Major US Tech Firms Press Congress For Internet Surveillance Reforms (reuters.com)

Dustin Volz, reporting for Reuters: Facebook, Amazon and more than two dozen other U.S. technology companies pressed Congress on Friday to make changes to a broad internet surveillance law, saying they were necessary to improve privacy protections and increase government transparency. The request marks the first significant public effort by Silicon Valley to wade into what is expected to be a contentious debate later the year over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, parts of which will expire on Dec. 31 unless Congress reauthorizes them. Of particular concern to the technology industry and privacy advocates is Section 702, which allows U.S. intelligence agencies to vacuum up vast amounts of communications from foreigners but also incidentally collects some data belonging to Americans that can be searched by analysts without a warrant.

Comments

No NOT just "incidentally"

[ScentCone]

Most of the lefty press is doing its hardest to not report on this week's news that the FISA court issued a scathing rebuke of the Obama administration for a protracted, sustained, deliberate embrace of purposeful 4th amendment violations of untold thousands of US citizens, and the FBI's dissemination of NSA-collected information on these people, without legal cover from a court, to "third parties." The courts had told the Obama administration specifically what they needed to change in order to become constitutionally compliant, and the Obama administration completely blew them off. A lot of this intersects with the scope of special counsel Mueller's authority in his current look-around, so hopefully he'll follow the trail down those "third party" rabbit holes and find out who was putting that huge pile of data to work, how, and to what end and at whose request.