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: 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.