Exactly two years after journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras traveled to Hong Kong to meet an NSA whistleblower named Edward Snowden, Congress has finally brought itself to reform one surveillance program out of the multitude he revealed — a program so blatantly out of line that its end was a foregone conclusion as soon as it was exposed.
The USA Freedom Act passed the House in an overwhelming, bipartisan vote three weeks ago. After hardliner Republicans lost a prolonged game of legislative chicken, the Senate gave its approval Tuesday afternoon as well, by a 67 to 32 margin. The bill officially ends 14 years of unprecedented bulk collection of domestic phone records by the NSA, replacing it with a program that requires the government to make specific requests to the phone companies.
After Snowden’s leak of NSA documents revealed it, the program was repeatedly found to violate the law, first by legal experts and blue-ribbon panels, and just last month by a federal appellate court. Its rejection by Congress is hardly a radical act — it simply reasserts the meaning of the word “relevant” (the language of the statute) as distinct from “everything” (how the government interpreted it).
At the same time, the Freedom Act explicitly reauthorizes — or, rather, reinstates, since they technically expired at midnight May 31 — other programs involving the collection of business records that the Bush and Obama administrations claimed were authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act. In fact, even the bulk collection of phone records, which was abruptly wound down last week in anticipation of a possible expiration, may wind up again, because the Freedom Act allows it to continue for a six-month transition period.
And while the Freedom Act contains a few other modest reform provisions‚ such as more disclosure and a public advocate for the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, it does absolutely nothing to restrain the vast majority of the intrusive surveillance revealed by Snowden.
It leaves untouched formerly secret programs the NSA says are authorized under section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, and that while ostensibly targeted at foreigners nonetheless collect vast amounts of American communications. It won’t in any way limit the agency’s mass surveillance of non-American communications.
As I wrote after Sunday night’s legislative action, which paved the way for Tuesday’s vote, this marks the end of a vast expansion in surveillance authorities that began almost immediately after the 9/11 terror attacks. Indeed, the Freedom Act represents the single greatest surveillance reform package since the 1970s.
But that’s a low bar.
After 14 years of rubber-stamping executive-branch requests for pretty much anything related to terrorism, Congress had an extraordinary moment of opportunity to pass genuine reform. The Snowden revelations had changed the public’s attitude about government surveillance. And three provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire.
The provisions did expire after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell repeatedly failed to stampede the Senate into extending them as is. Loath to vindicate Snowden, McConnell and most of the Republican majority took a position even more extreme than that of the White House and the intelligence community, both of which had declared themselves satisfied with the modest changes in the defanged compromise legislation.
McConnell and other fearmongers issued dire warnings until the very end. “The Senate is voting to take away one more tool from those who defend this country every day,” he said Tuesday.
McConnell tried to get support for “some discrete and sensible improvements” to the Freedom Act on Tuesday, but failed. In one last stand before his final defeat, he refused to allow debate on several amendments that would have given the reforms more teeth.
President Obama wasted no time in announcing his plans:
Glad the Senate finally passed the USA Freedom Act. It protects civil liberties and our national security. I'll sign it as soon as I get it.
— President Obama (@POTUS) June 2, 2015
Spitfire Strategies, a communications and campaign management firm, compiled the following responses to the passage of the bill:
Google: In passing the USA Freedom Act, Congress has made a significant down payment on broader surveillance reform. Today marks the first time since its enactment in 1978 that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has been amended in a way that reflects privacy rights enshrined in our history, tradition, and Constitution … Today’s vote represents a critical first step toward restoring trust in the Internet, but it is only a first step. We look forward to working with Congress on further reforms in the near future.” – Susan Molinari, Vice President, Americas Public Policy and Government Relations
ACLU: “The passage of the USA Freedom Act is a milestone. This is the most important surveillance reform bill since 1978, and its passage is an indication that Americans are no longer willing to give the intelligence agencies a blank check. It’s a testament to the significance of the Snowden disclosures and also to the hard work of many principled legislators on both sides of the aisle. Still, no one should mistake this bill for comprehensive reform. The bill leaves many of the government’s most intrusive and overbroad surveillance powers untouched, and it makes only very modest adjustments to disclosure and transparency requirements.” – Jameel Jaffer, American Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director
Center for Democracy & Technology: “This is a generational win for privacy and transparency,” said CDT President & CEO Nuala O’Connor. “We’ve successfully restricted government surveillance, protecting the privacy of Americans and strengthening transparency, while preserving our national security. The era of casually dismissing mass surveillance as unimportant to liberty is over – even in Congress.”
OTI: “It took two long years of intense debate and negotiation, but Congress has finally put a stake in the heart of the NSA’s program to collect the phone records of millions of innocent Americans. Although USA FREEDOM is a compromise bill that doesn’t include every reform that will ultimately be necessary to rein in mass surveillance, it is a historic victory for privacy rights and the first step on the long road to comprehensive reform. Without a doubt, this is the strongest new regulation of America’s intelligence agencies since the spying scandals of the 70s, and it is the result of a broad bipartisan majority of Congress responding to the average American’s clear demand: do not spy on us,” said Kevin Bankston Policy Director at New America’s Open Technology Institute.
