Senator Bernie Sanders' Restore Our Privacy Act | Hacker News Reader

Senator Bernie Sanders' Restore Our Privacy Act

sanders.senate.gov

31 pointssalimmadjd8 comments

Wouldn't it be much better to repeal the Patriot Act and any laws & organizations that provide blanket search warrants?

I am deeply suspicious of any laws that take into account the type of investigation performed. Why would it matter?

All laws that are basically exceptions from normal conduct "because of terrorism" are bad laws. You know these are going to get abused; they're basically set up to be abused.

The current running poll on Senator Sanders' site is relevant to the NSA leaks: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/polls/

This modifies FISA section 501 (Business Records aka PATRIOT 215, used in Verizon warrant) to be limited in use to the FBI investigating international terrorism and requiring "specific and articulable facts giving reason to believe that the thing is relevant to an authorized investigation (other than a threat assessment)".

I am not a lawyer. Is that enough to prevent requests for all information, and what is the purpose of the modification to limit it to the FBI? I thought that "international terrorism" investigations would normally be handled by other agencies.

Apart from that it requires reporting of all requests using this specific law to Congress, and making that information public "[I]n a manner consistent with the protection of the national security of the United States."

edit: the law being modified is Sections 1861 and 1862 at http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/50C36.txt

The FBI limit is probably because the companies in question are domestic in nature. The FBI is not under the same prohibition as the NSA is; they are allowed to investigate crimes involving persons overseas, while the NSA is forbidden from data mining Americans. So it would help to compartmentalize the Verizon-style phone metadata searches away from NSA.

Of course FBI is still able to share with NSA and CIA, but they would have to do the work of obtaining warrants with specific information.

For the rest, IANAL so can't really help. For finding the laws the House of Representative website has an archive, or you could find the Gov't Printing Office website.

Interesting about the FBI, I always thought they were limited to domestic investigations.

On the topic of this amendment, it looks like it does 3 things:

1) changes an ambiguous "or" clause that currently only requires that a request be "to protect against international terrorism" to requiring an investigation by the FBI

2) requires "specific and articulable facts" instead of "reasonable grounds", and specifically requires it for each and every "tangible thing"

3) removes the clause permitting collection of data on anyone "in contact with, or known to" a foreigner under investigation.

IANAL but it does look like a great amendment, albeit only reining in section 215.

The FBI has no authority to operate within other nations, so that usually makes the domestic/foreign distinction a moot point. But there is nothing forbidding the FBI from operating abroad if the host nation allows for a given investigation.

What's more relevant, the FBI has long been involved in domestic investigations of foreigners (exactly as we might use PRISM for, in fact). In fact the FBI technically is the NSA's liaison to Google, Facebook, MS, etc.; NSA has no authority to interface with them directly so they hand it off to FBI, FBI is the one who actually works with the domestic companies.

SB 1168 would amend FISA (1978) to require that the Attorney General provide specific, individual details when requesting a ruling from the FISC, and report back semi-annually on how effective the authorized actions were.

Naturally, it is doomed.

  [pdf] http://www.sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Restore%20Our%20Privacy%20Act.pdf

edit:

Here is the entire text of the Patriot Act.

  [pdf] http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ56/pdf/PLAW-107publ56.pdf
        http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.R.3162.ENR:

The ACLU has a detailed discussion of perceived flaws in Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

        http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-national-security-technology-and-liberty/reform-patriot-act-section-215

FISA 1978 makes many additions to section 50, US Code that might conflict with the 4th Amendment.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act#Provisions

SOPA and ROPA.

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