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Congress has sent legislation to the president reviving and remaking a disputed post-9/11 surveillance program two days after letting it temporarily expire.
The vote in the Senate Tuesday was 67-32. The House already has passed the bill, and President Barack Obama plans to sign it quickly.
The legislation will phase out, over six months, the once-secret National Security Agency bulk phone records collection program made public two years ago by agency contractor Edward Snowden.
It will be replaced by a program that keeps the records with phone companies but allows the government to search them with a warrant.
Senate Republican leaders opposed the House bill but were forced to accept it unchanged after senators rejected last-ditch attempts to amend it.
The story is being covered live by The Guardian.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, one of the most voluble defenders of the NSA in the past two years, has offered a more measured endorsement of Tuesday’s vote. She says she voted for the bill because it was “the best opportunity to quickly get [surveillance] programs back up and running.”
She emphasizes that the bill will allow “this and two other important counterterrorism programs to continue,” an allusion to Section 215 and the “lone-wolf” and “roving wiretap” provisions of the Patriot Act.
“I believe these programs are necessary to protect American lives and prevent terrorist attacks in our country,” she said in a statement.
Deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU, which did not back the USA Freedom Act, has nonetheless described the bill as “a milestone”.
“This is the most important surveillance reform bill since 1978, and its passage is an indication that Americans are no longer willing to give the intelligence agencies a blank check,” Jaffer said in a statement.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Freeman on Tuesday June 02 2015, @09:38PM
TL;DR NSA Shutdown their phone collection gathering just to start it back up again. Yay, Freedom...
Comment taken from the Guardian Link listed in the article:
" 5.15pm 17:15
NSA to temporarily restart bulk collection
In a bizarre twist, the passage of the USA Freedom Act – a bill that will end a program that collects phone records en masse – means the temporary resumption that same mass collection program.
From the Guardian’s national security editor Spencer Ackerman:
The NSA, facing legal uncertainty after the Senate failed to pass the bill last month, shut down the bulk collection of US phone records at 8pm Sunday 31 May.
But since the bill calls for a grace period of six months to “transition” the program so the phone companies remain the repositories of metadata they generate, the dragnet is now set to relaunch just to be shut down again in December.
A senior administration official told the Guardian the NSA was facing “a restarting process.”
— Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman)
June 2, 2015
Can't make this up: NSA shut down bulk US phone data collection at 8pm Sunday. Now it's going to *restart it* for 180 days for 'transition'"
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday June 02 2015, @09:46PM
I do have to repair my trailer, so I have one that works before I get a new one this winter.
I haven't carried anything on my trailer, ever. It's the most expensive model, too.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday June 02 2015, @10:07PM
When the government was taking it all, (don't believe that pen register data bullshit for a second) they had the capability for full digital take on the entire conversation. Even Carriers don't spin that much storage. So this suggests maybe it will be back to just pen register data from now on.
I'd like to see proof of that fiber optic cable being cut in AT&T's data center. But that will never happen.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2015, @10:36PM
Why would you want companies to hold the data instead? The problem is that the data is being gathered for the government *at all*. This bill is pure garbage.
(Score: 2) by TLA on Wednesday June 03 2015, @01:43AM
simple reason: so there is a clear line of sight for a criminal prosecution should that data disappear, financial penalties for breaches, and extra burden on telcos to ensure the security of that data and the ability to furnish instant access to whichever Government agency shows up with a piece of paper demanding it.
What would they do to contractors such as Snowden who leak such information? Chase them literally to the ends of the Earth over a trumped up charge of treason with the intent to throw them down a deep hole? This whole surveillance thing costs money, the Government have already spent a shitload on something they are already having trouble handling because of its sheer scale, they say it's time to offload some of that responsibility with no benefit for those shouldered with it and everything to lose should they fuck it up. Plus it gets them around that pesky little thing called the Constitution of the United States.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday June 03 2015, @02:03AM
Plus it gets them around that pesky little thing called the Constitution of the United States.
No, it doesn't. The government can't just hire companies to violate people's rights to get around the constitution, because the companies become a de facto part of the government at that point.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday June 03 2015, @09:41AM
Maybe, but it will probably take you best part of a decade to drag that argument through all the relevant courts to get a favourable ruling. At which point the government will simply find some other equally questionable loophole / workaround that allows them to move the goalposts again. Rinse, repeat.
They only have to string you along until they can realise their ultimate objective of installing net-connected electro-shock compliance chips in everybody's brain. You know, For teh Freedumz.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @01:03PM
They can and routinely do.
(Score: 2) by TLA on Wednesday June 03 2015, @03:44PM
they can, do, and the Sunset Clause is why.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday June 03 2015, @04:17PM
While they technically can do it, it isn't constitutional. It's not like they're actually bypassing the constitution; they're just ignoring it.
(Score: 2) by TLA on Wednesday June 03 2015, @07:14PM
it wouldn't be Constitutional for a Government agency to do it. I think a private company is a bit of unsettled case law as to whether or not a private concern being paid by Government becomes a part of Government. Are you a Government employee if you're on welfare? How about a Veteran's Pension? Or better yet, a VA resident?
Pre-empting the extreme, the ability to bend Government agencies such as Law Enforcement to your whim depends less on how good your manners are, more on how thick your pocketbook is. The United States has the best Government money can buy. But we're getting off topic.
The Constitution is designed to limit the reach of Government, by specifically telling the Government what they *are* allowed to do. Anything not specified in the document that would appear to violate any other clause is an automatic no-no, and while the gathering of personal information by Government for unspecified purposes is not specifically allowed by the Constitution and is in fact prohibited by the 4th Amendment, that same amendment DOES NOT APPLY to a corporate fiction because as it doesn't have a personality with the same inalienable rights as guaranteed by the Constitution to living human beings with souls, the restrictive Amendments also do not apply to it. The Constitution applies to the People and it applies to the Government.
The preceding paragraph represents pretty much the sum total of my understanding of the basic mechanism of the Contitution of the United States. Not being a student of United States Constitutional Law, I stand to be corrected by an expert with credentials.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday June 03 2015, @08:19PM
it wouldn't be Constitutional for a Government agency to do it. I think a private company is a bit of unsettled case law as to whether or not a private concern being paid by Government becomes a part of Government. Are you a Government employee if you're on welfare? How about a Veteran's Pension? Or better yet, a VA resident?
Whether it has been to court or not, it is blatantly unconstitutional for the government to hire companies to perform tasks that it cannot itself perform. They just become de facto agents of the government at that point.
The Constitution is designed to limit the reach of Government, by specifically telling the Government what they *are* allowed to do.
Exactly. That's why allowing the government to get around it by hiring corporations to do what they want to do would make the entire thing useless. Surely you can see this?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2015, @09:20AM
Until you can prove it in court, it doesn't matter how obvious or intuitive it is or who knows it. Like WRT law enforcement, its not what you know, its what you can prove.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday June 04 2015, @10:00AM
Well, yes, at the end of the day, the government has the power, and it ignores the constitution with near impunity because it has so much power. It's a matter of getting enough people to do something about it.