Access: “Congress has responded to public demands to curtail overbroad, unlawful surveillance by passing the USA FREEDOM Act,” said Amie Stepanovich, U.S. Policy Manager at Access. “We celebrate today’s vote as an important first step toward comprehensive surveillance reform. Now that the Congress has passed a prohibition against bulk collection, it should be expanded to other authorities, including Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.”
American Library Association: Passage of the USA FREEDOM Act is a milestone for two equally important reasons. It’s the first meaningful reform of our surveillance laws in almost 15 years. . . and it serves notice that libraries, tech companies, civil liberties advocates of every kind and hundreds of millions of ordinary Americans want the rule of law and their privacy restored. Tonight we celebrate. Tomorrow we go back to work to finish what USA FREEDOM started and can’t be stopped.”
Demand Progress: “The Senate just voted to reinstitute certain lapsed surveillance authorities — and that means that USA Freedom actually made Americans less free. Demand Progress opposes the USA Freedom Act, as it does not end mass surveillance and could be interpreted by the Executive branch as authorizing activities the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has found to be unlawful.” – Demand Progress Executive Director, David Segal
(This post is from our blog: Unofficial Sources.)
Oh wow. I didn’t realise how difficult this was to even find in the news cycle. That’s even more disturbing than I thought:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/03/nsa-surveillance-fisa-court
Out of curiosity, wouldn’t it be nice if we could make our governments have comments? I mean if they’re our governments, for the people etc etc etc…?
See what Obama did, there?
Still going to bat for this, Mr. Froomkin?
Well, your lede caught it. Snowden made a mark with his whistleblowing, but he needed a herald. Dreyfus had his Zola, Tom Mooney had Fremont Older, and Edward Snowden had Glenn. It’s somewhat thankless but history will remember it more positively than the man who signed the “USA” “Freedom” “Act.”
And so it goes.
jgreen7801 on 02 Jun 2015 at 7:41 pm said:
The third paragraph of Dan Froomkin‘s article asserts:
As jgreen 7801 astutely posits, once the smoke and mirrors and hyperbolic spittal have been wiped from the lens of reality, the proverbial deck chairs on the ship of actual reform have simply been rearranged; and the exact same operatives have retained the exact same unencumbered power to secretly and unilaterally define and determine what constitutes the “relevant” confiscation of any person’s Constitutionally protected private information.
One should wonder how much of the public treasure was expended on funding this vapid political charade, and how long it will take the media carnival to sell this “reform” snake oil to its willing victims.
As Usual,
EA
Cooler heads may prevail. However, I really don’t see any “giant leaps” or even “small steps” I can’t see where anything has changed. What I do see is a lot of vacuous political theater. Already people are expressing concerns. The US Imperial government already ignores the Constitution and democratic government.
You know, a legal memo or two ordered up by Obama and perhaps even drafted by him, a secret court ruling, perhaps an executive order for added spice and everyone’s favorite redefining words in the English language – black is now to mean any color except black. Business as usual.
Finally got a chance to actually read the USA Freedom Act in its entirety. I think it’s pretty hackable, and if I think that, then someone else who’s time and attention and requisite skills who has looked at it has already figured out the hacks. They have 6 months to debug them and create a pretty standardized system for subverting these provisions, probably they will have them nearly perfectly honed in time to make sure they can roll it out so as to control the amicus curiae and company reporting systems as well.
With respect to the latter, since the new law requires the companies to comply with any search of records for which the NSA can get a court order, either the NSA will get access to the company machines (less likely), or the companies are hereby required by this law to upgrade their own data analytics and search engines to whatever spec the NSA asks them to (more likely), and can then submit the bill to the government for the upgrades. It will take about one (1) business meeting, or less, of the corporate execs on the subject to decide to use the new capabilities for generating corporate profits — indeed, if the board takes it up it will be their fiduciary duty to make that decision. And then the process of converting private information that the court can require to be kept private into public information because it’s been used publicly by corporations and therefore no longer carries an expectation of privacy will commence. Public information can be scrutinized without any restrictions because it’s no longer subject to the 4th amendment rules because it’s no longer private.
So between hacking the court and pushing surveillance into the public sphere and turning it into a profit making enterprise, I’d say its a win-win for the NSA. But hey, we stopped the bulk collection of data that’s already bulk collected in the private sector for as long as it takes to create a recursive set of boilerplate documents that don’t look that way, and besides, no private corporation is allowed to report on the targets of a letter or court order more than once, so we only need to calculate each six months what level of new orders won’t raise an eyebrow based on a rolling (convolution) window of scary news events in order to end up having all of private industry doing all the work the NSA used to have to do without being able to tell anyone about any of it. Shouldn’t take more than a year or so to be able to access any record they want without going into court for anything but a bunch of routine renewals.
(Any random map with a one hop contraction has to converge. That single fact can defeat the entire bill. Sorry.)
Thanks to President Obama for doing more for civil liberties and the promotion of civil rights than any president in modern history, despite the naysayer twerks who’ve condemned him as a status quo president, including Edward Snowden and the Intercept. Elections matter. There is a difference between the two parties and this president proved it yet again with a John Hancock that can be seen from Russia.
Blatant rewriting of history, propaganda or committable delusion.
I could not have written better satire. Congrats!
@ Dan Froomkin
I’m curious how you can write the above two sentences? The bolded portion in the first sentence is an unsupported assertion. How can the USA Freedom Act mark the “end” of anything when clearly the rest of your report notes, quite accurately, that no program has “ended” not even bulk collection of telephone communications which will continue for another 6 months. And subsequent to that it will be collected and stored by the phone companies and it appears it will available to any designated Alphabet Agency upon request without a warrant and just for the asking.
