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posted by mrpg on Thursday December 21 2017, @01:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the christmas-tapping dept.

One of the NSA’s most important surveillance authorizations is set to expire on December 31st, and all year, reformers have been looking at the reauthorization as a way to pare back the agency’s powers. But after months of negotiating terms, Congress is now preparing a bill with none of the proposed limits, and a number of troubling new measures that say could greatly expand the agency’s power.

Submitted by Rep. Nunes on Tuesday afternoon, the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 is based on a previous bill submitted by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), generally seen as the most NSA-friendly of the proposals. The current bill is narrower than Burr’s proposal in some areas, but makes a significant expansion to “about” collection, which allows the NSA to search communications that mention a given target but was not sent or received by the target. In practical terms, that could mean searching a message simply because it contains an email address, phone number, or other string of characters associated with a target.

[...] The bill would also codify the backdoor search loophole, which allows for intelligence agencies to search communications to and from US citizens without obtaining a warrant, as long as those communications were intercepted overseas. While that loophole is most associated with the NSA, it also includes domestic agencies like the FBI, which the current bill says “has the discretion to seek a warrant” if the bureau deems it necessary.

A vote is expected this week.

Congress is sneaking through a major expansion of NSA surveillance powers


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday December 21 2017, @02:52PM (1 child)

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Thursday December 21 2017, @02:52PM (#612803) Journal

    Close, but not quite.

    10% of Americans will see this as an unconscionable invasion of privacy and have a chilling effect on the universe.
    10% of Americans will see this as a way to strengthen the security of America by allowing to scan content.
    1% of Americans will get the logical connection that all the discussion and promises about "Yeah we'll take a copy of everything but we won't search it, like Google or Microsoft does," were the absolute horseshit as we said when the promise was made that this would NEVER happen to us. (And no, I won't cite it... go do your own research if that statement is true.)

    79% of Americans will see it as not their problem as you suggested. More may join one side or the other by education, but not enough to keep that 10% that are going to find a way to do this, to do this.

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    This sig for rent.
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  • (Score: 2) by fishybell on Thursday December 21 2017, @04:49PM

    by fishybell (3156) on Thursday December 21 2017, @04:49PM (#612839)

    At best, 1% of Americans will see it at all. It doesn't matter what percentages they like it hate it, because no one will notice.