Senate Approves Bill to Rein in N.S.A. Surveillance

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/us/politics/senate-surveillance-bill-passes-hurdle-but-showdown-looms.html

by colinmegill • 11 years ago

230 133 11 years ago

josh2600• 11 years ago

The title of this article would suggest that there is a delta between where we are now and where we are after the bill. Is there a material difference in the way NSA will behave after the bill? Are surveillance powers any weaker if they can still query CDRs from operators?

Isn't this, on some level, a subsidy to ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint?

jessaustin2• 11 years ago

At least now we get to see the invoice. Don't imagine that Room 641A was set up for free.

namecast• 11 years ago

I actually wouldn't be surprised if it were.

"Hey $ATT_EXECUTIVE - see what happened to [Qwest's CEO] Joe Nacchio? Good. Now go splice me some fiber or you'll be joining him."

nsnick2• 11 years ago

Well before this bill (yesturday) bulk collection of phone data was illegal. Now it is legal.

agorabinary• 11 years ago

A weak bill that does little or nothing to properly stymie the torrent of civil liberties intrusions. Much stronger legislation is needed. At least Rand Paul's efforts produced a symbolic if temporary rebuke of Patriot Act powers.

davidw2• 11 years ago

Much stronger legislation is needed.

Make sure you let your legislators know this via a phone call or written (not email) comunication. Might not change things overnight, but it's pretty easy to do.

sandstrom• 11 years ago

Some would argue it won't make much of a difference what the public thinks:

http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fil...

toomuchtodo• 11 years ago

I went in person to my local reps office. demandprogress.org had a letter I could print to provide [I didn't use their letter; I provided my own]

infamouscow3• 11 years ago

The USA Freedom Act that passed the House and Senate extends the Patriot Act until December 31, 2017. This article is complete horseshit.

istvan__4• 11 years ago

Not a surprise, given it is New York Times...

javert• 11 years ago

Just to back this up, the NYT has been incredibly biased over and over and over and should not be treated as a reliable source of news.

SuperKlaus• 11 years ago

Not sure why this gets downvoted - the NYT has a terrible track record reporting about issues like this so it's a fair point.

fweespeech• 11 years ago

This is hilarious in a gallows humor kind of way.

They get articles trumpeting that they "did away" with Section 215, they get articles claiming they "reigned in" Surveillance by passing a new bill.

The reality is nothing changed for all this theater, its just been dressed up in different clothes to put the bad publicity behind them.

stevewepay• 11 years ago

I honestly can't tell from the article if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

glitchdout• 11 years ago

It's a bad thing. Also, you shouldn't trust the Times on issues like this. And I wonder why, of all the available articles, the Times was the one chosen to be submitted here on HN.

Anyway, just read ArsTechnica reporting:

* Let the snooping resume: Senate revives Patriot Act surveillance measures http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/let-the-snooping-...

* How the end of Patriot Act provisions changes NSA surveillance http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/how-the-end-of-pa...

randomname2• 11 years ago

Such doublespeak in the title of this article.

jgrowl• 11 years ago

Fitting for this bill named FREEDOM.

colinbartlett• 11 years ago

I have read so many articles over the past week about various bills and efforts to further them or block them and I have no idea what's going on at this point. I still read this and do not understand.

the Senate voted on Tuesday to curtail the federal government’s sweeping surveillance
the passage... will lead to the reinstatement of government surveillance efforts

Did we stop the surveillance? Did we continue it? Is this really going to do anything at all to change the culture of mass collection? Who is counting this as a win? Who is against this and who is for this?

headShrinker• 11 years ago

The way I understand it, the patriot act superseded existing spy legislation. While the the patriot act was not written well, it what better than what it replaced. Now instead of further shaping of the patriot act, we have a more draconian preexisting law that allows the government to spy.

jdp234• 11 years ago

Great questions. USA Freedom has some reforms, and shifts the collection to the telcos rather than the NSA. Then again it largely keeps the current regime in place (which makes it a win for the NSA), and it misses out on a lot of potential improvements. Some privacy and civil liberties organizations supported it; EFF and ACLU neither supported nor opposed it.