I mean you contradict the bolded portion of the first sentence explicitly so the question is why write it? I mean why not report accurately and simply that “The USA Freedom Act changes nothing except it adds “more disclosure” (whatever that means) and adds a “public advocate” to the FISA process.” I mean you could have saved yourself about 5 paragraphs and your reporting would have been exactly as accurate with a lot fewer words.
And as far as the bolded portion in the second sentence goes, here is the dictionary definition of “reform” as in “reform package” (used as an adjective I believe):
So if the USA Freedom Act “changes” nothing, how can it be accurately described as a “reform package”. And more importantly how can it be accurately referred to as “the single greatest reform package since the 1970s” when it has no meaningful activities that have been “changed” or “reformed”?
I mean why caveat it with “but that’s a low bar” when in fact there has been no meaningful “reform” whatsoever. Do you consider it “reform” to blithely include a nebulous provision in a law that says “more disclosure”? More disclosure to who/whom? To Congress? And will those in the Congressional loop or on the correct oversight committees be able to “disclose” to the public what “more” is “disclosed” to them? I doubt it if history is any indicator? And exactly what good does a “public advocate” do, if FISA court hearings are conducted in secret, its findings or decisions remain secret, and the “public advocate” is not allowed to make public his/her impressions of the process, the legal briefing he/she submits, or disclose the factual and legal issues being litigated?
I mean I seriously doubt you misunderstand the meaning of the word “reform” regardless of whether it is used as a verb, a noun or an adjective.
Don’t you find your piece as written to be contributing to the Orwellian doublespeak/doublethink nature of this entire episode of Surveillance State Kabuki Theatre 3000?
Why not just report the accurate statements in this piece and let it go at that? The entire piece could have been written in one sentence and be accurate as follows: “The New Unimproved USA Freedom Act does not change any existing power the surveillance state currently possesses and exercises. It does include “more disclosure” to somebody at some point in the future and at some point in the future some individual will be a “public advocate” before a secret court process that his legally hidden from the view of the public.”
Are you getting paid by the word, maybe? Because I think you are a much better journalist than this piece indicates. In fact, I was one of the first to advocate in these comments sections that you would be a fine addition to The Intercept if they could entice you over from that rag the Huffington Post.
This piece is overwritten and disappointing to say the least.
I’m with Segal. Enough of this squealer. I won’t stand for this intrusive state policy unless I get to bend over and slit its throat. How can ANYONE call that an act of Liberty? It’s a protection racket.
Might as well ring a Saar Freedom Bell, right Mom? I’m Reich behind you.
Was hoping the Senate leadership would continue to overplay its hand and deliver a Freedom Act requiring a new House vote that would go down to defeat and we’d have things lapse while surveillance opponents continue to gather their strength.
As it is, there’s a good amount here that does not appear to be an improvement. 1st off, the new law makes all this permanent (making this harder to eliminate). The required warrant/request does require an identity to be specified (seems like loophole big enough to drive a “get everything” truck through) – and the NSA won’t be calling AT&T up and saying search for this and give us the information – it’ll be just like before (you have an investigation, which got the “warrant” and you just turn to your computer and execute a open ended search on whatever you want) except the data will be housed at AT&T / Verizon (those willing partners of the U.S. Government Surveillance State).
There’s a reason the U.S. surveillance establishment was supporting this law and it wasn’t because it protected citizens privacy. Perhaps this represents the cresting of these powers and that is good step…but its very hard to say if this is really the case.
> . . one small step?.? Actually ONE MORE LIE. Now the truth is hidden once again… George Bush granted IMMUNITY to the telecom executives ” so they would not be tied up in courts WIRE-TAPS ( is there a difference?) G.B. deemed they were no “ILLEGAL” but granted immunity anyway (????) . Do you believe this government is releasing anything called truth? These people practice FRAUD … They are “professionals – experts” AT FAILURE TO CONNECT THE DOTS / and protect their SECRET BUDGETS. WE have some where around 16 intelligence agencies.. look at the wonderful job the T.D.A. is doing (headlines). THESE PROGRAMS WILL CONTINUE –
UNTIL THE AGENCIES. ARE DISSOLVED ( and they will secrecly be replaced – unless they get caught)
> > >. T R U T H……… C’mom admit how mush safer you are today…..as they bankrupt the country with new military spending – over 50% of the budget and climbing
are you sure you want to drive across that bridge?? no subway tunnel collapses YET
> > deemed to be NOT illegal – – – T.D.A. > is T. S.A.
Is McConnell wearing a Turtle Neck?
I’m slightly confused about the USA Freedom Act. The name sounds Orwellian and I was under the impression that Section 215 of the Patriot Act simply expiring would have been the best option. It seems that the USA Freedom Act is basically clarifying some of the verbiage from 215 and putting the wrongdoing back into more clearly defined law, no? I thought I read something about how all it does is put the data on Verizon’s servers instead of the NSA’s. The NSA then could and likely would simply request information on all of their callers, effectively putting us back at square one, with a more airtight legal case for the spy state. Am I off-base on this? I understand there were a bunch of amendments to this bill, but I haven’t been able to keep up on them.
Just as UK did — commit broad crimes against the people, declare it’s illegal, make it legal, magically it’s ok.
