Senate passes NSA reform measure

[Dima007]

Content source

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/02/politics/senate-usa-freedom-act-vote-patriot-act-nsa/

Washington (CNN)The Senate approved on Tuesday a bill to reform National Security Agency domestic surveillance programs, ending a drawn-out showdown on Capitol Hill that saw counterterrorism provisions expire.

The vote was 67 to 32.

The bill, which passed the House nearly three weeks ago, now heads to President Barack Obama, who has pledged to sign the bill.

His signature will ultimately end the government's indiscriminate collection of millions of Americans' phone metadata, requiring the government obtain a targeted warrant to access the data instead.

"It's historical. It's the first major overhaul of government surveillance in decades," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democratic sponsor of the reform measure called the USA Freedom Act.

The vote came two days after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell begrudgingly moved to vote on the compromise bill after pressure from House Republicans, the Obama administration and staunch reform advocates in the Senate, like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who helped force the expiration of the Patriot Act provisions late Sunday.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/02/politics/senate-usa-freedom-act-vote-patriot-act-nsa/

 

[comfortablynumb15]

You guys do realize that all they did was just legalize everything they were doing? Everything remains the same as it did, all they did was leave the metadata at the internet/phone providers servers and now will force it to be handed over instead of getting it directly themselves. There's absolutely no reform, their powers expired and our chance at privacy and security lasted 1 and a half days.

 

[Oxygen]

Everything remains the same as it did, all they did was leave the metadata at the internet/phone providers servers and now will force it to be handed over instead of getting it directly themselves

I think they are allowed to access the data with a court order which makes absolutely no sense at all, correct me if I'm wrong.

(heard it on news while changing channels)

 

[comfortablynumb15]

I think they are allowed to access the data with a court order which makes absolutely no sense at all, correct me if I'm wrong.

(heard it on news while changing channels)

They need the approval of FISA (so basically it's automatically granted because FISA) and it has to be relevant to a terrorism investigation. Of course the government has to "assert" that it's relevant, meaning as long as they say "Yep" FISA will grant it. One party on an investigated call has to be overseas as well. So basically they can just come on into your ISP/provider office and say "Give", and the provider has no choice in the matter. I'm pretty sure the days of MS/Google and others fighting a warrant are over. Like I said earlier, they heard the court say what they were doing is illegal, and passed a bill to make a legal. So the court needn't even have bothered.

 

[FreddyFreeloader]

Is there any provision in this law that REQUIRES the phone companies to actually keep these records?

 

[comfortablynumb15]

No, but they keep them anyway for their own protection.

 

[omidomi]

@FireShootSK : this is that news i talk about....

 

[comfortablynumb15]

To add to what I said a moment ago, the companies aren't so much keeping logs to avoid the NSA knocking. They do it to avoid police issues. The companies don't really care all that much about your rights or what you think your rights are. They are there to make money. If trying to protect you from possibly unwarranted investigation means they keep you as a paying customer, they will try usually. If it's Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc, forget it. You might as well hand them the logs yourself because they are giving them up. Google no longer needs "customers", they need eyes. And they don't even need you to use their search engine, their browser or their email. All they need you to do is visit a website that they have advertising on, and they make money.