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NSA-Reform Bill Fails In US Senate
New submitter Steven King writes with a link to The Daily Dot's report that the U.S. Senate has rejected the controversial USA Freedom Act, thus "all but guaranteeing that key provisions of the USA Patriot Act will expire"; had it passed, the bill would have allowed continued use of some mass data-collection practices, but with the addition of stronger oversight. From the article:
The Senate failed to reach agreement on passage of the USA Freedom Act, a bill to reauthorize and reform Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which the government has used to conduct bulk surveillance of Americans' phone records. The House of Representatives passed the bill last week by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, but Senate Democrats, who unified behind the bill, did not get enough Republican votes to assure passage. The linked piece also mentions that the EFF shifted its position on this bill, after a panel of Federal judges ruled that the Feds at the NSA had overstepped their bounds in collecting a seemingly unlimited trove of metadata relating to American citizen's phone calls.
An 'emergency order' will extend the rule until Congress comes back from a very well deserved vacation from their hard work :-/
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Now the NSA will feel compelled to stage a domestic terrorist act in cooperation with the FBI in order to make their point, needlessly endangering the life of Americans. Do you really want another 9/11?
Which older generation? The one that sent men to the moon and that designed and flew the SR-71? That one?
It's hard to predict what the end result of this will be.
On the one hand, I can imagine that letting the mass spying provisions expire, and forcing the bulk data collection to stop, could actually be a win for privacy in the long run. After all, inertia is powerful, especially in politics. It is much easier and less controversial to say, "let's continue with our existing domestic spying program" than it is to say, "now that we stopped spying on everyone for a while, let's start spying on everyone again."
On the other hand, letting everything expire could create an environment where it becomes easy for fear to rule the day (or, easier than usual). We'll no doubt have politicians eager to scare us with stories of how letting bulk domestic surveillance expire makes us unsafe and vulnerable to terrorists, and so "we need to do something now before we die!" Then, new spying legislation could be hastily pushed through that is no better (or worse, depending on your perspective) than what we have now.
As I said, I think it is hard to predict the ultimate outcome, but if the recent past is any indicator, I sadly suspect that fear will win.
"USA Freedom Act" - what evil manipulative piece of shit gave that name to a bill on communication monitoring?
Right, and all 12 year olds are uber-hackers supreme.
You can pretty much bet that the cool new cutting edge tech your young technophile or fresh college graduate is playing with was invented and designed by somebody you call an "older generation".
We know how this works: Issue an emergency order until a bare-bones bill allowing basic programs can be passed by US congress. Then secretly append the nasty schedules of the failed bill into necessary bills such as bills of supply. The military-industrial complex will get the laws they want sooner rather than later.
all this and they are still whining about not being able to read Hillary's Bengazi emails?
I officially call Shenanigans!
Hey Congress and Senate! I got your meta data right here!
It's a lawyer thing. Most people in congress simply had no education that enables them to do an honest job.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It pisses me off to no end that they can just violate our rights all they want, do it for years on end, then....no harm no foul in the end.
There is no scenario to my mind where every person involved should be walking free in the sunlight. Every single analyst, every politician, every single person who knew the facts and didn't turn them in.
All broke the law, all are guilty and deserve to be made individual example of for they are each individually 100% guilty of what they did.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Please actually look at the older generation, and revisit your own. Many younger people have _no idea_ how the technology works, much like their older peers. They have considerable hands-on familiarity with newer tools and no older habits to unlearn, but wait that same 10 years and they will be in a similar situation. I'm old enough to remember when 'C' and 'BASIC' were new and exciting. And it's a delight with my older colleagues and peers to learn new tools, and a personal delight to walk the young programmers through the same problems we had decades ago, problems they didn't realize the new tools would also have or which they ignored in testing.
While this is true of many there are those that do excel with tech. I also know that there are many of the younger generation who think that because they know how to use twitter they are special somehow but when their laptop wont boot they bring it to this old man to fix.