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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: 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.