Though it’s obviously not.
The data always was on “Verizon’s servers”. That’s how phone companies work and that’s where NSA got it in the first place. There is still the requirement for a warrant to search through the data based on phone numbers of suspected terrorists, such as known phone numbers from foreign countries, they just simply go to a different server to make the search and probably have to take measures that companies like Verizon will keep the searches confidential and not tip off the “targets”…
The data is on Verizon’s servers, but the new act means Verizon is required to keep it for longer than is necessary for the operation of their lines and servers.
As for Verizon keeping it confidential due to legislation, you trust your government far too much friend.
He’s invested. The Stasi must be his meal ticket.
You have to ‘trust’ the government and rule of law. it’s just a fact of life. It’s how the world works. You can’t live a life of irrational paranoia…
I seriously doubt Verizon would ever tip off their targets, unless their target was someone like Hillary Clinton, who they perceived to be a more powerful ally than whoever was requesting the data. As for confidentiality, I’d be more worried about them selling out information to third parties than tipping off targets.
???? ????
Can the State that has so little faith in its people that it fears and spies on each of them, ever be deserving of its people’s faith?
It’s about control, the ability to carry out political vengeance, to squash anyone who too loudly criticizes the abuses or policies that benefit the oligarchs.
As usual no mention of the tight relationship between corporate data-mining and state intelligence agencies. Google is buddy buddy with the DoS and donates generously to both sides of the aisle. Schmidt and Cohen even wrote a book laying out Google’s vision for the world and reassuring Washington the company is no threat. Julian Assange’s ‘When Google Met WikiLeaks’ exposes Google as frauds who readily hand user data over to the government. Public grandstanding about how much this publicly traded corporation _cares_ about building a better world for all while the Internet saves humanity is utter nonsense of course. But the tech-libertarian utopia KoolAid has made the rounds and Page, Brin and Schmidt spout the most ludicrous SV delusions and the wise media folks just nod politely and the wannabe billionaire coders openly worship their data mining fantasist overlords. Unbelievable.
Yet Snowdon, Greenwald, even Assange (until Google played him like a fiddle and wounded his pride) give SV data miners a pass wilfully or otherwise. Power concentrated in a few hands is dangerous. And Google is very powerful. And cooperates and works closely with DC. Bruce Schneier’s book ‘Data and Goliath’ takes state and corporate data mining to task and utterly demolishes surveillance state defenders and apologists with well reasoned arguments. Pierre Whatshisname, the SV tech weirdo paying for this site, is just a normal, chil, civic-minded billionaire I’m sure. Nope, no skeletons in his closet. Agenda…why to save the world of course! Just like every other uber-capitalist SV billionaire. Have some more KoolAid, the dog and pony show will be rrrrright back!
Vivian Janek left this link recently which I found to be the most revealing of all about the Google/Surveillance State link.
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e
“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“The biggest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he doesn’t exist.” [The Usual Suspects]
“The big move covers the little move.” [Magicians, GCHQ]
Sometimes the little move also covers the big move.
Now we wait for “Keyser Söze” to show up and run the Nation and our lives. All we need is the “strongman” who knows how to use power to the fullest, no weakling or bumpkin like Obama and Bush, it gets much worse not better.
Too soon! When someone is out of arguments, according to Godwins’ Law (see Wikipedia), sooner or later will start to talk about Hitler or Nazis.
As they already figured out in Europe criminality of bulk spying is just a technical problem. So they stole money from citizenry and build bypasses and cloning channels which result in convenient interchange of the bulk data stream among 5 eyes and subordinate agencies. As it was documented it’s happening in UK and Germany and everywhere in EU where NSA is spying on citizenry of a country short on cash and capabilities. All legislature in US or Europe is meaningless and serves political pasturing nothing else, a farce since they did not cut a cent from bloated NSA budget. And its is nor unique. China is doing it for decades and “protecting” peoples constitutional rights. The problem is internet backbone and concentration of traffic flow making spying easy.
I agree with @Arth. We have established several principles with this reform:
1) Spying on this data is no longer secret, and therefore no longer restricted from use in any courtroom for any reason.
2) It is perfectly OK to demand, as a condition of offering a service for two people to communicate, that a company not merely be wiretap-friendly, not merely facilitate spying, but actually be forced to store the records for the government to use for however long is demanded.
Like a prison, an NSA facility doesn’t go away when someone “closes” it, but just finds a new purpose. The same will happen here, which means, there will have to be yet further spying to fill the capacity.
The NSA searches are not intended to be used in any courtroom. The searches are mainly intended to identify who foreign terrorists are talking to in America and identifying terrorist cells…
My view: this is actually a pro-NSA ‘reform’. The NSA no longer needs to bother collecting and storing all that data. Now the phone companies are forced to do it and make it available to the spools, on demand. In the end, the NSA, FBI… whatever are going to have whatever data they want and ‘the rest of us’ are going to get higher phone bills because somebody is going to have to support the cost of collecting, storing and distributing all that info and, of course, it’s going to be ‘us’ (the people) paying for it.
Precisely. It kills so many birds with a single stone that I am disgusted that //TI is calling this ‘reform’.
Now you can’t even defund this crap — which means if it EVER had a chance of going away (not bloody likely) before, it certainly doesn’t now — oh, and now all that stuff that was illegal but whitewashed? Fine and dandy. Let’s not forget third party ‘evidence’ rules.
