retired this after it was unable to avoid over-collection even while having to approach telcos directly with reasonable suspicion-supported requests for call records. Having gone from mostly useless to completely useless, the NSA decided this collection was no longer worth the compliance headache. For whatever reason, the FBI fought to keep this zombie program alive, claiming that the slim possibility of it being useful as some undetermined point in the future justified its continued existence.

We'll have to see what survives the House's second pass before it heads to Trump for a signature. That's the version that's had plenty of input from Bill Barr, who apparently wants as much surveillance power as possible even as the Commander-in-Chief complains about the abuse of these powers to target him and his.

Filed Under: fisa, patriot act, reauthorization, senate, surveillance

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Senate Passes Surveillance Reauthorization Bill 80-16 -- One Stripped Of Almost All Of Its Reforms - Techdirt

By K J M Varma

Beijing, May 15 (PTI) China on Friday reacted guardedly to US President Donald Trump''s threat to cut off the bilateral relationship between the world''s top two economies and asked America to meet it halfway in the fight against the coronavirus.

Relations between the two countries nosedived after the coronavirus outbreak, which originated from the central Chinese city of Wuhan, and spread to other parts of the world.

The pandemic has claimed over 85,000 lives in the US, the highest in the world.

Trump, who has been pressing China to agree for an inquiry into the origin of the virus, including the allegation that it emerged from a bio-lab in Wuhan, further hardened his rhetoric on Thursday by threatening to cut off US ties with Beijing.

Reacting to Trump''s threat, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian reacted guardedly, saying that the relationship is in the fundamental interest of the two countries.

"To maintain the steady development of China-US relations is in the fundamental interests of the people in both countries, and is conducive to world peace and stability," Zhao said.

"At present, China and the US should continue to strengthen cooperation against the epidemic, defeat the epidemic as soon as possible, treat patients, and restore economy and production. But it requires the US to meet halfway with China," Zhao said.

There has been increasing pressure on Trump from American lawmakers to take action against China.

"There are many things we could do ... We could cut off the whole relationship," Trump said on Thursday in an interview with Fox Business News."You''d save USD 500 billion if you cut off the whole relationship." Trump said that his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping is "very good" but added: "right now I just don''t want to speak to him".

Trumps threat followed after China on Tuesday released a new list of US products which will be exempted from the second round of additional tariffs on American products.

Trump launched a trade war with China in 2018, demanding Beijing to reduce a massive trade deficit of over USD 539 billion. PTI KJV NSA AKJ NSANSA

Disclaimer :- This story has not been edited by Outlook staff and is auto-generated from news agency feeds. Source: PTI

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''Meet halfway'' in fight against COVID-19: China on Trumps threat to cut off ties - Outlook India

Some people say it doesnt even exist that its meaningless, or even a term of abuse. But from the 2008 financial crisis to the vote for Brexit in 2016, from the rise of the alt-right to the Covid-19 pandemic, there is no way of properly grasping our world without thinking about how neoliberalism informs our politics and economy.

But what is it? Broadly speaking, neoliberalism can be defined as the raft of policies and overarching political ethos that enabled governments in the late-1970s to turn away from state-directed economic planning, towards an economic model that extended competitive markets into every sphere of human activity and initiated the reign of finance capital (the kind dreamed up in the City of London and Wall Street) by removing constraints on capital mobility.

Importantly, neoliberalism is not merely a policy agenda but also a moral framework that teaches individuals to conceive of themselves not as, say, wage earners but rather as risk-taking entrepreneurs who should expect to shoulder the financial risks of their participation in higher education, the credit system and deregulated labour markets.

First implemented as an economic programme in the UK and the United States by the Thatcher government and the Reagan administration, its principles continued to underwrite the third way politics of New Labour and Clintonite Democrats. Although centre-left politicians reject the applicability of the term to their politics, a wealth of scholarship produced by economists, sociologists and historians demonstrates how third-way politicians advanced the neoliberal project.

