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House Votes to End N.S.A.’s Bulk Phone Data Collection

368 points by colinmegill 11y ago

staunch 11y ago
The fight is long from over, but everyone should be calling for Snowden's unconditional pardon and then a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- tptacek 11y ago
  It is not actually true that good outcomes from Snowden's actions eliminates all his culpability. In fact: we don't even know how culpable he is --- we haven't seen the last Snowden disclosure yet --- so it's pretty difficult to come to the conclusion that he should be unconditionally pardoned.
  - staunch 11y ago
    I credit him with good outcomes and government leaders who forced his hand for the bad outcomes, so I was ready to pardon him on nearly the first day. I also don't believe any leak, short of one that causes nuclear war, could damage America more than a definite march towards a police state.
    - happyscrappy 11y ago
      This idea that the US is becoming a police state is a joke. The biggest scam ever pulled on the American people is convincing them that the US government is in control of the country. The country is barely managed, hell there are tens of millions of undocumented aliens.
      - TheCoelacanth 11y ago
        It has the most incarcerated people per capita of any country in the world. That's enough to qualify it as a police state in my mind.
        happyscrappy 11y ago
        It is kind of humorous that you change the definition of police state because you want so badly to call the US a police state. "A nation in which the police, especially a secret police, summarily suppresses any social, economic, or political act that conflicts with governmental policy." Not exactly a great fit.
  - yanks 11y ago
    And an unconditional pardon doesn't solve things long term anyway. We need to stop things like the Espionage Act which makes leaking a defenceless crime.
    - meowface 11y ago
      But where do you draw the line? If you accept that Top Secret information should exist, how do you determine what sort of information leaks are ethical, and which are just pointless and reckless, even if the leaker's intent is not espionage or treason? You can't really say "the law", since a large portion of what the NSA is doing is legal under the PATRIOT Act and various intelligence bills and processes. And you can't really say "the Constitution" either, since only the Supreme Court truly possesses that power. I do think Snowden should be pardoned, and I think his intentions were pure and he mostly acted properly (though I do have a few issues with some aspects of how he handled it), but the Espionage Act exists for a reason.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > You can't really say "the law", since a large portion of what the NSA is doing is legal under the PATRIOT Act and various intelligence bills and processes. And you can't really say "the Constitution" either, since only the Supreme Court truly possesses that power. The Supreme Court may be the final arbiter (within the system of government, at least) when there is a controversy over what is constitutional, but it does not mean that they are the only entity that has the power or obligation to interpret and act on the Constitution even when other laws purport to mandate something contrary to it. > but the Espionage Act exists for a reason. The Espionage Act may exist for a legitimate reason, but the manner in which it purports to serve that reason has been the subject of serious and sustained criticism from pretty shortly after it was adopted nearly a century ago. It might be a good idea to rethink it from first principles, rather than accepting a framework laid out in the early-20th Century Red Scare and then tightened under McCarthyism.
      - LLWM 11y ago
        Why can't you say the law? Seems like you're assuming that everyone disagrees with what the NSA has been doing, which is totally off base.
  - supercanuck 11y ago
    Snowden did the right thing. He should be pardoned for that.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      Why are you so sure of this? Aren't you essentially saying "no matter what else comes of the Snowden leaks, enough good has been done that Snowden can't possibly be culpable"?
      - anonbanker 11y ago
        Aren't you essentially saying "no amount of good done by an action can outweigh a wrong caused?"
        tptacek 11y ago
        No, that's not an equivalent statement. Mine hinges on the fact that we don't know everything that's been disclosed yet. Mine incorporates the current unlimited downside of the leaks.
        hobs 11y ago
        If you want to be so precise, then lets go ahead and admit that the information to be disclosed cannot have an unlimited downside (what does that even mean, if we blow up the entire world have we reached unlimited downside?)
        ellyagg 11y ago
        Considering that Snowden massively raised awareness of how much closer to 1984 we are than many people thought, and considering that 1984 is considered to exemplify a horrific dystopia, it's hard to imagine a realistic downside to a Snowden disclosure that would evict him from my head as a hero. Wanna scoff at a 1984 reference? Fine, Snowden demonstrated that the government's power and reach is much greater--much much greater--than most people imagined. Of course, if the downside risk is unlimited, if it's actually infinite, then literally no good Snowden has done could overcome it. Seems like a bit of a gotcha to me.
  - davepage 11y ago
    Essentially the American state religion to which your refer is largely predicated on the concept that any law may be ignored by those in power so long as the intent is to produce "good outcomes" for some state perception of good. (i.e. 'the constitution is not a suicide pact' or read "Enemies: A History of the FBI") Law (so far) is merely stains on paper until interpreted by the mind of an individual in some context (time, place, society). Societal context is some collective consensus over right and wrong -- some popular mush of common sense, the influence of which can be seen in the evolution of, for example, supreme court decisions over socially controversial issues. Where large numbers of individuals subscribe to a particular set of beliefs about what the law is, and proceed to act accordingly, a very convincing illusion of government emerges. And one may refer to this as a state religion in the sense it is entirely an emergent property of belief rather than reality. Thus, absolute law is a myth. Pardons are an outlet for the elected leadership to short-circuit the legal process when, in a given instance, punishment is perceived to exceed the crime. It is thus arguably irrational to assert that a pardon is premature in the Snowden case, considering the outcome thus far. Of course, those capable of issuing such pardons are themselves true believers. Snowden has committed blasphemy against the state religion. Thus a pardon can only occur should some popular unrest threaten those in power.
  - rgbrenner 11y ago
    Exactly right tptacek... people forget that Snowden isn't just disclosing NSA spying. For example, he disclosed intelligence about a failed al-queda plot that: revealed that the United States intercepted messages between Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of Al Qaida, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, discussing an imminent terrorist attack [0] And as a result, they may have changed communication methods. He's had other questionable discloses as well. 0. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/us/qaeda-plot-leak-has-undermined-us-intelligence.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/us/qaeda-plot-leak-has-und...
    - jodah 11y ago
      You mean the journalists, who vetted and chose to publish the material, disclosed this. As has been discussed exhaustively, Snowden didn't disclose anything himself, opting to rely on the expertise and judgement of partner journalists to select which items to write about. Keep in mind, many times more items were withheld than not.
      - irishcoffee 11y ago
        I'm not sure how this is seen as a positive thing. Journalists, with, on average, limited knowledge of infosec, holding in their possession classified documents. Lots and lots of classified documents. I'd wager a guess that at least a handful of these journalists were holding said documents on a system that had its share of known vulnerabilities. I'd be absurdly happy to be proven wrong, but there is a very high chance that every single document snowden distributed is on sale to the highest bidder, and has been for a while.
        robotkilla 11y ago
        There is zero evidence that the data was stolen from these journalists and sold to the highest bidder. Since there is zero evidence, you have to cinsider yourself wrong for now.
