Renewing the Assault on Civil Liberties
A group of influential Republican senators have introduced a bill to make permanent the civil liberties-corroding provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act that were sold to the public -- and to Congress -- as temporary measures. These provisions are among the most controversial in the Act, and for good reason: they represent an extraordinary assault upon our most basic rights as U.S. citizens. The fact that they expire is one of the only checks on this assault.
For details, check out the current issue of Secrecy News newsletter and Let the Sun Set on PATRIOT.
Later: Timothy Edgar of the ACLU: "Congress had the foresight to make temporary some provisions of the hastily enacted Patriot Act. It is extremely premature to make these provisions permanent when Congress has not conducted thorough oversight on how the Act has been used and what safeguards can be included to protect civil liberties."
Related Updates
The New York Times reported that the Trump administration wants Section 215, the legal authority that allows the National Security Agency to collect Americans’ telephone records, renewed indefinitely. That’s despite earlier reports the NSA had shuttered its Call Details Record (CDR) Program because it ran afoul of...
Over nearly two decades, the NSA has searched millions of Americans’ telephone call records—all without a warrant or, for the vast majority of these calls, any suspicion of wrongdoing. It’s time to end the mass telephone Call Detail Records (CDR) program once and for all. Please join us in ...
Earlier this month, the New York Times published a major story reporting that the NSA has stopped using the authority to run its massive, ongoing surveillance of Americans’ telephone records. After years of fighting mass surveillance of telephone records, the story may make our jobs easier: NSA has consistently...
UPDATE September 14, 2018: This blog has been updated at the bottom to include information about two Senators’ reactions to the NSA’s call detail record deletion.In late June, the NSA announced a magic trick—hundreds of millions of collected call records would disappear. Its lovely assistant? Straight from the agency’s statement:...
This week, 24 civil liberties organizations, including EFF and the ACLU, urged Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats to report—as required by law—statistics that could help clear up just how many individuals are burdened by broad NSA surveillance of domestic telephone records. These records show who is calling whom and...
President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, Christopher Wray, will begin his confirmation process next week, giving lawmakers an opportunity to press him on his previous statements about expansive surveillance authorities and aggressive copyright prosecution.
Defense of the USA PATRIOT Act
During his tenure as Assistant...
The U.S. Senate confirmed Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo to be the Director of the CIA late on Monday over concerns from several congressional Democrats, who warned that putting Pompeo at the head of the intelligence agency would threaten civil liberties.
In an impassioned floor speech, Sen. Bernie Sanders...
Technology company leaders are reportedly meeting with President-elect Donald Trump and members of his transition team tomorrow in New York. Mr. Trump’s relationship with technology companies has been frosty, and his statements during the campaign and recent cabinet picks raise serious concerns about the...
The Patriot Act turns 15 today, but that’s nothing to celebrate.
Since President George W. Bush signed this bill into law on October 26, 2001, the Patriot Act has been ardently defended by its supporters in the intelligence community and harshly criticized by members of Congress, the tech industry,...