I think I may be wanting to bitchslap //TI right now. Why are you supporting this? WHY?
The Intercept is not all it appears. I think we would need to know what those ‘agreements’ between Greenwald and his boss Pierre to know what is actually going on.
You really need to bring it when you try to lure the prey.
What have Hillary and Cameron in common? BlackBerry Magic. He can crush the candy out of any tweet he sent NewsCorp’s Red Top Goddess, ask GCHQ. I know the way they do. They told NSA, and then Snowden told US.
Metadata that could bring down a PM, overnight.
There has been a weird national paranoia that NSA searches phone meta data without a warrant and without authorization and oversight by Congress…
Sorry…but you can keep repeating same bit of disinformation
You are extremely naive to keep republishing…or maybe not so naive!
Now you can dig deeper and get to the truth, unless you are part of the problem.
They will never give up this power…they will only improve on it.
The Utah Data Center (UDC) was built as the backbone of the Patriot Act. Our friend Mr Snowden cough up a truth and that it needed to be corrected otherwise UDC is wasted money. Snowden is in Russia But we can go back to congress and created an new improved Patriot Act and call it the Freedom Act…sounds better too. Sounds like something was accomplished; Freedom, glorious private freedom…I will say it again, I don’t think so.
UTAH DATA CENTER:
“The planned structure provides 1 to 1.5 million square feet (90,000 – 140,000m2), [18][19][20] with 100,000 square feet (9,000 m2) of data center space and more than 900,000 square feet (84,000 m2) of technical support and administrative space.[7][18] It is projected to cost $1.5-2 billion.[3][7][18][21][22] A report suggested that it will cost another $2 billion for hardware, software, and maintenance.[18] The completed facility is expected to require 65 megawatts of electricity, costing about $40 million per year.[7][18] The facility is expected to use 1.7 million gallons (6435 m3) of water per day.[23] An article by Forbesestimates the storage capacity as between 3 and 12 exabytes in the near term, based on analysis of unclassified blueprints, but mentions Moore’s Law, meaning that advances in technology could be expected to increase the capacity by orders of magnitude in the coming years.[2]
Toward the end of the project’s construction it was plagued by electrical problems in the form of “massive power surges”[24] that damaged equipment.[17]This delayed its opening by a year.[2″
-wiki
This huge complex was built specifically to deal with the vast amount of data accumulated in the gathering of every single phone call on the planet per day.
Just because they have rebranded the Patriot Act to the freedom act and informed a public. Does not mean it has stopped.
They simply corrected the Snowden problem with new a new act.
They will never give up this power.
You are parroting propaganda Dan.
“In light of the controversy over the NSA’s involvement in the practice of mass surveillance in the United States, and prompted by the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures by ex-NSA contractorEdward Snowden, the Utah Data Center was hailed by The Wall Street Journal as a “symbol of the spy agency’s surveillance prowess”.[1]”
– Wikipedia.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elb80xou8Zg&list=PLC5E7286C06659F9C&index=1
The USA Freedom Act was a deliberate and cynical ploy by the spook gangs and their Congressional slaves.
Changing the software and moving some loopholes around is not progress.
Progress would require acceptance of the Constitutional requirement for individualized warrants, and prosecution of the ring leaders of the unconstitutional spying.
NO! Bulk collection has NOT ended! What gives the telecoms the right to continue to collect the information, probably to still be stored in the NSA’s massive computer storage facilities, from which the government and its contractors will still violate the Constitution and mine the information as much as they please? The ‘Orwellianly’-named “USA (so-called) ‘FREEDOM’ Act”, like the ‘Orwellianly’-named “USA (so-called) ‘PATRIOT’ Act” before it, does a supposedly “legal” endrun around the Constitution; and, in the case of the “Freedom” Act, does a supposedly “legal” endrun around the U.S. Court of Appeals decision that the program is illegal. The telecoms are just as much in violation of the Constitution; but, like giving them so-called “legal” immunity from prosecution and being held accountable for illegally mass-spying on the American people before it was unconstitutionally “legalized” during that obtaining of retroactive “immunity” in 2005, the “Freedom” Act now also supposedly “legalizes” their continuing to hold, for the government, unconstitutional information on all of the American people in violation of the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment obviously makes ALL OF THIS completely absurd and illegal, no matter how much Congress attempts to put a patina of “legality” on it.
So, the bulk collection goes on in the guise of so-called “civil liberties ‘reform'” and standing for so-called “freedom”, when IT IS, AND DOES, NO SUCH THING(!), just as the so-called “Patriot” Act was supposedly “patriotic” and stood for “patriotism” [and that all those who would stand against it are supposedly “against” patriotism and “not patriots”, but “traitors”—well, now, with the so-called “Freedom” Act, all those who stand against it are also supposedly “against” freedom, “‘freedom’ to keep our country (so-called) ‘safe'” (screw civil liberties, and screw the Constitution and Bill of Rights!), “against” the ‘freedom’ to be “patriotic” (translation: nationalistically fascist), and “against” the ‘patriotism’ to (supposedly) “preserve” ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ through so-called “reform”]. The whole thing is so disgusting, it’s not at all funny! But it would make the fictional totalitarian fascist “Big Brothers” in Orwell’s book, “1984”, and the modern-day totalitarian fascist “Big Brothers”, happy; though, from their perspective, there’s never enough eradication of human rights and civil liberties, and never enough control of the People, because they want absolute control and for none of us to have any True Liberties, Freedoms and Rights, particularly to privacy, presumption of innocence and due process of law, whatsoever.