        11y ago
  - rapind 11y ago
    That sounds a bit like Guilty until proven innocent. Who knows what any of us will do tomorrow or the fallout from it?
    - tptacek 11y ago
      No, it is not at all "guilty until proven innocent".
      - sounds 11y ago
        Can you please explain?
        ncallaway 11y ago
        If I had to summarize tptacek's argument it would be something along the lines of: 1) Assumption: A pardon of Snowden is only appropriate if the upsides of the leak outweigh the downsides of the leak. 2) We don't know the full downside of the leaks (since that requires knowledge of the future) [1] 3) Therefore, the potential exists for the downside of the leaks to outweigh the upside. 4) Therefore, we shouldn't offer to pardon him yet as we don't know it's appropriate. The conclusion of the argument relates only to the decision on whether to extend a pardon to Snowden. We don't need to make a presumption of innocence or guilt when deciding to offer a pardon to someone. There is no right to a pardon, and no right to be considered for a pardon. These decisions are the prerogative of the President (for federal crimes). Calling his argument "guilty until proven innocent" would only be a fair assessment of his argument if tptacek was advocating for punishing Snowden before a trial court and jury determine his guilt. [1] As an aside, I don't see how this statement could ever become false — at least for time scales that would be relevant to offering relief to Snowden.
        tptacek 11y ago
        Yup. Thanks!
        11y ago
  - baddox 11y ago
    Wouldn't a pardon only apply to current charges?
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Wouldn't a pardon only apply to current charges? A pardon, at maximum (as usually understood, though I don't think the commonly-accepted belief that prospective pardons are invalid has actually been tested), could apply to all federal offenses committed prior to the pardon being issued, whether or not they were now known, or whether "current charges" even existed.
    - officemonkey 11y ago
      Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon and Nixon wasn't even charged with a crime.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        Richard Nixon should not have been pardoned!
        Aloha 11y ago
        Both sides have a good argument. Nixon shouldn't have been pardoned, he should have had to answer for the crimes he committed, but in a way, he did.. he was permanently removed from circles of power, and left in disgrace. I wont really make the argument that what history meted out to him what sufficient just merely that the prosecution would have taken another 5+ years, while in the mean time the nation and government would have been by in large paralyzed, I believe it was healthier in the long run to close the chapter on that phase of history, and move on. Something else I'd note, the laws passed in the wake of watergate were reduced in scope, and allowed to be skirted by a compliant and fearful of terrorism congress, the wiretapping is not the fault of the executive, its a failure of congress to provide anywhere near enough oversight.
  - hansjorg 11y ago
    tptacek always makes sure that his comments are legalistically true. He's not a fascist endorsing authoritarian tendencies.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      Awww, I bet you say that to all the fellas.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > It is not actually true that good outcomes from Snowden's actions eliminates all his culpability. That claim requires certain assumptions of moral first principles, so whether its "true" or not is not something people are liable to agree on even if they agree on the material facts.
  - pera 11y ago
    > It is not actually true that good outcomes from Snowden's actions eliminates all his culpability. Well, the government and the military uses very often this "good outcomes" concept when they pardon individuals who committed "collateral damage" (aka civilian casualties). I would like to know how one could be a whistleblower without being "culpable" of "aiding the enemy" (not quoting you here). If some very powerful agency is doing something that doesn't respect the constitution, after reporting that internally and being completely ignored, I believe it would be a crime to not disclose these actions. It seems to me that there is no escape in this culpability game...
    - mpyne 11y ago
      > Well, the government and the military uses very often this "good outcomes" concept when they pardon individuals who committed "collateral damage" (aka civilian casualties). CIVCAS is simply not a crime by itself, "good outcome" or not. The legality of use of force has nothing to do with the outcome of that use in international law, except insofar as a nation that can guard its borders can prevent the rest of the world from bringing war criminals to justice. E.g. if you deliberately target civilians in an attack that would be a crime, even if you accidentally managed to kill a bunch of important enemy military in a way that would have made the attack legal if you would have known the enemy military were there and targeted them. Conversely if you target what you have every plausible reason to believe is a concentration of enemy military and it turns out to be, say, a wedding with no military present, that still wouldn't be illegal in international law. The outcome is almost completely immaterial, it's the process that leads up to the decision to attack that determines the legality of a use of armed force.
  - vdaniuk 11y ago
    Some time ago tptacek argued against a suggestion that HN members include disclosure of their company/org affiliation in threads with possible conflicts of interest. This was a suggestion that at least merited a rational, constructive debate.[0] However, his comments in that discussion were dismissive, obnoxious and negative. Now tptacek publicly argues against Snowden's pardon without disclosing his NSA affiliation. The original comment calling for disclosures was heavily downvoted by HN community. I am interested in the opinion of the HN members present in this thread. Should there be an effort to expose possible conflict of interest on HN? Context is important: HN is one of/the most influential tech and startup media/community. tptacek is a respected, well-known and authoritative HN member with lots of clout. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8667657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8667657
    - tptacek 11y ago
      "My NSA affiliation". You people are funny.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- swombat 11y ago
  The fight isn't even started, this is just another punch in the face. According to https://www.usafreedom.fail/ https://www.usafreedom.fail/ this act actually extends spying rather than restricting it. Of course, it's being presented as the opposite of what it is. That's par for the course in US politics these days though.
  - irishcoffee 11y ago
    I do appreciate you providing backup to your claim. I do find it hard to give the link much credence. It would be like me commenting about how horrible meat is for people while linking to a fantastically pro-vegan website.
    - swombat 11y ago
      This very first link about the bill extending section 215 (the section under which spying has been justified) until 2019 is pretty self-explanatorily demonstrated by this link, from the page, via a third party legislation tracking site, govtrack.us: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr2048/text/ih#link=VII_705_a_~T1&nearest=H3970213DCD8B4A7C9D2AC368B1ADFDCA https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr2048/text/ih#li... I'm on my phone so I can't check out the other ones, but perhaps you can point to specific claims that are not supported? At the very least this one seems clearly correct. Edit: also, I disagree with your implicit assertion that a site can't be credible if it has an opinion that it asserts and backs up with facts. It's not always true (frequently not, in the case of U.S. politics) that both sides are viable. Often, one side is just plain wrong or lying, as seems to be the case in this present situation.
- sigzero 11y ago
  No. Exposing what he did was good. The way he did it was bad and he should paid the penalty for that.
  - deciplex 11y ago
    How do you reckon? He tried going through the official channels for many months, and when it was clear that the system he was working in would not allow those programs to receive even the slightest airing in public, he went to the press. What would you have had him do?
    - carboncopy 11y ago