So, where does the ideology stand today? Some are calling time on the neoliberal age. In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Paul Mason declared that the exigencies of the crisis would mean that, in short order, the UKs political class would soon consist entirely of either enthusiastic or reluctant socialists progressive state intervention was inevitably back on the agenda. However, claims of this sort should be treated with caution, not least because similar predictions were made following the financial crisis, and after the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as US president. And those predictions turned out to be seriously awry.

For instance, at the height of the financial crisis, the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz announced, Neoliberalism is dead. Yet it soon became abundantly clear that this was premature. It is true that the crisis seemed to pose a serious threat to the veneration of markets, as governments were forced to bail out the financial sector. But, as scholars such as Philip Mirowski have shown, neoliberals have long understood that their project requires state intervention to create and maintain markets. Rather than thinking of the crisis-fighting of governments in 2008 as a repudiation of market-friendly policy, its more useful to think of it as an extreme instance of pro-business government intervention that aimed to maintain the long-term primacy of the market.

On the face of it, the vote for Brexit and the election of Trump appeared to more plausibly represent a break with neoliberalism. But that diagnosis arose from a failure to understand how neoliberalism can adaptively recombine with elements of other ideologies.

While the Brexiteers may loathe the European Union (an institution that neoliberal intellectuals have long disagreed about) they remain committed to the core of neoliberal ideology. For example, the Australian points-based immigration system so beloved by the Brexiteers is perfectly congruent with the neoliberals view of human beings as bundles of assets (of greater or lesser value). The post-Brexit immigrants educational background, work experience and connections are redefined as forms of capital that may or may not be worth investing in (by letting them in) in order to secure a future return on that investment for the national economy. Points-based immigration systems, in other words, do not represent a straightforward shift away from neoliberal, free-market orthodoxy towards rightwing protectionism.

If neither the crises of 2008 nor 2016 signalled the end of neoliberalism, what about Covid-19? Today, as in 2008, politicians such as Rishi Sunak have been forced to implement policies that seem to contradict their adherence to market supremacy, but the intention is again to do so in order to swiftly return to normal and wean the public off their addiction to state support. The governments frustrated desire to curtail the furlough scheme, and the clear opposition to implementing a universal basic income, indicate a commitment to maintaining the core of neoliberal welfare policy. This means opposing generous, non-means-tested payments, which neoliberals view as detrimental to fostering entrepreneurial activity and disciplining the workforce.

More disturbingly, in the context of pandemic and the climate crisis, the persistence of the neoliberal view of individuals as human capital raises the possibility of governments treating populations of low value as disposable. Increased state intervention to protect incomes is welcome, but could be used by governments to implement a kind of economic triage, with populations deemed not worth bailing out excluded from state support. As Michel Feher has shown, there are milder precedents for this in welfare reforms carried out by mainstream political parties in Ireland and Portugal, which reduced benefits for younger cohorts in order to encourage emigration and, in the case of Portugal, to swap young, relatively poor Portuguese for wealthier retirees from abroad. In a context of ballooning national debt, where migrant populations are being treated as vectors of disease, its not difficult to see how an exclusionary neoliberal politics that supports investment in certain populations and disinvestment in others could gain traction.

All of this is not to deny that the Covid-19 crisis poses a real threat to neoliberal orthodoxy. Physical distancing and enforced quarantine have disrupted the labour market, potentially shifting the balance of power between labour and capital in favour of workers. The increase in wildcat strikes and the emergence of mutual aid groups are certainly encouraging. And the furlough scheme has temporarily revealed the artificiality of government spending constraints. But given the persistence and adaptability of neoliberal ideology over the past 10 years, any sober assessment of the current situation needs to be attuned to the possibility of its survival (or successful mutation), as well as its possible demise.

Alex Doherty is the host of the Politics Theory Other podcast

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Has the coronavirus crisis killed neoliberalism? Don't bet on it - The Guardian

Georgia is leading a national conversation today about white men with guns.

