As Expected, USA Freedom Act Aims To Stop Worst NSA Abuses
from the a-step-in-the-right-direction dept
As was expected, a new bill to curb the NSA’s excesses was introduced in both houses of Congress this morning, with very strong backing in both houses and on both sides of the aisle (in terms of having both powerful sponsors, and lots and lots of co-sponsors). The bill is not perfect, and it is not the final answer to all the NSA’s activities, but it’s a big step in the right direction — stopping dragnet surveillance, reforming the way the FISA court works and adding some more transparency (we described many of the details in our post last week, and the bill matches what was expected). It has a decent chance of passing, but getting anything through Congress can be a chore these days. We’ll be following what happens with this bill closely. You can see the full bill below or the quick two pager describing the details.
Filed Under: bulk collection, dragnet collection, fisa, fisa court, fisc, james sensensbrenner, nsa, nsa surveillance, pat leahy, usa freedom
Comments on “As Expected, USA Freedom Act Aims To Stop Worst NSA Abuses”
Queue the FUD from the NSA.
What was the one from Ron Wyden, Udall and Rand Paul called?
And we expect the NSA to start following laws now?
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If you ask them they are following the laws. It’s just according to them the laws mean whatever they want them to mean.
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They follow their own interpretation of the laws with their own blackjack and their own hookers
Waitaminit:
This one is just asking to be abused again by NSA
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Sadly cutting down their targets to just the people the suspects know or have contact with would be a significant curtailing of their activities.
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Even with that, we had tens of millions of Americans put onto the terrorist watch list by that method, including US Senators like the late Ted Kennedy.
Oversight This, Examine That
A huge exercise in bs: nowhere does the legislation mention unscrewing the backbone taps or reducing the flow.
I see lots of chatter regarding oversight, advocates, protection blah blah blah.
As Ed Snowden rightly pointed out, Section 215 authority is on it’s way out, but that doesn’t sweat the NSA. It’s collection prowess happens under Section 702, which will *not* be curtailed under this legislation, just supervised.
Re: Oversight This, Examine That
At this point I’d take a “just supervised” NSA… assuming actual supervision.
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Screw that! Shut them down completely. Fire everyone. Bring criminal charges against Alexander and Clapper. Open DOJ investigations into every company that cooperated with them. I want heads to roll.
Punishing the offending officers
When is someone going to get off their collective asses and
punish the offending people in charge of these offences?
I realize that many of them have a LOT of congressional
backing, but if Clapper / Alexander lied to congress they
should be brought to task. If you or I lied to congress the
way both of these asses did we would be drawn, quartered,
hung, ridden out of town on a rail and then eaten, and
likely worse. NO one has immunity not the lease the men we
had to trust to be telling the truth, which it has become
VERY clear they did NOT!!!
the Constitution was there before any of this happened ..It was worded correctly and they still abused it , this wont change a thing just another piece of paper in their eyes
Bullshit. This is theater to project the illusion that congress is actually doing something days before an election because certain individuals KNOW they’re about to get their asses booted right the fuck out.
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You are aware that no sitting members of Congress are up for re-election next week right? There are a couple special elections to fill vacant seats (deaths and people moving to other political office) but no re-elections. That’s a major reason that the shutdown was able to happen, it’s not an election year so members of Congress didn’t feel that their jobs were in as much danger.
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You are correct, of course, but Confucius say: “Sometimes it’s easier to tip scales if you shake table.”
I’m very glum. I believe that the digital communications infrastructure, in toto, is going to be too tempting a target for any sovereign power to resist tapping it up the wazoo, presuming of course that the sovereign has the resources.
We (the IT profession) have delivered the turnkey global surveillance state, and the only way out would be to smash the machines. No future.
What reason do we have to believe that the communications of the President, Congress and the Judiciary are not being monitored?
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Or create a new machine.
i bet it doesn’t stop anything. it may well stop a lot more from being seen and known about, but i bet it just continues as if nothing has happened! i am talking about US citizens though. there may well be a bit of easing back on the spying on everyone else, just to try to put out a bit of show
When all else fail they just pull the freedom card.
Because obviously terrorists hate freedom and everyone who disagrees is a terrorist.
freedom my @$$
Freedom my @$$. Freedom Act? Oh please. America (and the west) won’t stop spying or budding into other’s businesses until they have the whole world is under their iron fists. Bullcrap using “anti-terrorism” as an excuse for world domination.
When?
When can we expect to see the outcome of this? I’m at the edge of my seat with anticipation of how this works out.
Secret Law
Yet again this FISA secret law issue raises it’s ugly head. My understanding of the law (and I am no expert) is that it exists to promote a better society and punish those that, by there actions, do damage to others.
How on God’s earth can anybody be expected to conform to “secret laws”?
The similarities to the nazi’s are frightening
Those Acronyms....
Is Rep. Sensenbrenner the sponsor of this bill in the House or is there another member of Congress with a staffer who is excellent at coming up with backronyms?