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Filibuster Threat Means Trump Needs Senate Democrats to Pass Spying Bill

posted by martyb on Friday January 12 2018, @01:33PM   
from the pay-no-attention-to-the-TLA-behind-the-curtain dept.

DeathMonkey writes:

The House of Representatives passed legislation Thursday that would extend a controversial government spying power known as "Section 702" for another six years—without new privacy safeguards that had been sought by civil liberties groups.

Debate over the legislation now shifts over to the Senate, where it faces a filibuster threat from both Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

"If this Section 702 bill comes to the Senate, I will filibuster it," Wyden wrote in a tweet shortly after the House bill passed.

Wyden opposes the legislation because he believes that it offers too few protections for Americans' privacy rights. The powers granted by Section 702 are only supposed to be used against foreigners on foreign soil. But an American's communications can get swept up in the NSA's surveillance dragnet if they communicate with people overseas. Privacy advocates have championed an amendment to impose new privacy safeguards on the use of Section 702. But it was voted down by the House on Thursday.

[...] There isn't much time for the Senate to act. Section 702 expires on January 19, a little more than a week away.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/as-house-passes-surveillance-bill-wyden-and-paul-vow-filibuster/

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Original Submission

• changes as of January 9, 2018 changes as of January 9, 2018 (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:00AM (2 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:00AM (#621687)

  It seems there was some sort of direction provided by President Trump on the 9th of this year, which was Tuesday. This is it:

  https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICPG/ICPG-107.1.pdf [dni.gov]

  So now there will be regular public reports about numbers of USA people whose identities were revealed during intelligence investigations. Trump is actually going to be transparent about this, oddly fulfilling a promise that was made and ignored by his predecessor.

  Starting Score:	0		points
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  Informative=1, Total=1
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  Total Score:		1

• Re:changes as of January 9, 2018 (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anal Pumpernickel on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:30AM

  by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:30AM (#621718)

  He's going to be slightly transparent about the constitutional violations. Yes, slightly transparent, because revealing that number means very little. That's amazing. What a great leap forward. Asking for them to not violate the Constitution in the first place would be extremist, though.

  Parent

• Re:changes as of January 9, 2018 (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:17AM

  by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:17AM (#622052) Homepage Journal

  I personally directed the fix to the unmasking process. They unmasked people from my campaign staff. Never again!

  Parent