ACLU and EFF Endorse Weaker USA Freedom Act Passed By Committee 107
First time accepted submitter sumakor (3571543) writes "The House Judiciary Committee has advanced a weakened version of the USA Freedom Act (HR3361). The amended compromise version allows collection of phone call records up to two hops away from a target, potentially including millions of customer records, and allows for collection without a judge's order in emergency cases. The amended bill also drops the requirement for a privacy advocate who can appeal the rulings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and extends the controversial Section 215 of the Patriot Act from 2015 through 2017.
Despite these significant changes the amended bill has been endorsed by the ACLU and the EFF as a first step and the most promising path towards reigning in government surveillance. The two organizations called for further Congressional measures to tighten control of surveillance authorities including an explicit definition of the term 'selector,' a reduction in the number of hops from 2 to 1 under most circumstances and the closing the loophole that allows searches of Americans' data inadvertently collected thru Section 702.
The bill now proceeds to the House Intelligence Committee, who has advanced its competing bill, the FISA Transparency and Modernization Act (HR 4291). The committee will mark up both bills on the same day, beginning at 10am Thursday, behind closed doors."
Despite these significant changes the amended bill has been endorsed by the ACLU and the EFF as a first step and the most promising path towards reigning in government surveillance. The two organizations called for further Congressional measures to tighten control of surveillance authorities including an explicit definition of the term 'selector,' a reduction in the number of hops from 2 to 1 under most circumstances and the closing the loophole that allows searches of Americans' data inadvertently collected thru Section 702.
The bill now proceeds to the House Intelligence Committee, who has advanced its competing bill, the FISA Transparency and Modernization Act (HR 4291). The committee will mark up both bills on the same day, beginning at 10am Thursday, behind closed doors."
Two things... (Score:5, Informative)
1) This bill basically changes nothing - they can do whatever they want by declaring an "emergency", and there is no effective oversight.
2) "Reining in", NOT "reigning in". The expression refers to slowing horses down, not kings at home.
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The problem is that generally voters HATE congress, but LOVE their congressman.
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My senator Bill Nelson is shit. When the spying scandals broke last summer, I wrote to urge him to oppose the general warrants being issued by the NSA. Nelson sent me back some letter about how it's all legal and has oversight but that he "understand my concerns."
On the other hand, my congressman, Ted Yoho, wrote back agreeing with me and was one of the people voting to defund the NSA's collection operations.
Since he's actually doing the things I want, do I like my congressman? Yes. Would you rather have me
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Mine voted for the Kill Puppies act, so I support him. I'm a cat person.
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But they already have this "emergency" power. They can get backdated warrants from the FISA court now in emergencies. If they couldn't possibly obtain the after-the-fact rubber stamp then they clearly shouldn't be doing the survellience. This bill is a joke and so are these groups endorsing it.
Re:Two things... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, even though the bill doesn't seem to grant more power to the government than it has already grabbed for itself, having a law around what was illegally done, legitimizes it after the fact, and puts the onus to create new law forbidding the abuses on those who would end them.
and so are the groups that endorse it
Except that the bill at least defines what can and can not be done. The status quo is no definition which means it's free to slide anywhere, by not being prosecuted crimes become norms.
One of the biggest things they should hash out in the courts IMHO is the idea that copying data to a hard drive and not having humans look at it is somehow not unreasonable search. A machine you operate needs to be considered your agent, as machines will only get more intelligent. Indexing is understanding and machines do this. If your agents understand the information gleaned, then the information has been effectively searched. To obtain a copy of information your machine agents have had to handle every bit of the information and save it. Having a copy is the most basic version of understanding information. It equals search. Indexing just compounds the crime.
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It's the old "try to get 10X and then 'compromise' on 5X' scenario. We've seen it with the RIAA when they lobby for draconian copyright laws and then "compromise" on less-restrictive (but still very pro-big-business/anti-consumer) copyright laws. The NSA did a huge thing that is legally sketchy at best. So they "gen
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Except the law ALREADY defines what can and cannot be done, and seems to have been completely ignored, or rather "we went from lawyer to lawyer until somebody wrote an opinion saying what we wanted to do was legal".