      Do you have any evidence that he tried going through the official channels for any amount of time? The only evidence shown was an email where he asked about executive orders vs legislation to the office of legal counsel for the NSA during his last 30 days of employment. I know you can't prove a negative, but ordinarily we shouldn't accept unsubstantiated claims.
      - NotOscarWilde 11y ago
        Hypothetically, if no more evidence for or against this claim surfaces, we probably should give him the presumption of innocence on this point -- and since "avoiding the proper channels" is likely illegal, we have to assume that he tried.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
bsimpson 11y ago
Cool. They're stopping that one spy program everybody knows about. How many more do you think there are that are even more egregious but they don't have public pressure to end because nobody realizes they exist?
- mhurron 11y ago
  > They're stopping that one spy program everybody knows about Yes, I'm sure it will stop.
  - higherpurpose 11y ago
    I actually wonder what the NSA will do if this legislation will pass. I believe they used an excuse in Court before that they "can't" shut down the program (or a similar one). So would they actually shut it down or rename it and move it to a different facility? Who gets to verify that they're going to obey the new law? The Intelligence Committee members that already oppose the new laws?
    - baddox 11y ago
      I think the NSA will continue to spy. They might go to the trouble to hide it from Congress, but I doubt it, and I doubt Congress will actually care.
      - swombat 11y ago
        Here's your answer: according to https://www.usafreedom.fail/ https://www.usafreedom.fail/ this act doesn't actually restrict the NSA. In fact, it extends the spying powers of the NSA. So they'll continue what they're doing, and do more of it.
    - mindcrime 11y ago
      Yeah, at this point I'm pretty sure the NSA doesn't give a shit what Congress says. If Congress cut off their funding, they'd make it up by orchestrating the sale of arms and/or drugs on the black market, and keep right on doing what they're doing now.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Being a libertarian, I don't want to do all the knee-jerk stuff on here in response, but for context we must remember that bulk data collection was never authorized in the first place. So it very well may be that metadata collection ends under the Patriot Act and continues under some sealed executive order from the G.W. Bush years. If watching DC over the last decade or so has taught me anything, it's to be very careful noticing the difference between what things appear to be and what they actually are. ADD: Just to be clear "Congress votes (and the president signs) a law to outlaw bulk data collection" is one headline. "The House of Representatives fails to authorize some forms of bulk collection by no longer continuing certain provisions" is another. The House is not voting to end anything. Mr. Headline Writer Person: please do not confuse these two completely different scenarios.
JumpCrisscross 11y ago
What happens to records already collected?
eonw 11y ago
well its about time. but i am sure they will come up with another clever name for it and just keep on doing it.
simoncion 11y ago
I'm not 100% sure, but I think that a legislative end to the program moots any currently running judicial challenges to it. So, if Congress shuts the program down, the Supreme Court will never get to weigh in on the constitutionality of the whole thing. If I'm not wrong about that, I would much rather let the damn thing run for a few more years and have the Supremes kill it for good.
- tsotha 11y ago
  The risk, of course, is they might rule it's legal.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    It seems that that risk is small: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/senate-intelligence-chair-constituents-i-dont-care-what-you-think https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/senate-intelligence-ch... (Paragraph four is most relevant, but 'graphs one through three also make good reading.) Moreover, recent court cases at all levels make it clear that the Judicial system is pretty sick of surveillance methods that rely on creative interpretations of law. If the Supremes don't get a chance to weigh in and stake this behavior through the heart, Congress will soon dismantle some or all of it, only piece the programs back together over the next few years[0]. [0] Much as Ma Bell pieced itself back together (sans Bell Labs) after the breakup.
    - tsotha 11y ago
      You're most likely correct in that they would rule it illegal, though I don't think we should underestimate the court's ability to produce convoluted decisions to support the status quo. See Gonzales v Raich.
      - simoncion 11y ago
        Agreed. I think it's totally worth the risk.
sneak 11y ago
Great, so now all the people who make phone calls in the US will be safe from metadata collection of their contact graph... ...unless they make them on a smartphone OS from a PRISM partner vendor like Google or Apple. Or call someone outside of the country that only holds 4% of humans. Or make the call on Skype or Facebook. Or send an email. It's progress, I guess. But is it meaningful progress?
- tptacek 11y ago
  There is zero evidence establishing that a source appearing in PRISM implies that their smartphone OS is backdoored.
  - enlightenedfool 11y ago
    Better assume they are backdoored and every communication and stored information is accessible by govt and its organizations. That way we would be conscious about our activities on devices and elsewhere and try our best to protect ourselves until the system changes (which could be never).
  - jsmthrowaway 11y ago
    Snowden said directly, twice, and it meshes with my own speculation from having worked at two of the implicated companies, that PRISM is the NSA-side codename for an efficient warrant process and nothing more.
    - sneak 11y ago
      Calling them warrants when they are issued by the FISA rubberstamp court (or are NSLs) is quite a stretch.
  - sneak 11y ago
    Collecting metadata doesn't require a backdoor. There is tons of evidence that putting a name in your iCloud or Google contacts means the NSA gets a copy.
higherpurpose 11y ago
So the Senate will pass...this bill? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/op-ed-why-the-eff-is-pulling-its-support-for-the-usa-freedom-act/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/op-ed-why-the-eff...
- joshstrange 11y ago
  See the EEF's response https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/landslide-vote-house-overwhelmingly-passes-usa-freedom-act-without-amendments https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/landslide-vote-house-o...
pvnick 11y ago
Is the Freedom act even relevant at the moment? Since a district court ruled that the bulk collection is already illegal under the current law and Rand Paul and Ron Wyden are threatening to filibuster the renewal of the expiring Patriot Act, it seems that civil rights hawks currently have the upper hand, or at least an advantageous bargaining position. Why pass another law that could be skewed to give the intelligence agencies more loopholes?
- tanderson92 11y ago
  The district court decision is anything but established precedent.
  - magicalist 11y ago
    Not sure why you both wrote "district court". It was the Second Circuit: http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/NSA_ca2_20150507.pdf http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/NSA_ca2_20150507.pdf
- takeda 11y ago
  Freedom Act is a Trojan Horse: https://www.usafreedom.fail/ https://www.usafreedom.fail/
- 0x5f3759df-i 11y ago
  The court ruled it was illegal but did not order the end of the program and instead said it was the job of congress to either let section 215 expire or knowingly renew the program.
MCRed 11y ago
Wake me when the president signs a bill into law that ends the Patriot Act, once and for all. To be honest, we should have standards and secret courts and "national security" letters are the very thing that the constitution was designed to stop. (the fourth amendment and the like were meant to put an end to the equivalent of that era.) Signing or voting for any continuation of the Patriot Act should be considered an unforgivable act by anyone who values freedom.
- tptacek 11y ago
  The nondisclosure restriction on NSLs is tied directly to PATRIOT (or at least may have only been tested in the context of PATRIOT), but the concept of an NSL predates it. Really, your issue is with Smith v Maryland.
- drawkbox 11y ago
  Portions of the Patriot Act are up in June, where will our representatives stand? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/section-215-patriot-act-expires-june-congress-ready https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/section-215-patriot-ac...
