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House Votes To End Spy Agencies' Bulk Collection of Phone Data

Posted by timothy on from the big-brother-has-his-eye-on-you-just-the-same dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from a story at Reuters that gives a rare bit of good news for the Fourth Amendment: The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill on Wednesday that would end spy agencies' bulk collection of Americans' telephone data, setting up a potential showdown with the U.S. Senate over the program, which expires on June 1. The House voted 338-88 for the USA Freedom Act, which would end the bulk collection and instead give intelligence agencies access to telephone data and other records only when a court finds there is reasonable suspicion about a link to international terrorism.

6 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. They've invested billions by msobkow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They've invested billions if not trillions in the surveillance networks and infrastructure.

    Is anyone going to really believe it's all been mothballed at the stroke of a pen?

    I won't.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    1. Re:They've invested billions by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They've invested billions if not trillions in the surveillance networks and infrastructure.

      Is anyone going to really believe it's all been mothballed at the stroke of a pen?

      I won't.

      I don't think its the sunk money that matters to them. It's the heady feeling of autocracy and superpowers which they'll never give up. The NSA and CIA are significantly staffed by bad, treasonous, anti-democratic people.

      The bill that made it to the house floor was so watered down it was meaningless. It got so many votes because it was a way for congressmen to clean their skirts, while doing nothing significant to curtail the activities of the NSA.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
  2. Snowden... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So Snowden is going to be pardoned by Obama now, right? Because he's been proven to be correct time and time again, and congress continues to validate his position by voting to approve these counter-spy bills.

  3. "Ends spy agency bulk collection of phone data" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Have you actually read the text of the bill? The bulk collection of phone data is not only still allowed, they give legal protections and guidelines for monetary compensation to the businesses they order to collect the data.

    Oh yeah, and at the very bottom of the bill? They reauthorize another section of the Patriot Act.

  4. Re:Whatever... by Noah+Haders · · Score: 5, Insightful

    meh. I say that the section 215 of the patriot act as written is not necessarily a violation of the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments. it authorizes the collection of business records relevant to a terrorist investigation. it only became unconstitutional when "business records" was interpreted to mean "anything we want" and "investigation" was interpreted to mean "eternal vigilance." Section 215 could very easily be implemented in a way that is constitutionally sound, and thus the provision itself is not unconstitutional.

    Given the options on the table i would take the improvement. this legislative improvement, along with a bitch-slapped NSA who would stay within the intent of the law, is much better than what we had before.

  5. And: of which communication types by ron_ivi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Also -- why the focus on a tiny subset (just Metadata) of a dying communiation system (phone).

    It'd be far more interesting if they'd do something about far more invasive (not just metadata, but content too) that's being captured from (presumably) all internet traffic (skype, email, etc).