There is no reason to believe that their behaviour will be any different after the law has been enacted than it is right now.
Re:Two things... (Score:5, Insightful)
We are in a constant state of emergency due to the war on terror.
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We've always been at war with East Anglia.
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Pakistan isn't a war. We weren't at war with Iraq all that long. If you look, you'll find that there were a lot of military operations in the history of the US that weren't wars.
Re:Two things... (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole "emergency" thing is just an excuse that exploits the widespread belief that the CIA/NSA frequently face scenarios where the clock is ticking and Jack Bauer/James Bond MUST get someone's phone data RIGHT NOW or PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE IN 20 MINUTES!!!! The fact that such scenarios almost never occur in real life is irrelevant, since the public doesn't know that.
Re:Two things... (Score:4, Insightful)
Precisely. In fact, blame Hollywood at least as much as Washington. There's way more fictional terrorists and serial killers and so on than real ones. And they need the public to be much more afraid than is actually warranted, or they might push back against some of this madness.
I reserve a dedicated level of contempt especially for their fusion: the military-entertainment complex. Pentagon sponsoring series and films -- with strings attached of course so effectively outsourced propaganda -- has a much broader effect than just those productions. Companies might keep their content government-friendly for fear of missing out on future projects' funding.
Fear is the mind killer.
Re:Two things... (Score:4, Insightful)
I would add:
3) It doesn't fucking matter what they pass anyway, since neither Congress nor the President has any real oversight of the CIA or NSA, or any way of knowing if they're breaking the law or stopping them if they are.
The oversight doesn't care (Score:5, Insightful)
since neither Congress nor the President has any real oversight of the CIA or NSA
I think the President has a very good idea what the NSA is up to since the reports they generate ultimately come to him and his direct reports. I'm pretty sure the Congressional leadership also has a fairly good idea what is going on. However I do not think their interests align with those of the citizenry and so they have little to no incentive to exercise what you or I would consider proper oversight. They benefit from the violation of our civil rights.
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I'm sure people whisper in their ears, "Ya know, if there's a terrorist attack and the biggest thiing you and your party did recently was make it harder for the NSA, well, what will the voters think?"
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What do you consider congressional oversight? When the NSA Director tells congress an outright lie and faces no repercussions whatsoever, I would say that "congressional oversight" is pretty much a farce.
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What do you consider congressional oversight?
I didn't say they were exerting oversight. I said that they probably have a good idea what is going. Much of their reporting to Congress is behind closed doors so you and I have no idea what they are actually talking about. But if the Congressional leadership was not kept in the loop to some extent you can bet they would be making a big political stink about it. The Republican leadership in the House would make claims that Obama was turning the country into a police state.
Knowing what the NSA is up do a
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Or do you honestly think our so-called "representatives" do not think of themselves as royalty?
Section 215 is the problem (Score:4, Informative)
The real problem is section 215 or anything like it. Which is what the government has been using to confiscate all sorts of records that companies that you do business with might keep. Limiting just phone calls misses 99.9999% of what the government might want to collect moving forward.
Section 215 is the provision which they have interpreted to mean every and all records collected by a business... server logs, router logs, email logs, credit card transactions, cable tv viewing data, car transponder data, car location data (as now collected by private companies and bought by the police), bank records, facebook friends lists, pictures you upload, library records etc etc etc. Basically everything that any company you do business with or knows about you could possibly think of putting in a database.
So on the face of this Congress really needs to enumerate the things that can be collected instead of leaving in a provision that seems to allow them to collect everything and then only restrict one particularly type of record
Maybe the ACLU and EFF are just trying to make a career out of this law. Because in another couple years we are going to hear about how they are collecting another type of data under section 215 and then the ACLU and EFF are going to be up in arms over it and fundraising to stop it. Guys, just hold the line and oppose section 215 or any insidious replacement of it. You can still support the two-hop limitation, but oppose the bill.
More Doublespeak (Score:2, Informative)
Please note that the Orwellian title of this bill, as opposed to what is really in it.
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"Freedom Act" (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy hell look at that name...this bill must be full of draconian nightmare laws!
