Politics Factions forming as Congress attempts to curb U.S. spy power

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powe...bdd1236be5d_story.html?utm_term=.c6db5dd7a69c

Schisms are brewing on Capitol Hill over a new bipartisan effort to limit the authority and extend the timeline of the National Security Agency’s ability to monitor the communications of suspected foreign agents abroad, as key members refuse to endorse the proposal.

The NSA data collection program under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has long inspired divisions between privacy advocates and national security hawks, over where and how collected data will be disseminated and used by various government agencies. But as lawmakers look toward a looming, end-of-year deadline to reauthorize the program, both privacy champions and advocates for the intelligence community are finding fault in the new House Judiciary Committee proposal. It requires the FBI to seek a warrant before asking to view Americans’ emails and phone call records collected under Section 702 authority, relevant to criminal cases.

The disagreement is narrow, but critical to a Section 702 extension, which the intelligence community has identified as its top legislative priority for 2017.

In the House Judiciary Committee’s bill, searches of the NSA database are unlimited in national security cases. But if the FBI wants to query the database for the communications of a U.S. person related to a criminal case, it must first seek a warrant before it can review the results.

The provision is inspired by concerns that with no restrictions on law enforcement officials’ access to Americans’ information in such a database, the FBI could exploit its contents to aid money-laundering investigations, tax fraud, murders, or other federal crimes without an explicit national security bent.

While Section 702 authority permits surveillance of foreign agents believed to be outside the United States, American citizens and U.S. residents can also end up being monitored if they are in communication with the target.

But the restriction is too great for the intelligence community and its advocates, who fear any limitation on their ability to search and review information contained in the database could negatively affect national security investigations.

 

Fuck what the government/intelligence community wants.

If the constitution weren't being treated like toilet paper, this wouldn't be an issue because there wouldn't be this spying on the people by the government.

Here you go, @dviss1 . An actual 4th amendment violation.

 

These 13 House Reps sponsored a bill to legalize mass surveillance on Americans and called it the USA Liberty Act

On October 6th, House Representative Goodlatte and 12 other Representatives proposed the USA Liberty Act (H.R. 3989) – which would renew the currently active NSA’s mass surveillance programs. We’ve known for the better part of a year that theTrump Administration intended to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which would otherwise expire at the end of this year. Section 702 is used by the National Security Agency (NSA) to justify its controversial UPSTREAM and PRISM programs, which were revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013.

Section 702 permits the warrant-less targeting of foreign targets located in international places, not on US soil. However, in practice, the mass surveillance has picked up US citizens data – and the NSA refuses to state how many Americans’ are caught up in this surveillance database. However, the USA Liberty Act would codify this mass surveillance. The USA Liberty Act is an affront on the average American’s intelligence – and is even worse than the “Restoring Internet Freedom” Act put forth by these 9 Senators.

These are the 13 House Representatives that are sponsoring the poorly titled USA Liberty Act (H.R. 3989)

Rep. Goodlatte, Bob [R-VA-6]

Rep. Conyers, John, Jr. [D-MI-13]

Rep. Sensenbrenner, F. James, Jr. [R-WI-5]

Rep. Nadler, Jerrold [D-NY-10]

Rep. Smith, Lamar [R-TX-21]

Rep. Jackson Lee, Sheila [D-TX-18]

Rep. Collins, Doug [R-GA-9]

Rep. Johnson, Henry C. “Hank,” Jr. [D-GA-4]

Rep. Rutherford, John H. [R-FL-4]

Rep. Deutch, Theodore E. [D-FL-22]

Rep. Chabot, Steve [R-OH-1]

Rep. Raskin, Jamie [D-MD-8]

Rep. Johnson, Mike [R-LA-4]

The fact of the matter is, domestic law enforcement can still get a rubber stamp to view NSA collected data on Americans. The data shouldn’t be collected on Americans to begin with – but the legislation does nothing to address that, instead side stepping the issue with a flowery name and lip service to adding checks and balances to the FISA system. There aren’t any clauses that force the deletion of aggregated data after a certain period of time – and there isn’t a single mention of safeguards to prevent abuse of the system by those with access to it (even though such abuse has been revealed in the past).

https://www.privateinternetaccess.c...urveillance-americans-called-usa-liberty-act/