Unfortunately, more aggressive reforms -- like the Surveillance State Repeal Act -- weren't on the table; and there was a lot of concern that the Senate would further weaken it. So given the makeup of the House and Senate, passing the House version unmodified after a sunset was probably the best outcome. ACLU's Jameel Jaffer says "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."

While the sunset doesn't actually have any long-term effect, IMHO it's still symbolically important: it meant that the usual tactics of "engineer a last-minute crisis" didn't work this time. And because of Rand Paul, it's actually going to be an issue in the GOP Presidential campaign -- which is huge. [Sanders voted against it as well, saying it was too weak.]

So on the whole I'd say it's a win for reformers ... a small win, admittedly, and tinged with disappointment that even after Snowden we couldn't do better. Still, it's a long term battle. And frankly it's been a while since we've had even a small win.

phaus2• 11 years ago

Its technically a win, but in reality its a victorious battle that has likely cost us the war. Now everyone who voted for this anemic pile of shit can go back to his/her constituents and brag about how they fought the tyranny of the NSA. This "victory" is going to prevent a more meaningful reform bill from gaining any traction in the future. Meanwhile, the NSA gets >99% of what they want.

jdp234• 11 years ago

And, here's EFF's statement:

Technology users everywhere should celebrate, knowing that the NSA will be a little more hampered in its surveillance overreach, and both the NSA and the FISA court will be more transparent and accountable than it was before the USA Freedom Act.

It’s no secret that we wanted more ...

Even so, we’re celebrating. We’re celebrating because, however small, this bill marks a day that some said could never happen—a day when the NSA saw its surveillance power reduced by Congress. And we’re hoping that this could be a turning point in the fight to rein in the NSA....

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/usa-freedom-act-passes...

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

I may be wrong but didn't the House actually want to pass a rather strong version of the USA Freedom Act and then the House Committee drastically watered it down before sending it to the Senate?

If that is true then it's most disappointing. Couldn't the House members have done something about that (just calling for a replacement of the Committee members, I guess?). The House Committee doing something like that sounds quite undemocratic, because the House Representatives passed a significantly different bill and then these "middle-men" intervened to kill it.

tootie• 11 years ago

I think that aside from the reforms that were left on the table, it's another step to be exlicit about what's allowed and what isn't. For the past 14 years, the view from within the executive was that if no one has said one way or the other, let's just do it until we get caught. Now, we're zeroing in on an explicit set of rules and parameters so there's less ambiguity.

snarfy• 11 years ago

USA Freedom has some reforms, and shifts the collection to the telcos rather than the NSA.

It also shifts the legal liability, which I believe was the purpose. I don't know if I would call this a win.

rand3342• 11 years ago

See my comment above. It's not "symbolically a good thing"--the intelligence community wanted this. It just expands their powers. It's only symbolic effect is that now, the average American not paying attention, actually things that we've made reform and can stop caring about it. This is a fucking sad day. I'm disappointed in everyone who is saying this is anything but a terrible thing.

https://regmedia.co.uk/2015/05/01/and_then_i_told_them.jpg?x...

waffle_ss• 11 years ago

Sadly even if the Patriot Act were wholly removed, which it wasn't, thanks to FISA we'd still have secret laws authorizing mass surveillance due to secret court rulings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

tehwebguy• 11 years ago

You are confused because NYT headline is straight up false.

Nothing was even curtailed, the only difference is that now the NSA has some massive permanent power to get the exact same meta data as before but now it puts the burden on telecoms to keep it.

Zero of the existing programs that Snowden revealed to the world have been ended as a result of this bill passing.

MarkPNeyer• 11 years ago

agreed; the NYT headline is a lie.

the program as-is was ruled to be illegal by the supreme court, saying "congress didn't clearly authorize this level of surveillance."

with this bill, congress has clearly authorized this level of surveillance.

narrator• 11 years ago

This is what is known as a public/private partnership. The private organization is paid to be a mercenary for the government. Of course mercenaries are much more ethical and are much less likely to do unethical things for government money vs government employees. /s

deelowe• 11 years ago

Yep. Secret courts stay, data collection stays, nothing has changed. Well, one thing has changed. They've raised the bar yet again for becoming a telecommunications company...

yellowapple5• 11 years ago

On one hand, the pro-surveillance folks think it goes too far in reducing the ability of the NSA to collect intelligence data. On the other hand, the anti-surveillance folks think that it doesn't go far enough, and would have much preferred the USA Freedom Act to not make it through the Senate (along with the existing lack of the Patriot Act's renewal). There aren't very many folks in the middle on this.

