[Vision2020] Federal department needed to fight unconstitutional political claptrap

[Kenneth Marcy]

Federal department needed to fight unconstitutional political claptrap

The following article is yet another support for my contention that, 
despite the huge size of the US Federal government, yet another cabinet 
level department is needed, with a concurrent reorganization and 
reduction of some existing departments' responsibilities and powers, to 
centralize and coordinate federal policies and procedures with respect 
to information processing systems, their interfaces among federal 
departments, their interfaces with corporations and other 
non-governmental entities, and, of course, the interfaces between that 
new agency, existing agencies, and the citizenry of the nation and the 
world.

Most organizations of any significant size have a person, a unit, a 
department, a division, or some other sized entity, in-house or 
contracted, to perform the various levels of tasks necessary to run 
computers, networks, internal and external internets, inter-company 
connections and operations, and so on.  The US federal government has no 
such organization that has to answer to political scrutiny via a cabinet 
secretary to the federal legislature, and, therefore, theoretically, at 
least, to the American people.  Such a department should exist.  Such a 
department should be front and center, answering to, and defending 
against aberrant, abhorrent, and awful policy nonsense such as is 
reflected in the Senate vote reported in the following article.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxxvk/senate-votes-to-allow-fbi-to-look-at-your-web-browsing-history-without-a-warrant 


Tech by VICE
Senate Votes to Allow FBI to Look at Your Web Browsing History Without a 
Warrant
The government just got even more power to spy on your internet habits 
as millions remain quarantined at home.
by Janus Rose
May 13 2020, 12:32pm
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C-SPAN

The US Senate has voted to give law enforcement agencies access to web 
browsing data without a warrant, dramatically expanding the government’s 
surveillance powers in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The power grab was led by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell as part 
of a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which gives federal agencies 
broad domestic surveillance powers. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Steve 
Daines (R-MT) attempted to remove the expanded powers from the bill with 
a bipartisan amendment.

But in a shock upset, the privacy-preserving amendment fell short by a 
single vote after several senators who would have voted “Yes” failed to 
show up to the session, including Bernie Sanders. 9 Democratic senators 
also voted “No,” causing the amendment to fall short of the 60-vote 
threshold it needed to pass.

“The Patriot Act should be repealed in its entirety, set on fire and 
buried in the ground,” Evan Greer, the deputy director of Fight For The 
Future, told Motherboard. “It’s one of the worst laws passed in the last 
century, and there is zero evidence that the mass surveillance programs 
it enables have ever saved a single human life.”

The vote comes at a time when internet usage has skyrocketed, with tens 
of millions of Americans quarantined at home during the COVID-19 
pandemic. Privacy advocates have warned for over a decade that allowing 
warrantless access to web search queries and browsing history allows law 
enforcement to easily crack down on activists, labor organizers, or 
anyone else the government deems a threat.

“Today the Senate made clear that the purpose of the PATRIOT Act is to 
spy on Americans, no warrants or due process necessary,” Dayton Young, 
director of product at Fight For the Future, told Motherboard. “Any 
lawmaker who votes to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act is voting against our 
constitutionally-protected freedoms, and there’s nothing patriotic about 
that.”


https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxxvk/senate-votes-to-allow-fbi-to-look-at-your-web-browsing-history-without-a-warrant 




Ken