Re:"Freedom Act" (Score:5, Funny)
I've always said that when the bill to re-institute slavery comes, it will be called the "Full Employment and Housing for Minorities Act."
Re:"Freedom Act" (Score:5, Funny)
Finally a jobs bill that republicans can get behind.
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Eliminated means to move up in the world for most.
Capitalism did that all on its own. Unless you live in sparkly rainbow unicorn land where most people can be CEOs.
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Yes. I have often wished I could vote for the Republican Party of the 1860's. Sadly, the economic wing of the party was all to eager to jump into the pockets of the robber barons; and the social wing ran right off the deep end with their pivot from abolition to prohibition.
Re:"Freedom Act" (Score:5, Funny)
Slavery? Are you fucking nuts? You have to house and feed slaves, did you look recently at the housing cost in most areas? Wages are way cheaper!
But first (Score:2)
But first will be the "Women's Total Control Over Their Own Bodies Act", right after Roberts/Scalia/Thomas overturn Roe v. Wade, which at their present rate of terrorism, will be within the year.
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Yeah, you can tell what the bill does by the title: it's generally the opposite.
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I won't argue. It was an attempt to make a compromise between a decently working system (Canadian-style health care, which would kill off a whole industry in the US) and a total clusterfuck (the status quo of US-style health care). So it's still kind of a total clusterfuck.
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Holy hell look at that name...this bill must be full of draconian nightmare laws!
Bingo. We name our laws using the same methods that communists use to name their totalitarian hell-holes.
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My first thought was "If Orwell was alive, he'd probably complain that he wants royalties, that name of the law sounds like it's straight from 1984".
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Doesn't do a thing really (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to stop this mess is to completly outlaw ANY logging or surveillance by ANY agency (FBI, CIA, NSA, DEA, Homeland Security or whoever else) or by ANY private company on behalf of the government except where the surveillance or logging is being done on a specific identifiable entity (e.g. a Facebook account or a Google account or an ISP account or a cellphone number/account or whatever) AND a judge has granted a warrant.
Even the worst possible hypothetical attack (e.g. a terrorist with a nuclear bomb powerful enough to turn the entire eastern seaboard into a smoking crater) is not bad enough to justify any kind of monitoring, surveillance or logging of the communications of people who have not been classified as a threat by an independent judge.
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I think it's called the Constitution.
Except SCOTUS is MIA. When the justices are seen bloviating on the news networks, you know it's game over for us.
Lipstick on a pig (Score:2)
Though it sounds like a step in the right direction, for it's implementation to have any real teeth, the agencies it deigns to rein in would have to be rules-followers.
Observable evidence seems to run contrary to this conclusion.
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This legislation is a way to legitimize the ongoing illegal activity. It implicitly suggests that what was going on before was legal and now is being scaled back. This is worse than nothing -- it is a victory for the NSA, plus it's such weak tea, it's a double victory for those assholes.
No limits at all really... (Score:4, Insightful)
The amended compromise version allows collection of phone call records up to two hops away from a target, potentially including millions of customer records, and allows for collection without a judge's order in emergency cases. The amended bill also drops the requirement for a privacy advocate who can appeal the rulings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and extends the controversial Section 215 of the Patriot Act from 2015 through 2017.
This is the "weaker" version? This basically is a bill with no limits.
Two hops? That just means if you ever called the phone company, a utility, UPS/Fedex etc then they can "hop" to you. It's no real limitation at all. It also means that they can just declare something an emergency whenever they want. No real oversight. No advocate for the citizenry.
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This is the "weaker" version?
That's what I was wondering. The article makes this sound like the "strengthened" version, what with it dropping the privacy advocate.
But perhaps the original version wanted six-hop call tracking...
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Realistically, what would the privacy advocate add? After a few weeks, he or she would be background noise.
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Telcos get retroactive immunity.
2 hops with no real court support is now not illegal.
A lot of color of law to out pace the Fourth Amendment.
Thats the fun legal aspect to been to told to think back to some 'event' and watch your laws get altered.
With every generation of legal staff seeing or been told about emergency cases, all protections are reduced for decades until the next emergency.
