White House hails bill reforming NSA

[struggle4progress]

Source: The Hill

May 07, 2014, 09:49 pm
By Justin Sink

... The unanimous, bipartisan vote by the House Judiciary Committee, advances legislation that would require phone companies, rather than the government, to retain telephone metadata. The legislation also limits the number of “hops” away from a terror suspect the government can investigate, and adds a team of privacy advocates to a top-secret surveillance court weighing national security questions.

President Obama called for the legislation in a speech earlier the year, given amid mounting concern over the surveillance programs revealed in leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

“In March the President laid out his proposal to reform Section 215, and called upon Congress to act quickly to pass implementing legislation. We applaud the House Judiciary Committee for approaching this issue on a bipartisan basis,” National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden said in a statement. “The Judiciary Committee passed bill is a very good first step in that important effort, and we look forward to House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence action on it tomorrow.”

The Intelligence Committee review on Thursday will come as chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) is pushing an alternative bill, which some privacy advocates have complained does not do enough to limit the reach of the government. That legislation would not require the NSA to seek a court order every time it wanted to search phone records ...

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/205554-white-house-hails-bill-reforming-nsa

[JDPriestly]

1. Here is what I got when I clicked on the link.

Page Not Found | 404

Sorry, we could not find the page you requested.
You can try search to find what you want.

I'll be interested in reading how the bill reads. At least we are getting a token reaction from Congress and the White House. We shall see whether it can adequately protect the privacy of Americans while still stopping terrorism (however that is defined in practical terms).

We must watch this. Thanks for posting.

[joshcryer]

3. Fixed link:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/205554-white-house-hails-bill-reforming-nsa

[struggle4progress]

9. Thanks

[struggle4progress]

8. Apologies. I fixed the link

[billhicks76]

11. Cuz It Sucks

If it was real reform they would oppose it. NSA is used for two purposes. First is the drug war...monitoring pot growers and hippies phones as well as ravers, music promoters, coke dealers etc. The next is to gain leverage with embarrassing or criminal details about the lives of politicians, journalists, lawyers, judges and generals to make them do what the USSA Junta wants them to. The sooner you accept this reality and stop dithering around the edges of consensus reality the better off your world view and hence your life will be. Ask Russ Tice, NSA whistleblower preceding Snowden...he laid it all out...it was NEVER about terrorism...that's just a line they feed the sheep.

[JDPriestly]

15. Thanks. I heard you right. Appreciate it. We shall see. This will be a long battle over privacy

[Blue_Tires]

18. But people asked for something to get done on the issue and something was done...

Even if in real terms it only makes the situation 0.1% better...Of course if it was real reform, it never would have gotten out of congress, so from the White House perspective it was lose-lose either way as evidenced by the enthusiasm in this thread...

Funny enough, with ALL the unsavory shit that was revealed about the Five Eyes Alliance members, only the U.S. publicly admitted it was a problem and tried to address the issue (albeit in a half-assed manner)...I don't recall any kind of major discussions or reforms announced by the U.K., Australia, Canada, etc. etc...

[Fearless]

2. The bill will have the wolves overseeing the hen house

They can be trusted right?

[joshcryer]

4. Of course corporations can be trusted to hold our medtadata.

Even Snowden said that we have a choice with regards to corporations.

This is seriously, completely, no change in the status quo. None. It's disgusting.

[Fearless]

5. No change at all

[JDPriestly]

6. They should have to get a warrant to review e-mails and internet posts which are posted under a

pseudonym or nom de plume or to review financial records. It isn't that time-consuming or difficult to get a warrant. But the warrant is a record that the personal records were legally obtained. That is important to prevent harassment or political vendettas or abuse of the government's authority to review personal records, correspondence and writings.

It really should not be an impediment to honest law enforcement. A warrant system could be established that did not take a lot of time or create too many problems. But each warrant application should be based on probable cause.

Metadata is just about as revealing as other data.

My husband tried Linked In tonight. Wow! Anyone who ever had their name on an e-mail address, anyone who belongs to an organization he belongs to and lots of people he never heard of are on his Linked-In page.

Here is something kind of humorous. My husband and I moved into our neighborhood years and years ago. Since then, a lot of gay and lesbian couples as well as young families have moved in. We corresponed via e-mail with many of our wonderful neighbors. If you looked at that list, you might think that our lifestyle might be very different than it is -- 50-year-married couple that we are. So, metadata can be very, very misleading. It's really a risky business to have a government relying on things like metadata to characterize citizens.

[Fearless]

7. +1

[joshcryer]

10. Agreed. They merely want the metadata for profiling.

And the corporations will happily give it to them. Hell, the NSA may just get some better datamining tools out of it.

[phleshdef]

16. If you purchase communication service from a company, they keep records anyway.

They pretty much always have, at least going back a certain number of months/years. I personally have no problem with that as I understand that by using their service, I'm subjecting my communications to their information technology infrastructure.

[Fearless]

19. You don't know what metadata is then.

Likewise, in the past, if someone wanted that information from telecoms (et.al.) they had to get a WARRANT. This is no longer the case.

[phleshdef]

20. You are wrong on both counts.

I probably understand the concept of metadata more than most people, being a person who works with computer programming and databases for a living. And that's exactly the kind of data phone companies have always tracked. Phone companies have always tracked who calls who and when they called, etc.

Furthermore, the President's proposal still requires a court order to obtain data whereas Mike Roger's proposal seeks to remove that requirement.

[SamKnause]

12. Yay !!!!

We have another secret court !!!!

They never intended to stop collecting our data.

The fight was over who would store it.

This is not reforming the NSA.

[phleshdef]

17. You're acting like communication companies weren't keeping that data before the NSA programs.

Phone companies have kept records of who calls who, etc, for many, many decades and no one seemed to have a problem with it before.

[elias49]

13. Much ado about nothing.

What about on-line 'cloud' storage?? Imagine what a treasure trove of information - re: metadata - is stored at Carbonite or other 'cloud' services. If the federal government wants it, they'll get it. Nothing is sacred. Or, ultimately, private.

[PSPS]

14. Nobody will take any "reform" seriously as long as that 240-acre hard drive is there.

Just another Obama charade.