The compelling part is that the existing surveillance programs have yet to have a significant impact on fighting terrorism; while the pro-surveillance folks flail about on "well that's taken out of context blah blah blah", I think that alone is starting to make lawmakers wonder "well, if it's not actually preventing terrorism, then why does it exist?".

shard972• 11 years ago

Did we stop the surveillance? Did we continue it?

Continued. Now companies just have to hand over their data to companies like fireye who will have legal immunity to handle our data and hand it off to the NSA.

bradleyjg• 11 years ago

This is a reasonably comprehensive description of the House bill that the Senate just agreed to:

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2015/05/so-whats-in-the-new-usa-f...

The substantive part of the post starts at the header "Bulk Collection Under Section 215"

ryguytilidie• 11 years ago

I think the main problem I'm having is that any law we pass won't change anything. If our government can't even follow our own constitution, how do we expect the NSA to start following the law re: spying on US citizens?

chris_wot3• 11 years ago

Actually, mass surveillance was stopped because Congress allowed section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act to sunset (finally!) which meant that the NSA could no longer maintain their legal fiction that justified their program.

Ironically they are going to restart the program because of the USA Freedom Act [1], which allows for a 180 day window within which to transition over to the new requirements.

The USA Freedom Act does a few things to prevent the NSA from doing what they have been doing:

Firstly, it modifies the part of the Patriot Act that allowed for free and unfettered access to business and personal documents (the "library records" provision") by changing FISA to only allow for a warrant to be granted if:

  (i) there are reasonable grounds to
  believe that the call detail records sought
  to be produced based on the specific selection
  term required under subparagraph (A) are relevant 
  to such investigation; and

  (ii) there are facts giving rise to a
  reasonable, articulable suspicion that such
  specific selection term is associated with a
  foreign power or an agent of a foreign power

(which is ironic, given this was ALWAYS the intent of FISA and I'd argue the original Patriot Act!)

It also makes sure that the NSA can't go on a fishing expedition - they have to have actual grounds to capture the information. They can't grab every single record now, because the requirement is now that the warrant has to show that they are only "using call detail records with a direct connection to such specific selection term as the basis for production of a second set of call detail records".

It's worse for the NSA now, because they said that they needed the records in perpetuity for data mining, because of the Act now says that they have to adopt "minimization procedures that require the prompt destruction of all call detail records produced under the order that the Government determines are not foreign intelligence information", and and they must "destroy all call detail records produced under the order as prescribed by such procedures."

There's more awesome stuff in the Act, but I gotta get to work.

1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/02/nsa-surveillance-co...

tgb• 11 years ago

Sadly, there seems to be a big difference between "determines are not foreign intelligence information" and "does not determine is foreign intelligence information." Oops, we didn't have the resources to verify that this wasn't a target, so we'll just keep it around until it's proven innocent.

Or am I just being paranoid? I don't really know anything about this.

sroerick2• 11 years ago

Functionally, this is a loss.

This bill codifies the bulk collection of metadata for the first time. It gives power to the deeply corrupt telecoms, and is very similar to CISPA in its philosophy.

But there's one important point: even though this reform is a complete and utter falsehood, it was caused by the programs Snowden brought to light.

If Snowden hadn't come forward as a whistleblower, none of this would have happened. So while this bill is a failure, it is a massive vindication for Snowden.

