Dueling Amendments To Cut NSA Surveillance Funding; But One Is A Red Herring To Trick Congress
from the vote-for-the-right-one dept
We've been talking about the effort by Rep. Justin Amash to pass an amendment to the defense appropriations bill that would strip funding from the NSA when it comes to their surveillance efforts. While some in the House were trying to block his amendment from getting anywhere, it's been ruled in order and is likely to be voted on this week, most likely tomorrow (Wednesday). To be clear (as we'll describe in more detail below), it only tries to stop the funding of one specific program: the bulk collection of metadata. You can see the amendment here, but the key text:None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to execute a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order pursuant to section 501 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1861) that does not include the following sentence: ‘‘This Order limits the collection of any tangible things (including telephone numbers dialed, telephone numbers of incoming calls, and the duration of calls) that may be authorized to be collected pursuant to this Order to those tangible things that pertain to a person who is the subject of an investigation described in section 501 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1861).’’To translate this back to English, it's saying that Congress would basically defund the vast dragnet gathering of every bit of metadata done by the NSA on all phone records (and potentially other bulk records not yet revealed). These are done under a very questionable interpretation of §215 of the Patriot Act, which is the "tangible things" section or the "business records" section. In the law, it's also known as 50 USC 1861, where any common sense reading of the law would suggest that it only applies to specific records related to a non-US person under investigation. But, it's been twisted and stretched to mean the NSA can collect all records on all phone calls to search through at a later date at their leisure. What Amash's amendment is seeking to do is to basically say no funds can be use for this crazy and twisted interpretation, but rather funds can be used for the original and common sense interpretation. That is, the feds can still request business records under this section, but only if those specific records "pertain to a person who is the subject of an investigation."
In short: this part of the law can no longer be used to justify "collect everything and sort it out later."
However, since NSA supporters were unable to kill the Amash amendment outright, it looks like they've moved onto a sneaky alternative move: getting Rep. Richard Nugent to introduce a competing amendment that looks like it does something similar in defunding NSA surveillance, but in reality just reinforces the status quo. In other words, the Nugent amendment is a nefarious red herring, designed to attract votes from Reps away from Amash's amendment. It's a pretty scammy trick. The Nugent Amendment reads as follows:
None of funds made available by this Act may be used by the National Security Agency to—At a quick glance, these amendments may look similar. Both say stuff about how no funds can be used for certain forms of surveillance. But the specifics are very important here. There's been an awful lot of confusion over the past couple of months of revelations between two different programs and which laws they come under. As described above, much of the concern with the vast collection of data is about Section 215 under the Patriot Act. The separate concerns, about the PRISM program, fall under Section 702 of FISA. It looks like the Nugent amendment may be pulling funding from that, but it's not. It just says that it wouldn't allow funds to be used for Section 702 if it's "targeting a US person." But Section 702 already forbids the targeting of US persons and while there are some questions as to how well the NSA follows this limitation, so far there's been no real evidence that 702 is used to target US persons. So, this is just restating the status quo, and doing absolutely nothing to fix the gross reinterpretation of Section 215.
(1) conduct an acquisition pursuant to section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 for the purpose of targeting a United States person; or
(2) acquire, monitor, or store the contents (as such term is defined in section 2510(8) of title 18, United States Code) of any electronic communication of a United States person from a provider of electronic communication services to the public pursuant to section 501 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
There are problems with a wide variety of NSA programs, but the Amash amendment actually seeks to pull funding from one of the worst parts, while the Nugent amendment has the appearance of doing so while actually just reinforcing the status quo. Someone looks like they're trying to pull a fast one on everyone. Now might be a good time to phone your own elected representative to tell them that you expect them to support the Amash Amendment. If the Amash Amendment passes, there's nothing wrong with the Nugent Amendment also passing -- it doesn't really change anything. But if any Rep votes for the Nugent Amendment believing it's an alternative to the Amash Amendment, they're making a huge mistake.
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Filed Under: fisa, funding, justin amash, nsa, nsa surveillance, patriot act, red hering, richard nugent, section 215, section 702
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And the other is a slightly more subtle trick, besides ineffectual.
Take a loopy tour of Techdirt.com! You always end up same place!
http://techdirt.com/
Why aren't you fanboys helping out Mike with links back to here as I do? What a bunch of innovation-less freeloaders!
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Re: And the other is a slightly more subtle trick, besides ineffectual.
The NSA will still use whatever money they get to do whatever they want, they will either: A) stretch another part of the law to justify it; B) just tell everyone they can't talk about it because its S-E-C-R-E-T; or C) just do it anyway and lie about it. They've already proven their willingness to lie to Congress; while Congress and DoJ have already proven that they won't hold them accountable when caught lying.
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OHHH CANADA
IF the retards in power dont get the damage this does well heres on for you
MY ISP business will not host one server in the usa EVER...
in fact my actual american partner has hooked up with me to do this in Quebec Canada instead and ill add..
the last time i helped a Brit do this in 2 months we had 100 dedicated clients with a profit of around 2 grand a month...if my health at time had not gone south....well lets just say i was affecting the global pricing market as some of the big clients were coming to me for hosting...
i dont lie and use the word "CLOUD" and i give 24/7 real human being support and ive automated a ton of installs and applications and do tons of the custom work myself or with a few buds.
Ive had one guy over pay on purpose cause of that level of support and security.
I also give free advice and such on all softwares and hardware.
Last time i had a server in the usa?
1999....in florida.
before that...texas where a kind dude gave 200 of us space to muck around....he works for the pentagon and told me "DAMN you crash the server more then everyone combined , BUT DONT STOP...your teaching me so much "
he went to pentagon, i became a leader of 3200 hackers.
ahh the good ol days of crazy.net
see ya on flipside hercules.....
and the guy that took over started spying on peeps emails and we destroyed the box over and over.
and left.
i could write a very interesting book about my life so far....thing is it isn't over .....
up in canada we have these conservatives that do the same thing and use OMNIBUS bills to ram massive changes to bills through and as i see most leave so much vagueness into law as to be literally against the charter of rights and freedoms.
until you sue however the law is the law. and its all about trying ot create the same atmosphere in the usa as here..a land of lawyers, cops and military... A POLICE STATE...
Sorry to break it boys but this lil rid eya all been on willa not keep going.
FINLAND now is going backwards in copyright and watch as this allows massive growth....
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Re: OHHH CANADA
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None of these proposed solutions are designed to trick Congress in any way, shape, or form. These people are (at least in theory) well versed in political jargon, and quite aware of what these amendments do (and if they claim they don't, then they're basically admitting they aren't really qualified to be part of Congress).
What all this posturing is designed to do is trick the GENERAL PUBLIC into thinking something is really being done to address the problem.
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Re:
Earlier comments suggest that some politicians ask for a party line and stick to it, some politicians read through specific lobbyists comments to find out what they need to think about it and some of the more honourable read through all lobbyist opinions and make a judgement from them, which more or less is a fulltime job for each of their several committees.
None of the above ways to do politics actually forces the politician to read the text. Politics is mostly about posturing and making yourself look shining and your opponents as dirty. Actually reading laws is not a requirement to do well.
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Gone Rogue
However, it is possible that the NSA is a rogue agency, in which case, no law will ever stop them and nothing will make the NSA accountable except for the American people. They may always find government backdoor funding and secret interpretations to make their illegal activities seem legit.
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