“No fight for civil liberties ever stays won.” –Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU
And, in this case, we haven’t won anything!
All based on the myth and national paranoia that police forces get stuff from phone companies without a warrant.
Take your lame lines elsewhere; this is an informed public here. Perhaps you’d be better off serving that pablum at MSNBC or HuffPo.
CREDO said it best:
http://credoaction.com/major-update-how-the-senate-reauthorized-the-patriot-act-and-what-comes-next/?akid=14587.1504968.QhTQf8&rd=1&t=3
Basically, the “USA ‘Freedom’ Act” reauthorized the sunsetted Section 215 of the “USA ‘Patriot’ Act”, thus undoing the “win” of sunsetting of Section 215. So, in reality, no win.
The health of a nation depends on the principles on which it is founded, and on the checks and balances it has established to ensure adherence to those principles. For a while we went astray and let Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld-Obama-Clinton con us into doubting those very principles to which we owe our freedom and security. Edward Snowden, despite his tender age and experience, was instrumental in lifting the veil under which the con artists were operating, and all the free and secure people the world over owe him immense gratitude. This General salutes him for his bravery.
Personally I’m getting convinced we young people shouldn’t take our powerful information to old people.
@Cindy: You have some very good ideas. As for me, I usually don’t indulge in excessive drinking on weekdays.
General Herpes – I think you occasionally say interesting things, but you are an awful racist (‘slant-eyes,’ really?) and a poseur.
Plus, I drink cider very infrequently. Not lately, if that’s your implication.
I wonder if the Freedom Act has considered the following possibilities:
1) A North Korean or ISIS or Iranian or Israeli or worse still a German spy seeking and getting employed by AT&T or Verizon, or an employee getting recruited by one or more spy agencies, who would then have access to everyone’s phone data.
2) A foreign government acquiring a majority shareholding in one or more phone company.
3) From where the telephone companies will be able to generate funds in order to maintain such huge databases for five years? Will it show up in customer bills?
4) Sale of customers’ personal information or similar profitable activity that the telephone companies may indulge in.
I personally think this whole business of acquiring and storing telephone metadata is practically useless and fraught with inherent danger.
Ooh, this is getting good!
@General Hercules — On your point (2), it’s been illegal for many years for foreign companies, let alone foreign governments, to own and operate telecommunications networks in the U.S.
@ondelette:
Nationality, Allegiance and Convenience are all different ways in which a foreign entity can operate. The law only checks Nationality.
funny!
But younger people are far more manipulable, pliable, and ever-changing. At least with older people, if you dig hard enough, you can find out what they have to lose, and what they’re willing to lose — what their beliefs really are, not what they are “right now” — not what they say they believe in because they’ve never really been tested. There’s also a matter of judgment, which plays into things quite a bit. Maybe we need the wisdom of age and the incorrigible will to keep fighting of youth?
The Sun is gonna burn you, but not like the Old People do. Beefheart pre-authorizing you.
“…public advocate for the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court…”
That’s cute- I imagine their job will entail incessant repetition of paraphrasing Bill Hicks:
‘Go back to sleep America, everything’s fine.’
If you read through the new one you will see, new boss same as the old boss, and possibly worse.
Fuck you, Froomkin. The Intercept IS the establishment, people. It is a part of the theater.
jesus christ girl. Grow up.
You’re grown up? You weak-willed twit, you’re as feeble as the writers here. Stand up for something, for God’s sake.
Someone’s hijacked Cindy’s yacht. Are folks still playing BS with my detector?
Flatheads say gun it, gorilla bars. Join me in the Intercept’s silo where the tuning is superb. Vroomkin!
Some say you’re just an angry drunk but I say you are more than that.
Mixed with the sand and gravel that is TI, your wit brings strength to an otherwise unconsolidated, somewhat fractured, site. You create concrete positions that are ready to sink.
You are portlandite.
You’re catching on.
With all due respect, I don’t believe the ‘electromagnetic weapons’ angle you seem to be from.
When the establishment manipulates you, they offer money, or say (or hint) they will gut your lover or your child like a fish in front of you (just like any other criminal organization), they don’t send bizarrely employed half-wits to point vaguely-tested weapons at targets.
You shouldn’t pretend to know more than you do. Educate yourself.
All electromagnetic weapons are are a combination of electricity and magnetism. I’ve told you this before but apparently you didn’t listen Search ‘electromagnetic fields’ and radio waves and you can begin your education.
Hay, those AF Silo pukes don’t appreciate your out of date humor either.
Then let me, someone I know you’ve been in agreement with multiple times under other guises, but who is pretty much fed up, say ‘yes, yes it is’.
Are you surprised?
(Hint: Useful Idiots isn’t what I’m calling *myself*).
Or didn’t you notice the precipitous drop of multiple regular posters (only one of which was me)? Conveniently, no explanations were permitted to be posted.
“All in all it was… just more bricks in the wall.”
Take care, friend.
You guys have too many guises. Howz about a geyzer gets up some steam and cleans out the whole stable of you fur coats? What a freak show this devolved into. Thanks for salvaging my reputation while eliminating my verbation.