This bill demonstrates the massive need for whistleblower reform. This fight isn't over. But we can still win it.

mpyne6• 11 years ago

Snowden managed to codify the bulk collection of metadata, help enshrine a bunch of other legal authorities, and burned international cooperation against actual bad guys to the ground in the process. But somehow this all vindicates him? I thought the ends were supposed to justify the means?

rand3342• 11 years ago

No, the surveillance didn't stop; it's just fucking doublespeak. One of the circuit courts declared that PATRIOT section 215 doesn't actually authorize the bulk collection. So, the NSA stopped giving a shit about PATRIOT. The FREEDOM act re-authorizes it with new loopholes/etc., namely that specific warrants are now required against specific persons, but it specifically defines that "person" also means "corporation", so they can get a "specific warrant" against "all of Verizon". There's a bit more transparency, but not enough. So, now the programs can continue, but they might need to be shifted around a bit. But it effectively authorizes mass surveillance on the American public to continue, even more directly than 215 had previously authorized it. I'll give you a clue about how painfully fucking obvious this whole thing was:

- Feinstein supported it; need I say more? - It's called FREEDOM, and we all know that means its anything but, just like PATRIOT. - Rand Paul was the only one opposing it. - The NSA was fine with PATRIOT expiring and FREEDOM being enacted. - "(2) SPECIFIC SELECTION TERM- The term 'specific selection term' means a discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a person, entity, account, address, or device, used by the Government to limit the scope of the information or tangible things sought pursuant to the statute authorizing the provision of such information or tangible things to the Government.'." - (2) UNITED STATES PERSON- The term `United States person' has the meaning given that term in section 101 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1801).

From FISA/50 U.S.C. 1801: (i) “United States person” means a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence (as defined in section 1101 (a)(20) of title 8), an unincorporated association a substantial number of members of which are citizens of the United States or aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence, or a corporation which is incorporated in the United States, but does not include a corporation or an association which is a foreign power, as defined in subsection (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this section.

Get it now? Jesus, people are thick. All USA FREEDOM does is expand their powers with the illusion of reducing them. All the FREEDOM act supporters are tripping fucking balls, including the EFF. I will never again donate money to the EFF. I was surprised to see an enemy in an organization whom I thought was an ally.

woah• 11 years ago

Big question- does the NSA even follow laws?

imron• 11 years ago

Did we stop the surveillance? Did we continue it?

Up is down, black is white, we've always been at war with Eastasia.

jakejake• 11 years ago

"The passage of the measure, achieved after a vigorous debate on the Senate floor, will lead to the reinstatement of government surveillance efforts"

What the heck does this mean? Should the title of the article read "Senate votes to keep the NSA doing almost exactly the same thing?"

jdp234• 11 years ago

The Senate rejected all the amendments, and passed the same version of USA Freedom that the House did, so this round of legislative battles is over. Barring anything unexpected, the next fight is 2017 over FISA renewal.

[All the amendments they voted on would have weakened the protections. Paul and Wyden weren't allowed to introduce their amendments to strengthen it.]

dragonwriter6• 11 years ago

Given that 215 had already expired, and (as I understand) that was the one thing in previously-existing authorities that USA FREEDOM Act restrained a bit (while expanding others), is it accurate to say that USA FREEDOM Act actually reins in anything? Or would it be more accurate to say it is a pure expansion of surveillance powers?

bmelton• 11 years ago

Compared to yesterday, it is an expansion of surveillance authority.

Compared to May 30th, it is a slight contraction of surveillance authority.

bcheung• 11 years ago

The USA Freedom Act? Based on the Patriot Act should I assume it is the exact opposite of freedom?

From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act

"According to supporters of the USA Freedom Act, the USA Freedom Act was meant to end the bulk collection of Americans' metadata by the NSA, end the secret laws created by the FISA court, and introduce a "Special Advocate" to represent public and privacy matters."

"The USA Freedom Act is perceived as containing several concessions to pro-surveillance legislators meant to facilitate its passage, such as extending the Patriot Act powers until 2019."

I'm so confused. Is this bill a good thing or a bad thing?

blumkvist2• 11 years ago

I'm so confused. Is this bill a good thing or a bad thing?

I find it particularly amusing that you want somebody to make that judgement for you, while being obviously pro civil activism.

ChrisClark• 11 years ago

You can be both pro civil activism and not a lawyer at the same time. It's not bad to ask someone to help you understand a legal document.

kej3• 11 years ago

Assuming you have typical HN leanings, this bill is a qualified good thing. It ends the NSA bulk metadata collection, but keeps less controversial things like roving wiretaps.