The laws still stand just some cases will n
Government surveillance (Score:2)
well (Score:3)
This bill sucks... and I wondered "Why would the ACLU support this?" But when you really think about it, if your neighbor had a vicious attack dog and you wanted him to take it to the pound, and he came to you and said "Well, I got this $4 leash and tied him to a tree..." are you going to say "Absolutely not!" No, you're going to thank him, wait a few days and then continue to pester him to get rid of the dog. Some restraint is better than none. I suspect the NSA will completely ignore this legislation and the ACLU will use it as legal leverage to file lawsuits and try to reveal more evidence of what they're up to.
The US government... Give a micron... (Score:4, Informative)
Take whatever the fuck they want.
They can basically operate however they want until someone snitches on them.
At that point, there's a big kerfuffle in DC as people dive out of the line of fire. Then...nothing.
Shortly afterwards, the informant is renditioned or flees and is declared an enemy of the state.
Perfect Solution Fallacy (Score:2)
The perfect solution fallacy is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument assumes that a perfect solution exists and/or that a solution should be rejected because some part of the problem would still exist after it were implemented. This is an example of black and white thinking, in which a person fails to see the complex interplay between multiple component elements of a situation or problem, and as a result, reduces complex problems to a pair of binary extremes.
It is common for arguments which comm
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Hopefully you're a troll, but authoritarians who are utterly ignorant of the hundreds of millions of people abused and/or murdered by corrupt governments throughout history seem to be somewhat high in number. Though your post looks to be in the same style of the other authoritarian AC assholes that I've debunked around 50 times.
"FREEDOM!!!!!!!" is not a specific term of rejection.
Go look in the dozens of other articles on Slashdot about the NSA. Specific objections have been given many, many times. You're willfully ignorant.
The government is not, has never be
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Indeed, nothing any terrorist could do could cause the United States to cease to exist. Mr. Trollheim here is only correct about that point, but is overblowing the threat by several orders of magnitude.
In the face of an existential threat to the United States, her citizens have a proven track record of rising to the cause (WW1, WW2). Of course, there has been no existential threat to the United States since World War 2, except for maybe the Cold War, but that was an existential threat to all of humanity. So
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Except that the government does have a legitimate interest in all of this, and currently there are no clear laws preventing it. The Fourth Amendment protects against "unreasonable" searches, and has some criteria for warrants, but it doesn't define reasonableness and doesn't stop judges from being free with warrants. The NSA is interpreting the law in ways I disagree with, but not out of recognition, and they almost certainly have a policy of staying mostly within the limits of the law as they interpret
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Except that the government does have a legitimate interest in all of this
You say you disagree, but you say this? It is not legitimate; it is a disgusting violating of the highest law of the land and our fundamental liberties.
The Fourth Amendment protects against "unreasonable" searches, and has some criteria for warrants, but it doesn't define reasonableness and doesn't stop judges from being free with warrants.
This mass collection of information is clearly against the spirit of the constitution. Had this sort of thing been used against the founding fathers, you can bet they'd have taken steps in the constitution to forbid it, just like they did many other things. We don't even interpret the constitution 100% literally, so we need to take these things into account.
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I agree that mass surveillance would have been made explicitly unconstitutional if it had been widespread when the Bill of Rights was adopted. However, it wasn't and wasn't. I'll also agree that this is against the spirit of the Constitution, but that doesn't mean it's unconstitutional as the Constitution is written. I'd like to see an amendment that recognizes the difference between old-fashioned human surveillance and automated mass surveillance, although I'm not sure how to word it.
You're also misr
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However, it wasn't and wasn't.
Irrelevant. Look at the first amendment. Taken literally, even libel and slander would be allowed, as it restricts the government from prohibiting free speech.
The fact is, the government does not and never has interpreted the constitution literally; the intentions of the founders and its spirit have always been taken into account.
You're also misreading the Fourth. It protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, and gives a condition for warrants. It doesn't say that any search without a warrant is unreasonable.
I am not misreading it; I'm taking into account the spirit of the constitution and applying it to today's world. I do not think this surveillance is reasonable at all.
What the NSA doing is arguably a very large number of individually legal actions that do not require warrants, and AFAICT that's legal.
