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One of the NSA’s most important surveillance authorizations is set to expire on December 31st, and all year, reformers have been looking at the reauthorization as a way to pare back the agency’s powers. But after months of negotiating terms, Congress is now preparing a bill with none of the proposed limits, and a number of troubling new measures that say could greatly expand the agency’s power.
Submitted by Rep. Nunes on Tuesday afternoon, the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 is based on a previous bill submitted by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), generally seen as the most NSA-friendly of the proposals. The current bill is narrower than Burr’s proposal in some areas, but makes a significant expansion to “about” collection, which allows the NSA to search communications that mention a given target but was not sent or received by the target. In practical terms, that could mean searching a message simply because it contains an email address, phone number, or other string of characters associated with a target.
[...] The bill would also codify the backdoor search loophole, which allows for intelligence agencies to search communications to and from US citizens without obtaining a warrant, as long as those communications were intercepted overseas. While that loophole is most associated with the NSA, it also includes domestic agencies like the FBI, which the current bill says “has the discretion to seek a warrant” if the bureau deems it necessary.
A vote is expected this week.
Congress is sneaking through a major expansion of NSA surveillance powers
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @01:35PM (14 children)
If you know about it, are they really hiding anything? The American folks don't really care about anything unless it directly affects them, so they're just not paying attention, as usual.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Thursday December 21 2017, @01:55PM (6 children)
Depends on the political climate and how it's spun. If this were still the Obama era we'd never hear the end of how barry-o (barry? who the fuck is barry?) and the rest of the librul slime wants to spy on you. Now I'd expect to hear how it's going to help make america great again and build a wall or something.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday December 21 2017, @06:53PM (4 children)
Obama reduced the scope and Trump is expanding it. Your false equivalency is false.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday December 21 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)
Did you reply to the right post?
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday December 21 2017, @07:07PM
Yes. Apparently I don't know how to read though!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @10:33PM (1 child)
Reduced the scope? Which bill was that? The USA Freedom Act?
Also, I'm quite tired of this 'This evil piece of garbage is less evil than this other evil piece of garbage!' nonsense; it's such a vapid thing to argue about and it doesn't justify anything. I don't care who does it or who the people being talked about are. I don't want to see it. I want it to vanish from existence. You might even say I want a safe space from this type of content, or perhaps just a trigger warning. It's an eyesore. Vanish!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 22 2017, @02:35AM
Klaatu barada necktie!
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday December 21 2017, @09:16PM
Mass surveillance and the abridgment of civil rights is a bipartisan affair. I believe you have both R's and D's both simultaneously lambasting it and supporting it. The Orange Anus is the Orange Anus, and his bullshit is expected and excoriated. Ol' Barry could do nothing wrong, and the masses cheered him on as his fucked over our rights.
In any case, it's fucking pointless and a waste of money. Why intercept the traffic when they can just come in with guns, threaten Facebook's executives, wield that unPatriot Act, and gather the data locally?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday December 21 2017, @02:52PM (1 child)
Close, but not quite.
10% of Americans will see this as an unconscionable invasion of privacy and have a chilling effect on the universe.
10% of Americans will see this as a way to strengthen the security of America by allowing to scan content.
1% of Americans will get the logical connection that all the discussion and promises about "Yeah we'll take a copy of everything but we won't search it, like Google or Microsoft does," were the absolute horseshit as we said when the promise was made that this would NEVER happen to us. (And no, I won't cite it... go do your own research if that statement is true.)
79% of Americans will see it as not their problem as you suggested. More may join one side or the other by education, but not enough to keep that 10% that are going to find a way to do this, to do this.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Thursday December 21 2017, @04:49PM
At best, 1% of Americans will see it at all. It doesn't matter what percentages they like it hate it, because no one will notice.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @06:41PM (3 children)
Everything Congress votes on is public knowledge, and all the various horrors pushed through are always known about. However, if you can't get the media to focus on it then a very small number of citizens will know about it! It is effective secrecy, not total. Thus why it is so important for the powers that be to control the media, they can literally fabricate the reality for a vast majority of people and pull the rug out from any naysayers.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday December 21 2017, @07:12PM (2 children)
Calling a vote before anyone has a chance to read the bill is pretty sneaky...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @08:49PM (1 child)
Funny how both sides do that to each other
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @09:35PM
Is the political equivalency game really necessary for this comment? No one mentioned rep/dem. This is one of the reasons I think there are bots / shills all over this site. It has been reported that libertarians / conservatives are more highly targeted for manipulation so it wouldn't surprise me if this small site was actually a bigger target than many others.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday December 21 2017, @10:33PM
Remember the good old pre-Internet days, when legislative bodies could actually sneak things through because we didn't have ubiquitous visibility, and these sorts of issues never crossed the 'care enough to actively stay up-to-date on if you're not employed in politics' threshold? I wonder how long it will take before the new blood cycles in, and after having been raised by Facebook and Twitter, they automatically assume everything they do is in a fishbowl.