  - briandear 11y ago
    Rand Paul has a filibuster planned. http://thehill.com/policy/technology/241635-rand-paul-threatens-patriot-act-filibuster http://thehill.com/policy/technology/241635-rand-paul-threat...
- wanderingstan 11y ago
  > (the fourth amendment and the like were meant to put an end to the equivalent of that era.) Do you know off hand the name of those era's equivalents? Just some search terms to get me going would be appreciated. I'd like to learn more about the historical precedent.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    I think the term "general warrant" was used. Hopefully this gets you started, and hopefully others comment with more information.
shmerl 11y ago
Great, but what about bulk collection of Internet traffic which is even more critical?
- phy6 11y ago
  And should we expect a rise in the VOIP industry to get around these proposed changes?
jaredhansen 11y ago
... And in related news, NSA internal leadership votes to continue bulk data collection anyway. Call me overly cynical, but I suspect that the legislative branch lost meaningful influence on the executive in this area some time ago.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  Hell, the executive and the chain of command both would have a hard time forcing the hand of a recalcitrant NSA: "Joint Chief Smith, we're happy to discuss your objections to our policy, but first we'd like to review some saved communications we have that document some of your conduct. On page 2, we cover your first year at West Point..."
- tsotha 11y ago
  Only because Congress is happy with things the way they are. Letting the NSA (and other agencies) carry on with these kinds of programs gives them an out no matter what happens. If the program gets discovered and the public is upset legislators can pretend they didn't know about it. Nancy Pelosi did this rather famously, pretending she'd never been briefed on programs she was documented to have been briefed on. On the other hand, if a big terrorist attack happens and the public is in the mood for greater leeway for security services Congress can point to programs like this one and say "See, we've been looking out for you all along by authorizing intrusive data collection." This is the way legislative politics works in the US. The goal is to put yourself into a "heads I win, tails... I win" situation, and they're very good at it. To operate with principle is to risk giving your electoral opponents ammunition when you're up for office next. If Congress actually wanted to enforce its will here you would see concrete changes. But it doesn't.
guelo 11y ago
It gives me some hope for this country that this issue doesn't fall along the normal party line divisions.
- peteretep 11y ago
  I suspect this is always the case when both sides feel equally vulnerable to an issue.
niels_olson 11y ago
> A compromise of some form must be reached before June 1, when the provision of the Patriot Act that allows the N.S.A. dragnet expires. Actually, it would seem the best outcome would be to prolong things past the 1st...
swombat 11y ago
Or not: https://www.usafreedom.fail/ https://www.usafreedom.fail/
ccvannorman 11y ago
Is it just me, or did anyone else have to double-check to see that this was an ANTI-spying bill and not a PRO-spying bill? I wish bills were required to have descriptive names. TL;DR: It's a good one, but EFF and others feel it doesn't go nearly far enough to curb spying.
- javert 11y ago
  Yeah. Based on the name and past history of the government, I assumed it was something nefarious. (And probably like the Congressmen, I haven't read it, so maybe they did slip something nasty in.) Honestly, they ought to just pass a law that bills can't have names and can only be numbered, to avoid propagandized or just plain dishonest titles.
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    My god this might be brilliant! It will get nicknames from each partisan side but it WON'T have a title.
- beambot 11y ago
  But it's got "freedom" in the name. It couldn't possibly be bad... You know, like the "Patriot" Act. </s>
  - monochromatic 11y ago
    Anything with a patriotic word in the title is suspect. Anything with a victim's name in the title is presumed awful.
    - Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 11y ago
      I dunno, the AMBER alert system was a pretty damn good idea.
      - rblatz 11y ago
        I turned amber alerts off on my phone after multiple alerts at 2am for someone over 100 miles away.
felixfurtak 11y ago
so... only phone data collection then. what about everything else?
xnull6guest 11y ago
Let's be clear about what the "FREEDOM Act" does. It does not make NSA Bulk Collection of phone data illegal. What it does is rearrange the laws and request process and more carefully enumerate and define procedures by which the NSA may acquire and query phone records that are stored in bulk. It also focuses primarily on phone records and one phone record program. There are dozens of phone record programs and hundreds of different types of signals that are collected that are not subjects of the "FREEDOM Act". Now (like it presumably was before) the NSA will not have full takes of all American phone records. They will force companies to keep these records for them though, and they will continue to have the ability to query them. It doesn't matter if nobody is watching 99.5% of CCTV footage. If CCTVs watch every square inch of a city and record it for later possible inspection, that's surveillance. It does not matter if human analysts do not inspect 99.5% of the bulk data. It is still surveillance. It was also surveillance when the KGB forced private citizens to keep tabs on one another. It does not matter whether it is Google, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, Dropbox, Facebook, and Comcast doing the surveillance on compulsion of the Fed. All of our data and communications are being stored and processed. It is still, categorically, surveillance.
- takeda 11y ago
  When they were phone tapping in Eastern Bloc during communism they at least were nice enough to remind you about it through prerecorded message[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_tapping_in_the_Eastern_Bloc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_tapping_in_the_Easte...
  - swombat 11y ago
    My parents and grandparents lived in Romania at the time. There was no prerecorded message, just fear and uncertainty.
    - takeda 11y ago
      I guess it was just in Poland then.
- lewisl9029 11y ago
Zigurd 11y ago
Good. Domestic spying means less and slower social progress, because the leading edge of social progress will be seen as dangerous and programs like what NSA have been running will be used to crush it in the early stages of development. There is a real cost to living in a panopticon.
- shard972 11y ago
  This re-enforces the spying apparatus by giving them rules they otherwise made up for themselves. This bill doesn't give you any privacy.
fysac 11y ago
I'm so confused. What about this? https://www.usafreedom.fail/ https://www.usafreedom.fail/
- drawkbox 11y ago
  Oh I see what they did. Patriot Act section 215 was up in June 1, 2015. So they did this "USA Freedom Act" a month before to extend that to 2019. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr2048/text/ih#link=VII_705_a_~T1&nearest=H3970213DCD8B4A7C9D2AC368B1ADFDCA https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr2048/text/ih#li... "Section 102(b)(1) of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 (50 U.S.C. 1805 note) is amended by striking June 1, 2015 and inserting December 15, 2019." So no need to fight that Patriot Act fight for another 4 years. It is definitely time to switch to SB, HB and numbers for bills and no propagandistic naming of bills for sure so they can't get this fast track mentality. They are also pushing through TPP with strong-arming while presenting this false NSA good news as a top story.
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    > It is definitely time to switch to SB, HB and numbers for bills and no propagandistic naming of bills I think this is what should happen.
redchili 11y ago
Is Obama going to veto this? If he does that would be out of character and alarming. At the same time, he has never really shunned the NSA at all.
timtas 11y ago
Such sophistry from The Paper of Record. Honest headlines might be: House Declines to Let The Patriot Act Expire as Planned or House Votes to Extend the Patriot Act...Again or House Votes to Extend the Patriot Act, Attempts to Curtail Worse Excesses Here's a hint, NYT. When Milton Friedman said "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program," he was being critical not descriptive.
wsloth514 11y ago
Is it me or is this a misleading title?