A few weeks ago, the Michigan branch of Vanilla Isis carried rifles into the state capitol and screamed hell past lines of state troopers. And we asked ourselves, if they were black men with guns, how quickly would they have been arrested, or shot?

Last week, we watched video footage of three white men confront and shoot to death a black jogger in south Georgia footage that the Glynn County prosecutor had been sitting on for more than two months. And we asked ourselves, if they were black men with guns, how quickly would they have been arrested, or shot?

Wittingly or not, I think were linking these scenes together in our minds. The news cycle juxtaposes these images in front of us. We can bear only so much hypocrisy.

We are seeing our elected leaders ignore terrorism, though people resist calling it that because white men with guns dont just shape our policies, they also shape our language about who is and is not considered violent or threatening. And I think were finally tiring of it.

Under any other conditions, a man with a rifle screaming demands of you is an act of intimidation. In my view, it is a terroristic threat and a crime. And they know it. Its a dare.

I had a chat with Jerry Henry, the executive director of Georgia Carry, about the capitol protests last week. Georgia Carry is amid a fairly important and frankly interesting legal battle with Governor Brian Kemp over gun permits. If you moved to Georgia, you cant get a Georgia drivers license right now with all the tag offices closed. Hell, theyre handing drivers licenses to 20,000 people without a road test. The governor has been able to suspend enforcement of some laws, like one outlawing the wearing of a mask in public. But if you want a new gun permit with the county courthouses closed, youre out of luck.

For gun rights activists, this is infuriating. But Henrys crew doesnt participate in public gun demonstrations, and certainly not at the capitol, he said. A protest can make you look real good or look real bad, Henry said. The liberal press will pick out the worst people there or no one will show up.

So, to be clear, armed protesters at state capitols in Michigan, Texas and elsewhere dont have much of anything to do with gun rights. But I dont think the white supremacist messages were seeing with those armed protests are incidental.

If they were black men with guns, how quickly would they have been arrested, or shot? Well, probably pretty quickly, because thousands of black people are not having long chat room sessions fantasizing about armed insurrection after a confrontation with state police, as they are on the Fascist Forge board right now.

Heres some context people might be missing.

The 2017 racist alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., fundamentally screwed up the white supremacist movement in America, believe it or not. Heather Heyers murder and the images of running street battles turned the world decidedly against the alt-right. Activists like those behind Unicorn Riot infiltrated and exposed racists Discord channels, making clandestine recruiting all but impossible. They began outing the foot soldiers identities through social media, like Trent East, a deputy sheriff and National Guardsman in Haralson County who lost his job last year after activists spotted his online racism. The increased attention cost them their jobs, personal relationships and community standing. (This, by the way, is why the far-right loathes Antifa and propagandizes against it as much as it does: its an effective intelligence-gathering group).

White nationalist leaders and publications got sued and de-platformed, and financial supporters abandoned anything tinged with racial hatred. People like Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopolous were cut off from being able to raise money easily from the public. Two of the largest formal groups the Traditionalist Worker Party and the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement no longer exist as functional organizations today.

That doesnt mean things are getting better. Theyre just getting weirder, and perhaps if the El Paso shooting is any indication, more violent.

As a Southern Poverty Law Centers surveillance report notes, the white supremacist movement has fractured, and the conversation in the quiet places has changed.

The movements followers are breaking into two major strategic camps: so-called accelerationists who wholeheartedly embrace violence as a political tool and mainstreamers (or the dissident right, as they often call themselves) who are attempting, with a degree of success, to bend the mainstream political right toward white nationalist ideas.

Consider how both views play out in Georgia. Last year, Chester Doles, who has a lengthy history of white supremacist organizing, staged a rally in Dahlonega. Shortly after that, he launched American Patriots USA. This group has made four political endorsements across the state. Amazingly, one of them is in DeKalb County that of Hubert Owens, the Republican challenger to State Rep. Darshun Kendrick. Owens has allegedly accepted this endorsement perhaps because as a relatively recent transplant to Georgia, he doesnt know any better.

