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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: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday June 02 2015, @09:42PM
So, looking at the experience of a country with legitimate reasons to fear terrorist actions, let's figure out what we're getting voted in next, to protect the children:
- Mandatory gun carrying: everyone, not just the conscripts, because this is 'Murrica
- Systematic laws discriminating citizens with the same ethnicity as the enemy (including exception to rule 1, by the way): the next male president, probably.
- building walls along our borders while maintaining the incentives to try and cross them: Check. in progress
- Checkpoint in other people's territories: Check. kinda, see TSA rules for foreign airports
- Targeted assassinations abroad: Check. Gotta learn more from Mossad, we keep missing or overdoing it
- Arbitrary Military operations of a punitive nature: check
- Still being called a victim by pointing out to a past trauma: Check.
Whoa. Bibi for US president, we're ready!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @01:00PM
Dude, this is a major "Poe's Law" post.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not! (I'm guessing you are).
These are all pretty good ideas, actually.