No, because i
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Certainly personal rights are useless if the United States does not exist, so it should be clear even to a 5th grader that protecting the United States takes precedence over individual liberties.
So in order to protect our freedoms, we have to give them up. Beautiful.
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I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system
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The simple truth is that this bill supports the invasion of privacy under the guise of keeping America safe, it doesn't matter how complicated it is, privacy is being invaded.
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No, that is not what I am saying at all.
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No, that is not what I am saying at all.
What you said
The perfect solution fallacy is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument assumes that a perfect solution exists and/or that a solution should be rejected because some part of the problem would still exist after it were implemented. This is an example of black and white thinking, in which a person fails to see the complex interplay between multiple component elements of a situation or problem, and as a result, reduces complex problems to a pair of binary extremes.
People don't like this law because of the two hop rule (ass rape with 10" dick) without a judges order or any oversight. There doesn't need to be a perfect solution just stop ass raping, one hop with a judges order and require a privacy advocate that can represent the people and appeal rulings. It doesn't matter that the raping dick is 30% smaller the problem is the raping.
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If you don't want to be fucked in the ass it doesn't matter if it is a 10" or 14" dick you are stilling being ass raped.
As my gay friend, Dennis, said, "Oh, trust me, it makes a big difference. You wouldn't believe the difference..."
99.9999% still unconstitutional (Score:2)
Leaving section 215 in place without limitation means that the government can still order companies to hand over all their records. According to this report the only limitation now is going to be this two hop restriction on phone records which is likely to be narrowly construed to mean just phone calls and not text messages or location data or credit card transaction records or server logs or router logs or facebook friends lists or pictures you have uploaded, or files you store in the cloud, etc etc.
Call
The ACLU would have more credibility... (Score:3)
...if they aggressively pursued all Bill of Rights violations by the government, not just those of the Constitutional Rights that they particularly happen to agree with.
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If you mean the second amendment, there is the NRA for that, though the NRA does a rather poor job of defending it. But that's the organization with most of the resources.
The ACLU seems to get a lot of flak from authoritarians (though in this case I do wish their interpretation of the second amendment were different), but they do some good work.
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The NRA has roughly 10 times the funding that the ACLU does, last I knew. The second amendment doesn't need the help of the ACLU with the NRA around.
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It would sure be nice to take a few giant whacks at the grotesque manipulation of the interstate commerce clause to allow virtually anything to be federally regulated and mandated. Might need a few $BILLIONS to manage that though.
Dear Congress, (Score:5, Informative)
Unless you provide criminal penalties for those who would break this law, don't bother. You know what I mean - you do this for *every* other prohibitive law which doesn't target government, but always seem to forget that part when you're trying to reign in government.
While you're at it, make a breach of this law also be a civil cause of action.
Seriously.
Otherwise, don't bother. If there's no penalties for breaking this law, it'll be ignored like all the rest of them.
Two Hops (Score:2)
I hereby request all CostCo, Amazon, and my local power and water utility company customers to please abstain from ever being suspected of anything.
If you're not sure whether or not you might be suspected of a crime, perhaps a good rule of thumb is that you should try to stay two hops away from any actual criminals. So if you're a Bank of America customer, yes, that means I'm asking you to not use my local power utility.
Thank you for your cooperation.
NO, WAIT! NO!!! No, I didn't mean to imply I'm cooperat
Section 215 means they can collect everything (Score:4, Informative)
"extends the controversial Section 215 of the Patriot Act from 2015 through 2017."
Section 215 is the provision which they have interpreted to mean every and all records collected by a business... server logs, router logs, email logs, credit card transactions, cable tv viewing data, car transponder data, car location data (as now collected by private companies and bought by the police), bank records, facebook friends lists, pictures you upload, library records etc etc etc. Basically everything that any company you do business with or knows about you could possibly think of putting in a database.
Putting a 2 hop limitation on phone records misses 99.9% of the types of records government surveillance will be interested in collecting and aggregating moving forward. Might as well put a telegraph limitation in there or a horse and buggy surveillance limitation and call it "restraint".
Freedom act (Score:3)
behind closed doors (Score:1)
And the EFF and ACLU approve?? Very sad. That the voters approve is sadder still.