CWuestefeld2• 11 years ago

No. Bulk metadata collection will continue, but is in the custody of the telecom companies. The only obstacle to NSA running amok through the data is having to say "please" to the telecom companies first.

AIUI, there's still no need for a warrant, and there's still no need for a specific individual as target.

Nothing was reined in, it was just shuffled around a bit.

istvan__4• 11 years ago

We should also stop calling these bills like "the patriot act", "USA freedom act" and replace the names with something like a unique identifier. That would remove some of the support from bills like the patriot act.

totalforge• 11 years ago

That'll never happen. Congressmen and senators would then not be able to say "...and my opponent voted against the America Awesome Act..." in the next election.

dragonwriter6• 11 years ago

We should also stop calling these bills like "the patriot act", "USA freedom act" and replace the names with something like a unique identifier.

All bills have a unique identifier (a bill number combined with the Congress in which it is introduced.)

However, its very common for them to have, as part of the content of the bill, language providing a title, which -- especially with controversial bills -- is often, for bills with controversial subject matter, itself a brand name designed to make the bill sound warm and fluffy.

The Unique IDs are hardly memorable and hard to keep straight which applies to which substance, so the titles are convenient and useful in most cases (and the convenience encourages the use, which is then exploited in the controversial cases.)

filoeleven2• 11 years ago

I'll repost this with minor edits from the last time I saw someone call for the sensible naming of bills in Congress:

See Downsize DC's One Subject at a Time Act (OSTA) which does almost exactly what you ask[0] in addition to eliminating riders. I have heard that what the bill wants to accomplish would require a constitutional amendment due to legislative entrenchment (the current congress cannot bind a future congress) but I do not know what the truth of the situation is.

Downsize DC's Agenda page has a list of all of their bills[1]. OSTA is the one I think has the best chance of being implemented. Some others with good ideas include:

* Read The Bills Act: 'Yea' votes require that the congressperson has read/heard the bill (no more "I didn't know that was in there!"), mandatory 7-day public review period of final bill text. I think that the additional requirement of a mandatory reading of a bill's text before a quorum will keep this one from being considered though.

* Enumerated Powers Act: Congress must cite the constitutional authority on which any proposed bill rests. The full text of OSTA[3] includes this citation.

I don't view Downsize DC as a very effective organization (don't sign up for their newsletter unless you like poorly-formatted rants), so I would love to see other orgs throw their weight behind OSTA and RTBA. It seems to me that it's something EFF or ACLU could support, for example, because so many of the things they fight against were enacted using sneaky riders.

[0]https://downsizedc.org/etp/one-subject [1]https://downsizedc.org/agenda

[3]https://downsizedc.org/blog-content/the-one-subject-at-a-tim...

grubles• 11 years ago

The USA Patriot Act is actually a ridiculous backronym: "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act

chiaro• 11 years ago

I was curious to see if my country (Australia) had a similar bad habit of wrapping up bills in rhetoric buzzwords. I found only eight bills (on the digest archive) that mentioned the word "Patriot" and, hilariously, they're all references to the American bill.

Splendor2• 11 years ago

Link to the bill text: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c113%3AH.R.3361%3A

Section regarding bulk collection: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c113:4:./temp/~c113LpL...:

cchip2• 11 years ago

"The Government shall compensate a person for reasonable expenses incurred for producing tangible things"... Great! Thirty pieces of silver for everyone!

chris_wot3• 11 years ago

Oh come on. That's not an issue by itself, it's perfectly reasonable under proper oversight to require that someone turn over material evidence. That's never been controversial.

efuquen• 11 years ago

For all those confused about this, this is a mild victory. Certainly better than the Patriot Act, but not as strong a piece of legislation as it could have been. EFF writes their opinion of it here:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/usa-freedom-act-passes...

"Technology users everywhere should celebrate, knowing that the NSA will be a little more hampered in its surveillance overreach, and both the NSA and the FISA court will be more transparent and accountable than it was before the USA Freedom Act.

It’s no secret that we wanted more.