368 points by colinmegill 11y ago

The fight is long from over, but everyone should be calling for Snowden's unconditional pardon and then a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

tptacek 11y ago
It is not actually true that good outcomes from Snowden's actions eliminates all his culpability. In fact: we don't even know how culpable he is --- we haven't seen the last Snowden disclosure yet --- so it's pretty difficult to come to the conclusion that he should be unconditionally pardoned.
- staunch 11y ago
  I credit him with good outcomes and government leaders who forced his hand for the bad outcomes, so I was ready to pardon him on nearly the first day. I also don't believe any leak, short of one that causes nuclear war, could damage America more than a definite march towards a police state.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago
    This idea that the US is becoming a police state is a joke. The biggest scam ever pulled on the American people is convincing them that the US government is in control of the country. The country is barely managed, hell there are tens of millions of undocumented aliens.
    - TheCoelacanth 11y ago
      It has the most incarcerated people per capita of any country in the world. That's enough to qualify it as a police state in my mind.
      - happyscrappy 11y ago
        It is kind of humorous that you change the definition of police state because you want so badly to call the US a police state. "A nation in which the police, especially a secret police, summarily suppresses any social, economic, or political act that conflicts with governmental policy." Not exactly a great fit.
- yanks 11y ago
  And an unconditional pardon doesn't solve things long term anyway. We need to stop things like the Espionage Act which makes leaking a defenceless crime.
  - meowface 11y ago
    But where do you draw the line? If you accept that Top Secret information should exist, how do you determine what sort of information leaks are ethical, and which are just pointless and reckless, even if the leaker's intent is not espionage or treason? You can't really say "the law", since a large portion of what the NSA is doing is legal under the PATRIOT Act and various intelligence bills and processes. And you can't really say "the Constitution" either, since only the Supreme Court truly possesses that power. I do think Snowden should be pardoned, and I think his intentions were pure and he mostly acted properly (though I do have a few issues with some aspects of how he handled it), but the Espionage Act exists for a reason.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > You can't really say "the law", since a large portion of what the NSA is doing is legal under the PATRIOT Act and various intelligence bills and processes. And you can't really say "the Constitution" either, since only the Supreme Court truly possesses that power. The Supreme Court may be the final arbiter (within the system of government, at least) when there is a controversy over what is constitutional, but it does not mean that they are the only entity that has the power or obligation to interpret and act on the Constitution even when other laws purport to mandate something contrary to it. > but the Espionage Act exists for a reason. The Espionage Act may exist for a legitimate reason, but the manner in which it purports to serve that reason has been the subject of serious and sustained criticism from pretty shortly after it was adopted nearly a century ago. It might be a good idea to rethink it from first principles, rather than accepting a framework laid out in the early-20th Century Red Scare and then tightened under McCarthyism.
    - LLWM 11y ago
      Why can't you say the law? Seems like you're assuming that everyone disagrees with what the NSA has been doing, which is totally off base.
- supercanuck 11y ago
  Snowden did the right thing. He should be pardoned for that.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Why are you so sure of this? Aren't you essentially saying "no matter what else comes of the Snowden leaks, enough good has been done that Snowden can't possibly be culpable"?
    - anonbanker 11y ago
      Aren't you essentially saying "no amount of good done by an action can outweigh a wrong caused?"
      - tptacek 11y ago
        No, that's not an equivalent statement. Mine hinges on the fact that we don't know everything that's been disclosed yet. Mine incorporates the current unlimited downside of the leaks.
        hobs 11y ago
        If you want to be so precise, then lets go ahead and admit that the information to be disclosed cannot have an unlimited downside (what does that even mean, if we blow up the entire world have we reached unlimited downside?)
        ellyagg 11y ago
        Considering that Snowden massively raised awareness of how much closer to 1984 we are than many people thought, and considering that 1984 is considered to exemplify a horrific dystopia, it's hard to imagine a realistic downside to a Snowden disclosure that would evict him from my head as a hero. Wanna scoff at a 1984 reference? Fine, Snowden demonstrated that the government's power and reach is much greater--much much greater--than most people imagined. Of course, if the downside risk is unlimited, if it's actually infinite, then literally no good Snowden has done could overcome it. Seems like a bit of a gotcha to me.
- davepage 11y ago
  Essentially the American state religion to which your refer is largely predicated on the concept that any law may be ignored by those in power so long as the intent is to produce "good outcomes" for some state perception of good. (i.e. 'the constitution is not a suicide pact' or read "Enemies: A History of the FBI") Law (so far) is merely stains on paper until interpreted by the mind of an individual in some context (time, place, society). Societal context is some collective consensus over right and wrong -- some popular mush of common sense, the influence of which can be seen in the evolution of, for example, supreme court decisions over socially controversial issues. Where large numbers of individuals subscribe to a particular set of beliefs about what the law is, and proceed to act accordingly, a very convincing illusion of government emerges. And one may refer to this as a state religion in the sense it is entirely an emergent property of belief rather than reality. Thus, absolute law is a myth. Pardons are an outlet for the elected leadership to short-circuit the legal process when, in a given instance, punishment is perceived to exceed the crime. It is thus arguably irrational to assert that a pardon is premature in the Snowden case, considering the outcome thus far. Of course, those capable of issuing such pardons are themselves true believers. Snowden has committed blasphemy against the state religion. Thus a pardon can only occur should some popular unrest threaten those in power.
- rgbrenner 11y ago
  Exactly right tptacek... people forget that Snowden isn't just disclosing NSA spying. For example, he disclosed intelligence about a failed al-queda plot that: revealed that the United States intercepted messages between Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of Al Qaida, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, discussing an imminent terrorist attack [0] And as a result, they may have changed communication methods. He's had other questionable discloses as well. 0. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/us/qaeda-plot-leak-has-undermined-us-intelligence.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/us/qaeda-plot-leak-has-und...
  - jodah 11y ago
    You mean the journalists, who vetted and chose to publish the material, disclosed this. As has been discussed exhaustively, Snowden didn't disclose anything himself, opting to rely on the expertise and judgement of partner journalists to select which items to write about. Keep in mind, many times more items were withheld than not.
    - irishcoffee 11y ago
      I'm not sure how this is seen as a positive thing. Journalists, with, on average, limited knowledge of infosec, holding in their possession classified documents. Lots and lots of classified documents. I'd wager a guess that at least a handful of these journalists were holding said documents on a system that had its share of known vulnerabilities. I'd be absurdly happy to be proven wrong, but there is a very high chance that every single document snowden distributed is on sale to the highest bidder, and has been for a while.
      - robotkilla 11y ago
        There is zero evidence that the data was stolen from these journalists and sold to the highest bidder. Since there is zero evidence, you have to cinsider yourself wrong for now.
        11y ago
- rapind 11y ago
  That sounds a bit like Guilty until proven innocent. Who knows what any of us will do tomorrow or the fallout from it?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    No, it is not at all "guilty until proven innocent".
    - sounds 11y ago
