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Republicans Block Latest Attempt At Curbing NSA Power

Posted by Soulskill on from the and-everybody-will-have-forgotten-about-it-in-two-years dept.

Robotron23 writes: The latest attempt at NSA reform has been prevented from passage in the Senate by a margin of 58 to 42. Introduced as a means to stop the NSA collecting bulk phone and e-mail records on a daily basis, the USA Freedom Act has been considered a practical route to curtailment of perceived overreach by security services, 18 months since Edward Snowden went public. Opponents to the bill said it was needless, as Wall Street Journal raised the possibility of terrorists such as ISIS running amok on U.S. soil. Supporting the bill meanwhile were the technology giants Google and Microsoft. Prior to this vote, the bill had already been stripped of privacy protections in aid of gaining White House support. A provision to extend the controversial USA Patriot Act to 2017 was also appended by the House of Representatives.

4 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. How did your senator vote? by khasim · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=113&session=2&vote=00282

    As you can see, it was pretty much along party lines.

  2. Re:Bill Rejected with Bi-Partisan agreeemnt by Saunalainen · · Score: 5, Informative

    A couple more Republican's voted against it than Democrats.

    "insightful"?

    If you look at the data (scroll down to "grouped by vote position", all but three Republicans voted against it, and all but one democrats in favour of it. So, a lot more than "a couple".

  3. Re:DID ANYONE READ THE ARTICLE? by jandrese · · Score: 5, Informative

    One Democrat and almost every Republican is not "bipartisan effort against liberty".

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  4. Re:So basically by whistlingtony · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ahem.... There were TWO bills, ONE of which was introduced by Jim Sensenbrenner, a republican in the House. I don't know how it started, and Sensenbrenner is the guy that helped WRITE the Patriot Act, who later said "oops". He gets credit for that in my book. Anyway, the HOUSE (R controlled) version went through committees and THAT version extended the Patriot act and didn't go far enough.

    The OTHER bill was introduced by Patrick Leahy, a Dem in the Senate. THAT version was stronger, and THAT version unequivocally was BLOCKED by Republicans in the Sentate.

    If you'd care to look for yourself... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...

    So, it seems you don't know what you're talking about....