God bless Mr. Owens for his service and dedication he showed his country. And now he is in another war. Let's help him out Wwe need a representative like him!

Posted by American Patriots U.S.A onSaturday, April 4, 2020

This post was not available on Huberts Facebook page as of Wednesday, May 13. Reached by phone, Hubert said he was unaware of this endorsement and hadnt removed anything from his Facebook page.

Im not even in the state of Georgia right now, he said. He ended the conversation with, Im in D.C. Ive got to get back to work.

On the other side of the coin, the FBI arrested three Georgia men in January, who are charged with conspiracy to commit murder and participation in a criminal gang. They, and other members of The Base are accused of, plotting to murder a Bartow County couple they believed were Antifa members and training for a race war on a range just south of Rome.

Theres a lot of push and pull between these views among white supremacists. Mainstream white supremacists want to carry their message in a suit and tie into schools and churches and legislation. Accelerationists want someone, somewhere, to kick off the boogaloo, or the long-awaited apocalyptic race war that will reset America. And they want to recruit fighters.

But every time theyve tried to stage a major public demonstration like the neo-Nazis tried in Newnan two years ago, or Chester Doles tried in Dahlonega last year, theyre met fifty-fold with anti-fascist local protesters and cameras ready for a repeat of Charlottesville. They look weak, because they are weak. Theyre completely outnumbered and despised.

And then the pandemic locked everyone down.

The guys with guns wearing Hawaiian shirts under their camo and giving the Pepe the Frog OK sign arent out here because theyre protesting the pandemic. Thats incidental.

Theyre out here because we cant counterprotest in force.

Theyre piggy-backing off the pandemic protests in exactly the same way that black bloc anarchists use the relative anonymity of anti-police brutality street protests to flip over cop cars. Its an opportunity presenting itself, a means to an end. The end, for the alt-right guys, is visibility without the opposition making them look small. They know theyre running a risk of getting COVID-19, but if the rest of us start confronting them as before, our greater numbers would actually create an exponentially greater risk of infection.

Its an elegant game theory put to disturbing use.

While weak, theyre hoping for a galvanizing Ruby Ridge confrontation of some sort to rekindle public support. The best thing that could happen to them, in their view, is a violent confrontation with authority preferably liberal authority that sparks massive armed conflict. Its a fantasy. But it shapes how we react. State leaders across the country are denying them their Waco moment.

George Chidi is a political columnist and public policy advocate.

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George on Georgia: Why We're Not Just Arresting White Guys With Guns - Decaturish.com

By Michael Rosenthal

The power of a story is immeasurable, but in a time when we isolate ourselves and hunker down to protect our loved ones from COVID-19, I am writing my truth about how this coronavirus might just save our country and our planet. This is the fourth year of Donald J. Trump's presidency, and our country and our planet may not survive a second term. This could be the plague to save the U.S.A. and the Earth.

Trump won the election, although he did not win the popular vote, because his populist message was heard by the forgotten and frustrated white Americans in the cities, suburbs, and rural America who felt the economy wasn't working for them. Trump won the election because he was able to give white America an enemy they could visualize, Latino immigrants coming across our border with Mexico. His call for a wall and the demonizing of undocumented workers played to the fears of white Americans of increased violence, drugs, and unemployment. This hate and fear of non-whites was always draped in the red, white, and blue of our flag.

This call to arms to stop illegal aliens from crossing our southern border was also couched in language understood by white supremacists, who feared that the demographics showed that within a generation whites would be a minority in the United States of America. The fear of being in the minority went to the primal fear of white supremacists; they feared that the systematic subjugation of blacks, latinos, and native Americans during the past 125 years would happen to them before the 21st century was over. Our society and criminal justice system claims to be unbiased, but the actions of police, our government, and our penal system tell another story. There are not any white people I know who fear for their life when going out for a jog, while unarmed like Ahmaud Arbery, or who are fearful when they are stopped by the police while behind the wheel because of the color of their skin.