      Can you please explain?
      - ncallaway 11y ago
        If I had to summarize tptacek's argument it would be something along the lines of: 1) Assumption: A pardon of Snowden is only appropriate if the upsides of the leak outweigh the downsides of the leak. 2) We don't know the full downside of the leaks (since that requires knowledge of the future) [1] 3) Therefore, the potential exists for the downside of the leaks to outweigh the upside. 4) Therefore, we shouldn't offer to pardon him yet as we don't know it's appropriate. The conclusion of the argument relates only to the decision on whether to extend a pardon to Snowden. We don't need to make a presumption of innocence or guilt when deciding to offer a pardon to someone. There is no right to a pardon, and no right to be considered for a pardon. These decisions are the prerogative of the President (for federal crimes). Calling his argument "guilty until proven innocent" would only be a fair assessment of his argument if tptacek was advocating for punishing Snowden before a trial court and jury determine his guilt. [1] As an aside, I don't see how this statement could ever become false — at least for time scales that would be relevant to offering relief to Snowden.
        tptacek 11y ago
        Yup. Thanks!
        11y ago
- baddox 11y ago
  Wouldn't a pardon only apply to current charges?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Wouldn't a pardon only apply to current charges? A pardon, at maximum (as usually understood, though I don't think the commonly-accepted belief that prospective pardons are invalid has actually been tested), could apply to all federal offenses committed prior to the pardon being issued, whether or not they were now known, or whether "current charges" even existed.
  - officemonkey 11y ago
    Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon and Nixon wasn't even charged with a crime.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      Richard Nixon should not have been pardoned!
      - Aloha 11y ago
        Both sides have a good argument. Nixon shouldn't have been pardoned, he should have had to answer for the crimes he committed, but in a way, he did.. he was permanently removed from circles of power, and left in disgrace. I wont really make the argument that what history meted out to him what sufficient just merely that the prosecution would have taken another 5+ years, while in the mean time the nation and government would have been by in large paralyzed, I believe it was healthier in the long run to close the chapter on that phase of history, and move on. Something else I'd note, the laws passed in the wake of watergate were reduced in scope, and allowed to be skirted by a compliant and fearful of terrorism congress, the wiretapping is not the fault of the executive, its a failure of congress to provide anywhere near enough oversight.
- hansjorg 11y ago
  tptacek always makes sure that his comments are legalistically true. He's not a fascist endorsing authoritarian tendencies.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Awww, I bet you say that to all the fellas.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > It is not actually true that good outcomes from Snowden's actions eliminates all his culpability. That claim requires certain assumptions of moral first principles, so whether its "true" or not is not something people are liable to agree on even if they agree on the material facts.
- pera 11y ago
  > It is not actually true that good outcomes from Snowden's actions eliminates all his culpability. Well, the government and the military uses very often this "good outcomes" concept when they pardon individuals who committed "collateral damage" (aka civilian casualties). I would like to know how one could be a whistleblower without being "culpable" of "aiding the enemy" (not quoting you here). If some very powerful agency is doing something that doesn't respect the constitution, after reporting that internally and being completely ignored, I believe it would be a crime to not disclose these actions. It seems to me that there is no escape in this culpability game...
  - mpyne 11y ago
    > Well, the government and the military uses very often this "good outcomes" concept when they pardon individuals who committed "collateral damage" (aka civilian casualties). CIVCAS is simply not a crime by itself, "good outcome" or not. The legality of use of force has nothing to do with the outcome of that use in international law, except insofar as a nation that can guard its borders can prevent the rest of the world from bringing war criminals to justice. E.g. if you deliberately target civilians in an attack that would be a crime, even if you accidentally managed to kill a bunch of important enemy military in a way that would have made the attack legal if you would have known the enemy military were there and targeted them. Conversely if you target what you have every plausible reason to believe is a concentration of enemy military and it turns out to be, say, a wedding with no military present, that still wouldn't be illegal in international law. The outcome is almost completely immaterial, it's the process that leads up to the decision to attack that determines the legality of a use of armed force.
- vdaniuk 11y ago
  Some time ago tptacek argued against a suggestion that HN members include disclosure of their company/org affiliation in threads with possible conflicts of interest. This was a suggestion that at least merited a rational, constructive debate.[0] However, his comments in that discussion were dismissive, obnoxious and negative. Now tptacek publicly argues against Snowden's pardon without disclosing his NSA affiliation. The original comment calling for disclosures was heavily downvoted by HN community. I am interested in the opinion of the HN members present in this thread. Should there be an effort to expose possible conflict of interest on HN? Context is important: HN is one of/the most influential tech and startup media/community. tptacek is a respected, well-known and authoritative HN member with lots of clout. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8667657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8667657
  - tptacek 11y ago
    "My NSA affiliation". You people are funny.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
swombat 11y ago
The fight isn't even started, this is just another punch in the face. According to https://www.usafreedom.fail/ https://www.usafreedom.fail/ this act actually extends spying rather than restricting it. Of course, it's being presented as the opposite of what it is. That's par for the course in US politics these days though.
- irishcoffee 11y ago
  I do appreciate you providing backup to your claim. I do find it hard to give the link much credence. It would be like me commenting about how horrible meat is for people while linking to a fantastically pro-vegan website.
  - swombat 11y ago
    This very first link about the bill extending section 215 (the section under which spying has been justified) until 2019 is pretty self-explanatorily demonstrated by this link, from the page, via a third party legislation tracking site, govtrack.us: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr2048/text/ih#link=VII_705_a_~T1&nearest=H3970213DCD8B4A7C9D2AC368B1ADFDCA https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr2048/text/ih#li... I'm on my phone so I can't check out the other ones, but perhaps you can point to specific claims that are not supported? At the very least this one seems clearly correct. Edit: also, I disagree with your implicit assertion that a site can't be credible if it has an opinion that it asserts and backs up with facts. It's not always true (frequently not, in the case of U.S. politics) that both sides are viable. Often, one side is just plain wrong or lying, as seems to be the case in this present situation.
sigzero 11y ago
No. Exposing what he did was good. The way he did it was bad and he should paid the penalty for that.
- deciplex 11y ago
  How do you reckon? He tried going through the official channels for many months, and when it was clear that the system he was working in would not allow those programs to receive even the slightest airing in public, he went to the press. What would you have had him do?
  - carboncopy 11y ago
    Do you have any evidence that he tried going through the official channels for any amount of time? The only evidence shown was an email where he asked about executive orders vs legislation to the office of legal counsel for the NSA during his last 30 days of employment. I know you can't prove a negative, but ordinarily we shouldn't accept unsubstantiated claims.
    - NotOscarWilde 11y ago
      Hypothetically, if no more evidence for or against this claim surfaces, we probably should give him the presumption of innocence on this point -- and since "avoiding the proper channels" is likely illegal, we have to assume that he tried.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

