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Senate Bill Would Ban Most Bulk Surveillance
An anonymous reader writes: Today Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced a bill that would ban bulk collection of telephone records and internet data for U.S. citizens. This is a stronger version of the legislation that passed the U.S. House in May, and it has support from the executive branch as well. "The bill, called the USA Freedom Act, would prohibit the government from collecting all information from a particular service provider or a broad geographic area, such as a city or area code, according to a release from Leahy's office. It would expand government and company reporting to the public and reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews NSA intelligence activities. Both House and Senate measures would keep information out of NSA computers, but the Senate bill would impose stricter limits on how much data the spy agency could seek."
I will cheer for you all the way until the first anonymous hold prevents you from advancing to a vote!
Golly gee, with a name like the "USA Freedom Act," it must be good!
I wonder if anyone's every thought of writing up a "Patriot Act" - that would be doubleplus awesome!
Well, since the party whose member is placing the hold has to at least make that known, if there's bipartisan support in the House and the Executive Branch is on board, I don't expect such a hold to go over very well. This might be one of the few things that both parties agree on and that neither party could really use as leverage against the other in an election year, as the public is starting to get upset across the board about it too.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
As a non-American I couldn't care less how much the U.S. government is spying on its citizens. What I'm concerned about is the absence of effort to curb the U.S. spying on non-Americans. I haven't heard my government even acknowledging the fact that the U.S. is going through all our communications. Decentralized Internet is badly needed and nothing seems to be in works...
While the changes are good, I do not think they go far enough.
Allowing full monitoring from someone two hops away from a suspect still can involve a lot of people. What if a suspect were to call Time Warner, then I was to call the same number later that day? It could potentially be a very large number. Also what qualifies as being a suspect? It may be that there are a half million suspects, and a majority of the earth's population is two hops away.
It also doesn't remove the First Amendment violations on the National Security Letters.
It's pretty clear at this point that the executive branch can get away with completely ignoring any law they want, without actual repercussion.
Congress fiddles while our separated-powers republic burns. I can't find words for how much I hate Congress and the President for this.
Don't the NSA report, directly or indirectly, to the President? So if executive branch support a measure to limit bulk surveillance, couldn't they, of their own initiative, direct the appropriate agencies to cancel or modify the mass surveillance programs?
1. The President doesn't support this. He's the executive and is over the NSA. If he really wanted to stop bulk data collection he would simply call the NSA and say "hey, quit doing bulk collection". The law is needed specifically because he doesn't support it.
2. Unless the law will include criminal penalties it's of no value. A cursory glance shows that it simply says "hey, don't do that" instead of "hey, don't do that, and if you do it'll be a class _ felony with a minimum penalty of ___". It's interesting how laws made to limit non-government workers *always* have the criminal penalties, and laws that are made to limit government workers always conveniently forget that part. When we start jailing people who break laws like this we'll start making headway.
Do you have ESP?
...it's called the Bill of Rights.
How about instead, we just pass a law clarifying that the constitution does indeed apply to algorithms?
Just because a robot searched your car does not mean your car was not searched.
i.e. A police officers doing:
C:\directory search batch file.bat
is no different than:
C:\dir
and really... that's what this all comes down to.
It turns out that spying on Europe is perfectly legal in the US after this law passes, and that spying on the US is perfectly legal in Europe. . . .
Lucky for everyone's citizens, no European country and the US are incredibly close allies.
So this would:
> prohibit the government from collecting all information from a particular service provider or a broad geographic
> area, such as a city or area code
Sounds rather specific. My bet is this was very carefully crafted, with help of the NSA to specifically and publically ban a slice of activities so narrow and specific as to stop NOTHING that they are currently doing.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I'd like to see an analysis by EFF or ACLU. Laws these days are named so that people will think they do when thing when the often do something else or even the opposite of what they do. There's no details given. I'm betting there are no criminal penalties for breaking this new either. Without that, it's useless.
TFS notes that Obama is behind this bill.
I find this interesting, since as head of the Executive Branch, he can order the NSA to do what this bill requires without bothering with a law, since no law exists requiring the NSA to collect telephone records on everyone.
And if such a law existed, it would be pretty clearly unconstitutional, and thus null and void....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I find this interesting, since as head of the Executive Branch, he can order the NSA to do what this bill requires without bothering with a law, since no law exists requiring the NSA to collect telephone records on everyone.
However, he can't order the next President to continue his policies. There's a lot to be said for pinning these things down so that they can't be changed on a whim.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It's a real shame that the Supreme Court doesn't really agree with you.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It turns out that spying on Europe is perfectly legal in the US after this law passes, and that spying on the US is perfectly legal in Europe. . . .
Lucky for everyone's citizens, no European country and the US are incredibly close allies.
Are you saying the NSA is going to outsource spying on Americans to our allies? We can't allow this; we need to keep jobs right here in the US.