Colin Kaepernick, quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, rightfully and peacefully protested injustice to people of color who looked like him by the police by taking a knee during the national anthem. Those whites who said Blue Lives or All Lives Matter were missing the point; black lives should matter, too. That "too" makes all the difference in the world. Instead of addressing injustice, President Trump wrapped himself in the flag and questioned the patriotism of anyone who kneeled during the anthem. The president then proceeded to strong-arm the 32 white owners of NFL teams who blackballed Kaepernick from the league, and who dropped any support or concerns of their players due to a threat on their bottom line. Even during this isolation it was amazing to me how it was the players who stepped up to protect the lost wages of stadium employees often before the actions of the billionaire owners or the professional leagues.

The sway that the alt-right has with our president should be of concern to all Americans. These all-white rallies with citizens either in paramilitary gear including body armor and assault rifles, or draped in the flag and their MAGA gear should have all Americans afraid for our country. These rallies to "liberate" citizens from state governments, put the lives of police, first responders, and the medical profession in greater danger of exposure to the virus, and often the police are even physically threatened. Those same Americans who bemoaned Blue Lives Matter when Kaepernick took a knee are now showing their true colors. These same police who forcibly and violently take down unarmed blacks whom they think have weapons fail to make arrests of armed white men who physically confront them while packing serious heat.

These paramilitary protests are also a dangerous foreshadowing that these "good people" who are flexing their muscle now in armed peaceful protests in front of the state houses, will revolt to keep another president from taking office if and when Trump loses the 2020 election. These armed peaceful protests by "good people" threaten to provoke the first violent transfer of power in our country's history.

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There are many reasons why Trump has been a danger to our nation as well as the future of our planet, and this pandemic has exposed his failures as President, the flaws in our society, and the resiliency of our planet. Therefore the coronavirus might just be the plague that saves this country and the world.

Trump's failures as a leader have been apparent from the start of this pandemic. Looking at the differences between the responses of South Korea and the United States to this crisis is a good place to illustrate his deficiencies as a leader. Both South Korea and the United States had their first reported case of COVID-19 in their country on the same date in January. As of early May, South Korea has had fewer than 300 deaths compared to the greater than 80,000 deaths here in the United States. South Korea learned from their experiences with SARS, Mers, and H1N1, and treated news of the outbreak in China with a sense of urgency. Within two weeks South Korea had developed a test for coronavirus and had begun a massive effort to test their population, and trace the path of the virus, isolating those with positive tests and quarantining those who had contact with people who tested positive.

President Trump on the other hand is a science denier, and failed to approach this outbreak with a sense of urgency. His administration did not follow the playbook developed from the Obama administration response to H1N1 and ebola. In addition he dismantled the part of the White House security council responsible to respond to an infectious epidemic. Unlike South Korea, it took the United States two months to develop a test, as they even eschewed tests developed by the World Health Organization. During February and most of March the president downplayed the threat of the virus, failed to stockpile personal protective equipment, or use the war powers act to get the full weight of the U.S. government behind efforts to stop this invisible enemy. He would rather lie to the American people than tell us the truth.

Failure to understand the scope and severity of this pandemic is one of his flaws as a leader, as are failure to listen to experts, reliance on inexperienced cronies, and promoting unfounded and potentially dangerous coronavirus treatments; but how can we follow any leader who fails to ever take responsibility for his actions? These are the same leadership qualities he displayed in avoiding serving in our military during the Vietnam War. During this crisis he has blamed President Obama, China, the governors of various states, and the media for his failings. He doesn't want to be a leader, instead he has said he has acted as a cheerleader. He won't even lead by example by wearing a mask.

The coronavirus pandemic has made it clear: the future of the United States depends on making Trump a one term president in November.

Michael Rosenthal writes from Williston, Vt. The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of the Brattleboro Reformer.

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Michael Rosenthal: The COVID-19 pandemic just might be an antidote for the 'plague' of Trump - Brattleboro Reformer