And if they weren't enough, the age average of them is fairly close to retirement age:
"The average age of Members of the House at the beginning of the 114th Congress was 57.0 years; of Senators, 61.0 years."[2]
[1] https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-18/79-members-congres...
Ehhh. Richmond and Oakland, yes. Berkeley? No. San Francisco? No.
And no, it's not a question of "if you have nothing to hide.." it's simple, basic reality--you are not free in any sense of the word if you have East-German type surveillance up your ass 24/7.
Folks, it ain't so. The Democrats won't protect us in this regard any more than the Republicans will.
125 Democrats voted to add privacy protections, 55 did not.
By Contrast
58 Republicans voted to add privacy protections, 178 did not.
By definition, that means Democrats were better about privacy protections.
Stop peddling this both-parties-are-the-same nonsense. Its amazing this can even be said with a straight face during the Trump administration.
From my comment down thread
>Unfortunately Obama almost quadrupled funding to these agencies[1]. Throughout his administration he allowed the Alphabet boys to try and steal more american's data without warrants (See FBI v Apple and the FBI attempting to get access to your browser history with out warrants)[2][3]. Obama even EXPANDED surveillance on his way out of office[4]. Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers we all know what happened to Chelsea.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/surveillance-in-the-obama-era-1... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-vs-fbi-all-you-need-to... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-w... [4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveill...
Parent didn't say _only_ Republicans do this. Parent said Republicans do it more. They backed it up with proof (Congress voting record).
Obama didn't expand surveillance on his way out (several surveillance programs stopped under his watch, including both email and phone metadata collection). You're confusing an authorization to share information, which allowed a more thorough investigation into Russian meddling, with authorization to collect new data.
Your first link doesn't support your claim that Obama quadrupled funding because that didn't happen. https://fas.org/irp/budget/
And we all know that Obama released Manning over the objections of our current President.
Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers
we all know what happened to Chelsea.
I am sure it will be easy for her to explain "Violating the Espionage Act, stealing government property, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, multiple counts of disobeying orders" on her job application.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-mannin...
The Dems are better. They are better than republicans on this, but they certainly aren't good enough. That is the unfortunate part. But if you definitely want a better chance for civil liberties, voting for R's will hurt you worse than if you vote for D's, significantly so.
I suppose that depends which civil liberties are more important to you. You'll find that Democrats are pretty awful if you value your right to self-defense, or if you don't think the government should be able to use eminent domain to take your property and give it to a wealthy supporter.
Some of the details may be different, but they're both different sides of the same coin. I don't see that one side is significantly better than the other overall.
Democrats had plenty of opportunity to strengthen privacy laws during the previous administration, but they didn't. Instead they strengthened the surveillance powers of the government. Now that a Republican controls the executive branch and all of these agencies, they want those powers weakened.
The US is experiencing the terrible pitfalls of a two-party system, just as the founding fathers warned. Instead of making progress, the parties mostly just fight each other, at our expense.
Regardless of what they believe, a politician's first priority is reelection, and it is partisan campaign committees that hold the reigns to the resources required for that. Even if you are independently wealthy and can finance your own campaign, you can't accomplish anything in office if you get ostracized by everyone who doesn't have that luxury.
Cooperate with the cartel leadership, or you'll be denied funding, voter data, and committee seats.
If you don't like blacks, browns and gays but DO like privacy were do you go? Exactly. There is no alternative to the Republicans.
If the US had 15 parties in Congress the game would be a LOT more interesting. Half of America has no choice to support Trump because the alternative is literally Satan.
So here we are: the endless stalemate.
More accurately, the US electoral system supports only two competitive parties at a time; the US political system has several dozen political parties.
I don't have much faith in the Democratic party as an institution to protect privacy, but many Democrats are trying to do so.
One of the reasons democrats feel able to be horrible here is that there is just no alternative.
* Bush implemented surveillance of citizens in response to 9/11
* Obama continued to support this program after it was revealed by Edward Snowden
* Now there's Trump
[0]: http://obamaspeeches.com/041-The-PATRIOT-Act-Obama-Speech.ht...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_on_mass_surveilla...
Unfortunately Obama almost quadrupled funding to these agencies[1]. Throughout his administration he allowed the Alphabet boys to try and steal more american's data without warrants (See FBI v Apple and the FBI attempting to get access to your browser history with out warrants)[2][3]. Obama even EXPANDED surevellience on his way out of office[4]. Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers we all know what happened to Chelsea.
Let's not even get into the fact that he dropped a bomb on average every 20 minutes of his presidency. The is just 2016[5]
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/surveillance-in-the-obama-era-1... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-vs-fbi-all-you-need-to... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-w... [4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveill... [5] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-presiden...
Something to ponder.
Edit: your house.gov link is in fact wrong. This is the correct link. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll014.xml
My Twitter link shows Dems who voted against the USA Rights amendment, and my house.gov link is for the bill itself. It is possible (and in fact likely) that a rep who voted no on the amendment would support the bill without it.
Your house.gov link is for the amendment, so it should reflect the same votes as the image in the tweet.
Dems who voted against the Amash/USA Rights amendment: https://twitter.com/gzornick/status/951501089047764992
All votes for the Amash/USA Rights amendment: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll014.xml
All votes on S. 139, aka the main bill: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll016.xml
To my knowledge, he's the only one that does it with any degree of regularity.
The Amash amendment was also to this bill.
Here is a pamphlet comparing S. 139 with the Amash/USA Rights Act Amendment: https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/ChartCompa...
That same document refers to S. 139 as the FISA Reauthorization Amendments Act.
More clarification from journalists who closely follow this topic: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/951541344274649089
First, it sounds like a genetic information surveillance law to me, but lots of laws have things other than their main focus (including reauths of other laws) tucked in.
Second, lots of laws have misleading titles; do “USA PATRIOT Act” and “USA FREEDOM Act” sound (other than knowing the actual content put under those titles included) like surveillance laws?
Also, it's quite conceivable that a government considers surveilance "patriotic" or necessary to defend "freedom", but I don't feel the same about "Rapid DNA".
https://twitter.com/gzornick/status/951501089047764992 http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll016.xml