SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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, Insightful) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Tuesday June 02 2015, @10:35PM
Patriot Act vs. USA Freedom Act
Heads, they win
Tails, you lose
Somehow, commercially outsourcing of government spying on your personal communications is viewed as a victory for civil liberty.
Double tap, right to the head.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday June 02 2015, @10:51PM
Our only hope is that the carriers are incompetent.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by captain normal on Wednesday June 03 2015, @05:21AM
Actually the TelCos have been archiving this information for years. I didn't realize that they had been keeping actual conversions and texts, as well as email till Snowden released the info on NSA. I knew that the TelCos and large ISPs kept records of who contacted who and when for years.
Now I would like to know why it's not OK for government to collect and keep such data, but it's OK for large corporations to do so. Actually I doubt that the NSA ever collected and archived this information. It was the Big TelCos (ATT, Verizon, Comcast, Sprint, etc) that did and have always collected and kept this information and then after the Patriot Act, opened it up to the Government.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @08:06AM
Hint: because the government is bound to the Constitution whereas large corps are not. Therefore if ever SCOTUS decides NSA cannot spy on US citizens, all is fine, the corps will do the job for them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday June 03 2015, @06:42PM
Plus, they can easily put terms in the EULAs that say it's okay for them to do it and you can't sue them ("binding arbiration" or whatever?).
Oh, but you can decline the terms and instead sign up with one of their competitors.
Hmm. Looks like the competitors have the same terms.
Oh wait, no--silly me. There is no competitor in this region.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday June 03 2015, @05:57PM
Somehow, commercially outsourcing of government spying on your personal communications is viewed as a victory for civil liberty.
This is Phase One. Phase Two is the TPP, where corporations will be able to search your personal communications. It is much easier (and probably profitable for someone) if these communications are concentrated in a place where they are more accessible than a government database.