...

infamouscow3• 11 years ago

The USA Freedom Act extends the Patriot Act until December 31, 2017. It seems like nobody, not even the EFF, read the actual legislation.

whoisthemachine• 11 years ago

Headline should be "Senate Approves Bill to Reinstate most of NSA Surveillance"

datamingle• 11 years ago

We were literally more free yesterday than today. We should have just left the 'Patriot' Act to expire and replace it with nothing

infamouscow3• 11 years ago

Read the last page of the USA Freedom Act, it extends the Patriot Act until December 31, 2017.

mindslight4• 11 years ago

Nytimes is as close to state-run media as there can be under our microkernel government.

As to our brief respite from one small part of tyranny: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9642843

yellowapple5• 11 years ago

microkernel government

Hah. I wish. In reality, it's more of a modular monolith than a proper microkernel.

cchip2• 11 years ago

Thanks Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, Microsoft, Yahoo and friends for being on the wrong side: https://www.reformgovernmentsurveillance.com/

From take action with Google: "Senator * said YES to USA Freedom. Say thank you and show your support." "Thank your Senator now for saying YES to the USA Freedom Act."

Freedom Act (Patriot Act v 2.0.. Same author: Rep. Sensenbrenner) must be vetoed... Someone please start a change.org thing, or whatever.

Freedom Act is going to require everyone to keep records for the NSA... Simple fix for the no funding problem... "No datacenter, no problem; we'll use yours"

Do not sacrifice your privacy for security.

yellowapple5• 11 years ago

Do not sacrifice your privacy for security.

Note that "security" is (or ought to be) in massive finger-quotes here. Bulk data collection like this is actually a liability in terms of data security, not an asset, due to being a large target for attack.

lani0• 11 years ago

if the senate approved, does it mean surveillance was actually good for the nation's security ?

AdmiralAsshat• 11 years ago

Ars Technica's coverage of the same event carried a slightly different headline:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/let-the-snooping-...

Splendor2• 11 years ago

According to The Verge[0], Senator Wyden -- who I trust very much in these matters -- said the passage of this bill is "the most significant victory for Americans’ privacy rights in more than a decade." That gives me some hope that this bill represents actual change.

[0] http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/2/8714651/senate-passes-usa-f...

dataker• 11 years ago

Is there any reason to assume it'd stop anyway?

If it hadn't been approved, I doubt the real outcome would've been different.

nsnick2• 11 years ago

The headline should read, "Senate Approves Bill to continue NSA phone surveillance."

ebel• 11 years ago

so snowden can come home ?

GizaDog• 11 years ago

Maybe but the FBI is taking over the spying role!

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FBI_SURVEILLANCE_F...

themeek2• 11 years ago

This isn't really right. The FBI does perform surveillance, but they aren't in charge of signals collection. The NSA is in charge of these capabilities - and also the protection of the Gov networks.

The FBI also spies, but it is not taking over the NSA's spy role.

They both spy. Neither is decreasing.

kelvin0• 11 years ago

In other news NSA lawyers have changed the definition of 'domestic surveillance'. Seriously, that would be hilarious.

conorgil145• 11 years ago

A Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) press release about the bill: https://cdt.org/press/victory-passage-of-usa-freedom-act-rei...

which links to a great table explaining the difference between the house and senate bills: https://cdt.org/insight/comparison-of-house-senate-versions-...

geetee• 11 years ago

How long until there is a new fee on my phone bill to pay for the storage and retrieval cost of this?

golemotron• 11 years ago

I'm sure that when Snowden's revelations came out the first thing that happened is that the government created a new more hidden level that could not be touched by any retaliatory regulation. How could this happen? Does the legislation call out the NSA by name? If it does consider that maybe another agency is now doing it.

pc2g4d• 11 years ago

Thoughts on next steps at the end of the article:

"Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, and Senator Leahy made it clear after passage that curtailing the phone sweeps might be only the beginning. The two are collaborating on legislation to undo a provision in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 that allows the government to read the contents of email over six months old. House members and senators from both parties are already eyeing a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that they say has also been abused by the government.

"But opponents of the law said they imagined further fights going forward for their positions, too. Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said she and others would continue to seek reforms and oversight.

"'It’s not the end,' she said."

Senate Approves Bill to Rein in N.S.A. Surveillance

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