Fuck you GCHQ. Still selling out on post-dated Tempora? Executives love the privildged code of record keeping, brother.
Cindy,
I think a lot of your criticisms of TI are valid, particularly your comments recently about the site and commenter’s dialogue ultimately not bringing about effectual change.
To what extent is TI theater? Genuine question, not trying to mock. I agree Froomkin’s articles on this act have been mostly BS.
What do you think about Greenwald?
Looking forward to your response.
R
I have an inordinate fondness for Greenwald that I find hard to shake, for he is morally assertive and has a skill with language I could only wish for.
However, having read all his books I find he has now settled into a timidity toward the establishment which is uncomfortable to behold.
I can’t fault people for being threatened into compliance, although I can fault them for being paid to submit. I’m not sure which has happened to Greenwald, and it could be neither (and this just means he’s made himself functionally useless for other than obvious reasons), but he has scaled down his assaults on the establishment such that now he is merely a nuisance to the elite, embodying an impotent frustration with the status quo that anyone could do.
He used to have fire. Now he’s a mere observer, brilliantly astute, but toned down so much that his flame is just lukewarm.
I want him to tear the establishment a new one.
I want him to ‘worry the establishment’ like he and Scahill used to do regularly.
But it seems those days are over. The rebels are all just *wistful* now, a ‘side’ on a show, and don’t really kick ass at all, they’re just grateful for scraps.
It’s difficult for me, and my emotions are high, as I’d hoped Glenn Greenwald was visionary.
Cindy,
I think Greenwald can be, and often is, visionary without bringing meaningful change to the status quo.
I’m sure he has been threatened, and in light of Michael Hastings’ death, as well as his partner’s detention at a UK airport when the NSA leaks were gaining traction, I can see how he could feel intimidated.
I doubt he has been paid TO not be critical of established interests, but being paid more and gaining prestige could result in one not wanting to risk those to challenge power structures.
R
Julian Assange initially thought the way to go was through funding from somewhere like Soros. That ultimately, obviously, didn’t happen.
I think any big money that enables easy, as opposed to easier, reporting usually acts to thwart the people, not assist us (we, the people). Some of GG’s more gutsy statements have been in his twitter feed. I find that sort of interesting. Most of the Snowden stories are being covered by other journos. Most of the Big Story, somehow, isn’t being covered, regularly or otherwise, with any sort of synthesis, by anybody here at all. I think that’s dangerous given the overall attitude of the press and its lack of reporting in general on any of this — if it isn’t in “your paper” then often other papers just don’t cover it. Reuters/AP sometimes gets past this, but even the biggest news organisations aren’t pushing for this. And that’s not surprising. They’re owned by a small, concentrated group of power brokers.
This shit’s hard enough. It’s difficult to blame anyone for wanting monetary stability to fight the man — the problem is when that money comes, in various ways, from “the man” that you’re also essentially supposed to be exposing — even when you have the absolute best interests at mind, and in your heart — even if you aren’t complicit, it can too easily make one look complicit. One judges people by the friends they keep (even if they don’t want to, or don’t wish to admit it). It’s probably better if there’s no opportunity to question the integrity of people we get our news from, or at less reason to. It’s not that the integrity isn’t there, so much as it occupies braincycles that might otherwise be spent on the actual topic instead of the messenger.
Nobody, yet, has managed to avoid this with any deal of success.
“It’s probably better if there’s no opportunity to question the integrity of people we get our news from, or at less reason to. It’s not that the integrity isn’t there, so much as it occupies braincycles that might otherwise be spent on the actual topic instead of the messenger.”
How would that be more beneficial than considering the context of where information is coming from? One needs to be constantly vigilant and skeptical of information, PARTICULARLY when it comes to political agendas.
Why would you discourage critical thinking?
I wouldn’t at ALL discourage critical thinking.
The conscious mind is willing to put in quite a bit of effort, if its owner wants it to, in coming to a conclusion about trustworthiness. Over time, those conclusions lend certain patinas to what we hear, read, and see — it passes from conscious thought into unconscious thought as we’ve already done thorough analyses. We may pick the pieces up off the rack and reinspect them from time to time, but generally once we commit to a belief set, we’re programmed to follow that belief set as a preferred neural pathway. It’d be nice if people did more critical thinking in that early stage.
I mean, as a thought experiment, let’s say one of those people most of us who are on this site consider reprehensible, were to come out with something truly revealing. Do you not judge the revelation based on your previous experience with that media outlet? If you’re, say, anti-surveillance and they have anonymous officials ‘leaking’ something, are you more likely to question the veracity or reason for the leak if it’s somewhere like, say, Fox or Limbaugh or maybe (to go in a different direction) AboveTopSecret?
Let’s say you have A, who did some bad bad things. They then apologised, ceased doing what they were doing, and gave all their money and time to fighting that same bad thing. While, yeah, there’s obviously a psychological payoff to this form of penance, it also makes them more credible than someone who continues to support a massive state surveillance/corporatist agenda who at the same time is giving money to people who are fighting it. The mind struggles to make sense of it.
All that said, I’m NOT saying that’s the case here (at least for me) — I’m saying that given the choice between something totally and completely anonymously crowdfunded (and I do mean anonymously) where one is given no indication of what direction the donators want you to go in, and the choice of money coming from anywhere where there might be an agenda, even if it is implicitly and explicitly not enforced or followed by those who take the money… which is the better option?
