Notice all Democrat Senators voted for it. They are going to spend all this week trying to bring over 3 more Senators by offering to add amendments to the bill.
The time to act is now, not May 31st minutes before the vote. Does anyone know how to reach out to Senators and let them know that we want them to let section 215 of the Patriot Act to expire, and not to vote for USA Freedom Act simply because a few new amendments might be added in the next week?
That was simply a vote to extend the current program by two months:
"That was immediately followed by rejection of a two-month extension to the existing programs. The vote was 45-54, again short of the 60-vote threshold."
I think it's pretty clear the policy was they don't want an extension of the Patriot Act, which I think is a good thing. I also think there is a lot of confusion here, everything I've read about the USA Freedom Act seems pretty sensible and addresses privacy concerns. It completely changes how the NSA could gain access to phone records and bears no resemblance to the blanket powers the Patriot Act allowed.
The Senate is holding an unusual weekend vote tomorrow to extend section 215 of the Patriot Act 2 more months. If that vote fails, NSA bulk spying on U.S. citizens is illegal on June 1st.
No, this is about the speed of the earth relative to the sun. E.g. even if we wanted to shoot, say, the ISS into the sun, it'd be hard. As soon as you point it towards the sun it will go into an elliptical orbit.
Too bad it looks like congress dropped this amendment that passed with an overwhelming majority in a backdoor deal over the past 48 hours:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8703331
1. Transaction times are long (6 blocks to confirm)
2. Transaction Fees of 0.0001 BTC could likely incur for transactions smaller than 0.01 BTC. This is about a $0.03 USD transaction fee for transactions under $3.30.
My solution to these limitations is to trade BTC on a distributed, low-transaction fee, fast confirming exchange.
That is why today I launched a BTC to Stellar gateway for my p2p microlending startup at https://onecred.com
I expect to see a lot of things people never imagined were possible once bitcoin's store of value combines with a distributed exchange that is good at the things that consumers need (speed, low fees, security, decentralization).
Notice all Democrat Senators voted for it. They are going to spend all this week trying to bring over 3 more Senators by offering to add amendments to the bill.
The time to act is now, not May 31st minutes before the vote. Does anyone know how to reach out to Senators and let them know that we want them to let section 215 of the Patriot Act to expire, and not to vote for USA Freedom Act simply because a few new amendments might be added in the next week?