Senate Intelligence Committee Rejects A Bunch Of Attempts To Amend Dianne Feinstein's Fake NSA Reform Bill
from the but-of-course dept
The Senate Intelligence Committee apparently just voted on Dianne Feinstein's fake NSA reform bill, which actually legalizes all of the illegal spying and adds a few new ways for the government to spy on everyone. Some of the members of the committee tried to add some amendments which would have made the bill do at least a few minor useful things, but it sounds like all of those were rejected. Incredibly, even though the NSA has been indicating pretty strongly that it's fine if the data it collects can only be held for three years, rather than the five it currently uses, an amendment limiting such data collection to three years was rejected. Even Dianne Feinstein supported that amendment, but increasingly disappointing Senator Angus King (like so many politicians, he seemed promising... until he got into office) voted with the Republicans on the Committee who all wanted to keep the surveillance backups for five years. As for other amendments, here's how Politico summarized them:Another 7-8 casualty in the intel panel mark-up was a provision to ban the bulk collection of cell-site information that can show where a caller is physically located at the time of making or receiving a call. The NSA has acknowledged running experiments to handle such data, but says it isn’t collecting it now. Most panel Democrats supported the geolocation data ban, and most Republicans opposed it, but some crossed the lines. Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), whose state is home to the NSA, voted against the ban. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) voted for it.The overall bill passed out of committee 11-4, with Senators Wyden, Udall, Heinrich and Coburn voting against it. As the Politico article notes, Coburn voting against it is a bit of a surprise, since he's been seen as an NSA supporter. In fact, the article suggests he voted against it because he thinks it puts too many restrictions on the NSA, which is crazy since it puts fewer restrictions than they have today. Specifically, Coburn doesn't want any limits on how long the NSA can keep your data, which is downright nutty.
The third proposed reform to fall 7-8 was an amendment by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to require that any Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court decision finding a violation of the Constitution be made public. Again, most Democrats supported the proposal, while most Republicans opposed it. This time, Feinstein and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) bucked their Democratic colleagues. Collins joined with six Democrats in favor of the transparency mandate.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: amendments, dianne feinstein, fisa, fisa improvements act, mark udall, nsa, ron wyden, surveillance, tom coburn
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Seems like we need more votes on the committe. Fifteen votes ain't cut'n it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Forever and a day...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"Five Years"
"So how long do you ACTUALLY hold it for?"
"That's classified."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What they want
Whenever Americans talk to each other, their government takes note of that conversation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What they want (part ii)
These senators, eight members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, want America to be a nation where the government gets a record of everywhere anyone goes.
When Americans stay at home, their government takes note of that.
When Americans go places, their goverment tracks them there.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Smile ! .. you're on candid camera
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I highly doubt the full Senate will pass this one simply turning all that is unlawful into lawful. Yeah let them ignore all the public disgust by saying "no problem here". Such supreme corruption would make people almost happy if "terrorists" exploded the Senate.
Well as already stated this one should not pass when it should be clear to most that the NSA has far exceeded what they have been authorised to do.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient...
Apt description of senatorial committee theatrics.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Apparently most Republicans aren't about small government after all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]