(Incidentally for the majority of people, those ‘thoughtful analyses’ can be split-second things, drawn on a lifetime of past experiences and subtle cognitive/social/etc biases. Any thinking beyond the split-second usually informs or works backwards from said outcome. I won’t even try to say I’m immune to this myself. Nobody is.)
I’d generally let this go without saying, but I think I was pretty forceful there, so I want to iterate something, however difficult, as a caveat:
Pointing out weaknesses here shouldn’t be used as a way to basically sidetrack the real conversation — and while things are certainly weak beer, and even useful (inadvertently), there are a lot of people who’d gladly see this place — and the *very* powerful talent it has amassed — burn in a singular almighty conflagration. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back despite my distaste. It also never hurts to point out that places like this can serve as blueprints or examples, just as I suspect most whistleblowers hope to serve as. We can learn from it, but maybe it also serves as courage for someone else later on. Most early attempts at anything only meet with partial success.
Wow, we gave Woodward a decade before we called him a boot licking loser. I fear too many of ya’ll thought a wrecking ball would build us a palace. What silly princesses looking for a restful sleep. Get to work, whiners! This rodeo just got STARTED! Pick up a shovel and look for more shite.
To answer your first question, I think The Intercept is now ‘theater’ in that its creators and main attractions are wittingly or unwittingly serving the establishment, basically by presenting themselves as alternate observers rather than engaging agents of change whose perspective is universal.
By diminishing their view of themselves to ‘another competitive outlet on the web’ they are ignoring the attractive dynamic which (perhaps) united them in the first place, and whether this is deliberate or not the result is the same – mere criticism replacing bold declarations of wickedness in high places.
And so instead of obviously pushing back, they play a ‘niche’ part in the status quo, as an instrumentalist plays a part in a depressing symphony.
Cindy,
I think your criticisms of The Intercept are apt. By playing a role of “more critical than most other journalists,” and as you said, an alternate perspective, they do tend to reinforce the same propaganda models used by corporate media- repetition and omission of ideas, limiting of debate (Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent comes to mind).
The journalists that write for TI clearly are skilled at analyzing the corrupt power structures of America, but largely still engage those structures in the political doublespeak terms that surround them (Greenwald seems to be the best at avoiding this).
I think Greenwald can be, and often is, visionary without making any meaningful change to the status quo. As you have alluded to before, journalism and online forums do not change entrenched structures.
If the legal authority were completely removed, and Congress passed unequivocal bans on this surveillance activity, I have absolutely no trust that it would stop or respect the legislative oversight in any way.
The passage of the USA FREEDOM Act is a failure of the Senate. Paul and Wyden’s amendments should have been voted on, but they were not. The only amendments voted on were McConnell’s surveillance-enhancing measures, and they failed.
If the PATRIOT Act was not so important that McConnell was willing to risk prolonging the lapse, then the Senate should have taken broader argument and taken this week to pass a bill which actually challenges the surveillance state. USA FREEDOM Act is just a re-brand.
Unfortunately, she was talking about FISA, she meant the Patriot Act, and she most definitely was not talking about Google’s privacy policy, which still doesn’t provide for Safe Harbor regulations anywhere except where it is required by law (and that would be in the European Union), and which amalgamates all your accounts into one account, thereby providing a directory to everyone’s anonymity to anyone who hacks them. If it’s wrong for the government to forbid anonymity and to create backdoors, then it’s wrong for Google to forbid anonymity and create backdoors.
Y’all celebrate if you want, but the unseemly display of the government grudgingly tossing the people a bone every couple of decades has lost its entertainment value. Witness how much energy, money, time and noise this one anemic bill generated, then ask yourself if the situation has significantly changed proportionate to that effort. Now ask yourself if you believe real substantive reform is possible. Everybody involved is high fiving and slapping each other on the back, except those who actually read the bill and understand how little has actually changed. To top it all off, the IC has an army of lawyers dedicated to obfuscation, stretching the truth to the breaking point, redefinition of words, all in an effort to render classified programs even more opaque. We haven’t turned a corner, as some would love to claim, and are claiming, rather more like hit a tiny speed bump. Without systemic overhaul, all we just witnessed was a lot of smoke and mirrors. Does anyone think the American people have enough courage and staying power to make this country live up to its potential? Or do you think most people are either too busy trying to scratch out an existence, or too self absorbed to give a damn? WE musn’t give up though, the alternative is unacceptable. I could have never imagined this country would be where it is today. How many wars will it take to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity?
My personal guess, based on extensive reading and observing and talking to people and taking history into account: We’re fucked. Though change can come from unexpected places at unexpected times and I have been wrong before. But I still think we are well and truly fucked. If global warming, which honestly I haven’t thought about much, is indeed the harbinger of a slow burn apocalypse as some seem to be suggesting…well, in that case we are absolutely fucked.
Good piece, Mr.Froomkin. Last line of 4th graph has one verb too many: calls allows.
And for his efforts, Edward Snowden has been awarded the Bjornson Prize, a Norwegian prize for freedom of expression!
http://news.yahoo.com/snowden-awarded-freedom-expression-prize-norway-140646575.html
Long live Snowden!
Stop the hero worship already. You are making Ed uncomfortable. Seriously, Snowden doesn’t want statues in his honor and sycophant swooners pretending this is a soap opera. How many times does he have to say it?