bsimpson 11y ago

Cool. They're stopping that one spy program everybody knows about. How many more do you think there are that are even more egregious but they don't have public pressure to end because nobody realizes they exist?

mhurron 11y ago
> They're stopping that one spy program everybody knows about Yes, I'm sure it will stop.
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  I actually wonder what the NSA will do if this legislation will pass. I believe they used an excuse in Court before that they "can't" shut down the program (or a similar one). So would they actually shut it down or rename it and move it to a different facility? Who gets to verify that they're going to obey the new law? The Intelligence Committee members that already oppose the new laws?
  - baddox 11y ago
    I think the NSA will continue to spy. They might go to the trouble to hide it from Congress, but I doubt it, and I doubt Congress will actually care.
    - swombat 11y ago
      Here's your answer: according to https://www.usafreedom.fail/ https://www.usafreedom.fail/ this act doesn't actually restrict the NSA. In fact, it extends the spying powers of the NSA. So they'll continue what they're doing, and do more of it.
  - mindcrime 11y ago
    Yeah, at this point I'm pretty sure the NSA doesn't give a shit what Congress says. If Congress cut off their funding, they'd make it up by orchestrating the sale of arms and/or drugs on the black market, and keep right on doing what they're doing now.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

Being a libertarian, I don't want to do all the knee-jerk stuff on here in response, but for context we must remember that bulk data collection was never authorized in the first place. So it very well may be that metadata collection ends under the Patriot Act and continues under some sealed executive order from the G.W. Bush years. If watching DC over the last decade or so has taught me anything, it's to be very careful noticing the difference between what things appear to be and what they actually are. ADD: Just to be clear "Congress votes (and the president signs) a law to outlaw bulk data collection" is one headline. "The House of Representatives fails to authorize some forms of bulk collection by no longer continuing certain provisions" is another. The House is not voting to end anything. Mr. Headline Writer Person: please do not confuse these two completely different scenarios.

JumpCrisscross 11y ago

What happens to records already collected?

eonw 11y ago

well its about time. but i am sure they will come up with another clever name for it and just keep on doing it.

simoncion 11y ago

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that a legislative end to the program moots any currently running judicial challenges to it. So, if Congress shuts the program down, the Supreme Court will never get to weigh in on the constitutionality of the whole thing. If I'm not wrong about that, I would much rather let the damn thing run for a few more years and have the Supremes kill it for good.

tsotha 11y ago
The risk, of course, is they might rule it's legal.
- simoncion 11y ago
  It seems that that risk is small: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/senate-intelligence-chair-constituents-i-dont-care-what-you-think https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/senate-intelligence-ch... (Paragraph four is most relevant, but 'graphs one through three also make good reading.) Moreover, recent court cases at all levels make it clear that the Judicial system is pretty sick of surveillance methods that rely on creative interpretations of law. If the Supremes don't get a chance to weigh in and stake this behavior through the heart, Congress will soon dismantle some or all of it, only piece the programs back together over the next few years[0]. [0] Much as Ma Bell pieced itself back together (sans Bell Labs) after the breakup.
  - tsotha 11y ago
    You're most likely correct in that they would rule it illegal, though I don't think we should underestimate the court's ability to produce convoluted decisions to support the status quo. See Gonzales v Raich.
    - simoncion 11y ago
      Agreed. I think it's totally worth the risk.

sneak 11y ago

Great, so now all the people who make phone calls in the US will be safe from metadata collection of their contact graph... ...unless they make them on a smartphone OS from a PRISM partner vendor like Google or Apple. Or call someone outside of the country that only holds 4% of humans. Or make the call on Skype or Facebook. Or send an email. It's progress, I guess. But is it meaningful progress?

tptacek 11y ago
There is zero evidence establishing that a source appearing in PRISM implies that their smartphone OS is backdoored.
- enlightenedfool 11y ago
  Better assume they are backdoored and every communication and stored information is accessible by govt and its organizations. That way we would be conscious about our activities on devices and elsewhere and try our best to protect ourselves until the system changes (which could be never).
- jsmthrowaway 11y ago
  Snowden said directly, twice, and it meshes with my own speculation from having worked at two of the implicated companies, that PRISM is the NSA-side codename for an efficient warrant process and nothing more.
  - sneak 11y ago
    Calling them warrants when they are issued by the FISA rubberstamp court (or are NSLs) is quite a stretch.
- sneak 11y ago
  Collecting metadata doesn't require a backdoor. There is tons of evidence that putting a name in your iCloud or Google contacts means the NSA gets a copy.

higherpurpose 11y ago

So the Senate will pass...this bill? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/op-ed-why-the-eff-is-pulling-its-support-for-the-usa-freedom-act/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/op-ed-why-the-eff...

joshstrange 11y ago
See the EEF's response https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/landslide-vote-house-overwhelmingly-passes-usa-freedom-act-without-amendments https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/landslide-vote-house-o...

pvnick 11y ago

Is the Freedom act even relevant at the moment? Since a district court ruled that the bulk collection is already illegal under the current law and Rand Paul and Ron Wyden are threatening to filibuster the renewal of the expiring Patriot Act, it seems that civil rights hawks currently have the upper hand, or at least an advantageous bargaining position. Why pass another law that could be skewed to give the intelligence agencies more loopholes?

tanderson92 11y ago
The district court decision is anything but established precedent.
- magicalist 11y ago
  Not sure why you both wrote "district court". It was the Second Circuit: http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/NSA_ca2_20150507.pdf http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/NSA_ca2_20150507.pdf
takeda 11y ago
Freedom Act is a Trojan Horse: https://www.usafreedom.fail/ https://www.usafreedom.fail/
0x5f3759df-i 11y ago
The court ruled it was illegal but did not order the end of the program and instead said it was the job of congress to either let section 215 expire or knowingly renew the program.

MCRed 11y ago

Wake me when the president signs a bill into law that ends the Patriot Act, once and for all. To be honest, we should have standards and secret courts and "national security" letters are the very thing that the constitution was designed to stop. (the fourth amendment and the like were meant to put an end to the equivalent of that era.) Signing or voting for any continuation of the Patriot Act should be considered an unforgivable act by anyone who values freedom.

tptacek 11y ago
The nondisclosure restriction on NSLs is tied directly to PATRIOT (or at least may have only been tested in the context of PATRIOT), but the concept of an NSL predates it. Really, your issue is with Smith v Maryland.
drawkbox 11y ago
Portions of the Patriot Act are up in June, where will our representatives stand? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/section-215-patriot-act-expires-june-congress-ready https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/section-215-patriot-ac...
- briandear 11y ago
  Rand Paul has a filibuster planned. http://thehill.com/policy/technology/241635-rand-paul-threatens-patriot-act-filibuster http://thehill.com/policy/technology/241635-rand-paul-threat...
wanderingstan 11y ago
> (the fourth amendment and the like were meant to put an end to the equivalent of that era.) Do you know off hand the name of those era's equivalents? Just some search terms to get me going would be appreciated. I'd like to learn more about the historical precedent.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  I think the term "general warrant" was used. Hopefully this gets you started, and hopefully others comment with more information.

shmerl 11y ago

Great, but what about bulk collection of Internet traffic which is even more critical?

phy6 11y ago
And should we expect a rise in the VOIP industry to get around these proposed changes?

jaredhansen 11y ago

... And in related news, NSA internal leadership votes to continue bulk data collection anyway. Call me overly cynical, but I suspect that the legislative branch lost meaningful influence on the executive in this area some time ago.

jessaustin 11y ago
Hell, the executive and the chain of command both would have a hard time forcing the hand of a recalcitrant NSA: "Joint Chief Smith, we're happy to discuss your objections to our policy, but first we'd like to review some saved communications we have that document some of your conduct. On page 2, we cover your first year at West Point..."
tsotha 11y ago
Only because Congress is happy with things the way they are. Letting the NSA (and other agencies) carry on with these kinds of programs gives them an out no matter what happens. If the program gets discovered and the public is upset legislators can pretend they didn't know about it. Nancy Pelosi did this rather famously, pretending she'd never been briefed on programs she was documented to have been briefed on. On the other hand, if a big terrorist attack happens and the public is in the mood for greater leeway for security services Congress can point to programs like this one and say "See, we've been looking out for you all along by authorizing intrusive data collection." This is the way legislative politics works in the US. The goal is to put yourself into a "heads I win, tails... I win" situation, and they're very good at it. To operate with principle is to risk giving your electoral opponents ammunition when you're up for office next. If Congress actually wanted to enforce its will here you would see concrete changes. But it doesn't.

guelo 11y ago

It gives me some hope for this country that this issue doesn't fall along the normal party line divisions.

peteretep 11y ago
I suspect this is always the case when both sides feel equally vulnerable to an issue.

niels_olson 11y ago

> A compromise of some form must be reached before June 1, when the provision of the Patriot Act that allows the N.S.A. dragnet expires. Actually, it would seem the best outcome would be to prolong things past the 1st...

swombat 11y ago

Or not: https://www.usafreedom.fail/ https://www.usafreedom.fail/

ccvannorman 11y ago

Is it just me, or did anyone else have to double-check to see that this was an ANTI-spying bill and not a PRO-spying bill? I wish bills were required to have descriptive names. TL;DR: It's a good one, but EFF and others feel it doesn't go nearly far enough to curb spying.

javert 11y ago
Yeah. Based on the name and past history of the government, I assumed it was something nefarious. (And probably like the Congressmen, I haven't read it, so maybe they did slip something nasty in.) Honestly, they ought to just pass a law that bills can't have names and can only be numbered, to avoid propagandized or just plain dishonest titles.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  My god this might be brilliant! It will get nicknames from each partisan side but it WON'T have a title.
beambot 11y ago
But it's got "freedom" in the name. It couldn't possibly be bad... You know, like the "Patriot" Act. </s>
- monochromatic 11y ago
  Anything with a patriotic word in the title is suspect. Anything with a victim's name in the title is presumed awful.
  - Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 11y ago
    I dunno, the AMBER alert system was a pretty damn good idea.
    - rblatz 11y ago
      I turned amber alerts off on my phone after multiple alerts at 2am for someone over 100 miles away.

felixfurtak 11y ago

so... only phone data collection then. what about everything else?

xnull6guest 11y ago

Let's be clear about what the "FREEDOM Act" does. It does not make NSA Bulk Collection of phone data illegal. What it does is rearrange the laws and request process and more carefully enumerate and define procedures by which the NSA may acquire and query phone records that are stored in bulk. It also focuses primarily on phone records and one phone record program. There are dozens of phone record programs and hundreds of different types of signals that are collected that are not subjects of the "FREEDOM Act". Now (like it presumably was before) the NSA will not have full takes of all American phone records. They will force companies to keep these records for them though, and they will continue to have the ability to query them. It doesn't matter if nobody is watching 99.5% of CCTV footage. If CCTVs watch every square inch of a city and record it for later possible inspection, that's surveillance. It does not matter if human analysts do not inspect 99.5% of the bulk data. It is still surveillance. It was also surveillance when the KGB forced private citizens to keep tabs on one another. It does not matter whether it is Google, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, Dropbox, Facebook, and Comcast doing the surveillance on compulsion of the Fed. All of our data and communications are being stored and processed. It is still, categorically, surveillance.

takeda 11y ago
When they were phone tapping in Eastern Bloc during communism they at least were nice enough to remind you about it through prerecorded message[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_tapping_in_the_Eastern_Bloc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_tapping_in_the_Easte...
- swombat 11y ago
  My parents and grandparents lived in Romania at the time. There was no prerecorded message, just fear and uncertainty.
  - takeda 11y ago
    I guess it was just in Poland then.
lewisl9029 11y ago

Zigurd 11y ago

Good. Domestic spying means less and slower social progress, because the leading edge of social progress will be seen as dangerous and programs like what NSA have been running will be used to crush it in the early stages of development. There is a real cost to living in a panopticon.

shard972 11y ago
This re-enforces the spying apparatus by giving them rules they otherwise made up for themselves. This bill doesn't give you any privacy.

fysac 11y ago

I'm so confused. What about this? https://www.usafreedom.fail/ https://www.usafreedom.fail/

drawkbox 11y ago
Oh I see what they did. Patriot Act section 215 was up in June 1, 2015. So they did this "USA Freedom Act" a month before to extend that to 2019. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr2048/text/ih#link=VII_705_a_~T1&nearest=H3970213DCD8B4A7C9D2AC368B1ADFDCA https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr2048/text/ih#li... "Section 102(b)(1) of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 (50 U.S.C. 1805 note) is amended by striking June 1, 2015 and inserting December 15, 2019." So no need to fight that Patriot Act fight for another 4 years. It is definitely time to switch to SB, HB and numbers for bills and no propagandistic naming of bills for sure so they can't get this fast track mentality. They are also pushing through TPP with strong-arming while presenting this false NSA good news as a top story.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  > It is definitely time to switch to SB, HB and numbers for bills and no propagandistic naming of bills I think this is what should happen.

redchili 11y ago

Is Obama going to veto this? If he does that would be out of character and alarming. At the same time, he has never really shunned the NSA at all.

timtas 11y ago

Such sophistry from The Paper of Record. Honest headlines might be: House Declines to Let The Patriot Act Expire as Planned or House Votes to Extend the Patriot Act...Again or House Votes to Extend the Patriot Act, Attempts to Curtail Worse Excesses Here's a hint, NYT. When Milton Friedman said "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program," he was being critical not descriptive.

wsloth514 11y ago

Is it me or is this a misleading title?